"I must be gettin' deaf," drawled Billy. "Seems like I heard you say got to."
"You heard me right," declared Rale, with a vicious snap of strong, white teeth. "You cancel those appointments and put in Johnson and Kenealy instead."
"Everybody seems to want those two fellers," said Billy, wagging a puzzled head. "I don't understand it."
The district attorney leaned forward. His broad, flat face was venomous in its expression.
"Look here," he said harshly, "you like Hazel Walton, don't you?"
Whang! In that confined space the crash of the gun was deafening. The district attorney, coughing in the smoke, picked up himself and his chair from the ground. He had fallen over backward at the shot, struck the back of his head and now his actions were purely mechanical.
"Dazed you like, didn't it?" Billy queried in a soft voice. "You did hit pretty hard. Luck is with you to-day. I'll bet if you went down to Crafty's, you'd bust the bank and Crafty's heart."
Rale did not take the palpable hint. He sat down again and looked uncertainly at Billy Wingo. He had courage, this district attorney, the species of courage, you understand, that to function properly must have a shade the better of the break, that bets always on a sure thing and never on an uncertainty.
Rale had been knocked off balance mentally and physically. He did the wrong thing.
"You tried to murder me," he blurted out.