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“The game has blown up! It was too rich for us. Everybody is trying to slit everybody else’s throat. I couldn’t find Elder — but Fernie tried to pot me from a window; and he’s Elder’s right-hand man. Or he was — he’s a stiff now. I think this thing in my chest is the big one — I’m about — but you can get the girl out. You’ve got to! Elder will go through with the play — try to make the killing for himself. He’ll have the town touched off to-night. It’s now or never with him. He’ll try to —”

A shriek cut through the darkness.

“Steve! Steve! Steve!!!”

Steve whirled away from the gate, leaped through flowerbeds, crossed the porch in a bound, and was in the house. Behind him Larry Ormsby’s feet clattered. An empty hallway, an empty room, another. Nobody was in sight on the ground floor. Steve went up the stairs. A strip of golden light lay under a door. He went through the door, not knowing or caring whether it was locked or not. He simply hurled himself shoulder-first at it, and was in the room. Leaning back against a table in the centre of the room, Dr. MacPhail was struggling with the girl. He was behind her, his arms around her, trying to hold her head still. The girl twisted and squirmed like a cat gone mad. In front of her Mrs. MacPhail poised an uplifted blackjack.

Steve flung his stick at the woman’s white arm, flung it instinctively, without skill or aim. The heavy ebony struck arm and shoulder, and she staggered back. Dr. MacPhail, releasing the girl, dived at Steve’s legs, got them, and carried him to the floor. Steve’s fumbling fingers slid off the doctor’s bald head, could get no grip on the back of his thick neck, found an ear, and gouged into the flesh under it.

The doctor grunted and twisted away from the digging fingers. Steve got a knee free — drove it at the doctor’s face. Mrs. MacPhail bent over his head, raising the black leather billy she still held. He dashed an arm at her ankles, missed — but the down-crashing blackjack fell obliquely on his shoulder. He twisted away, scrambled to his knees and hands — and sprawled headlong under the impact of the doctor’s weight on his back.

He rolled over, got the doctor under him, felt his hot breath on his neck. Steve raised his head and snapped it back — hard. Raised it again, and snapped it down, hammering MacPhail’s face with the back of his skull. The doctor’s arms fell away and Steve lurched upright to find the fight over.

Larry Ormsby stood in the doorway grinning evilly over his pistol at Mrs. MacPhail, who stood sullenly by the table. The blackjack was on the floor at Larry’s feet.

Against the other side of the table the girl leaned weakly, one hand on her bruised throat, her eyes dazed and blank with fear. Steve went around to her.

“Get going, Steve! There’s no time for playing. You got a car?” Larry Ormsby’s voice was rasping.

“No,” Steve said.

Larry cursed bitterly — an explosion of foul blasphemies. Then:

“We’ll go in mine — it can outrun anything in the state. But you can’t wait here for me to get it. Take Nora over to blind Rymer’s shack. I’ll pick you up there. He’s the only one in town you can trust. Go ahead, damn you!” he yelled.

Steve glanced at the sullen MacPhail woman, and at her husband, now getting up slowly from the floor, his face blood-smeared and battered.

“How about them?”