Billy Kane flung a quick glance around him. The girl was a little behind him, close to those electric-light switches, her way clear to the front door, save for the peril of that lighted passage down which she must run. In front of him, just out of arm’s reach, the Cherub’s bland eyes smiled into his with a sort of hideous serenity; while over the Cherub’s shoulders, one on each side, showed the vicious faces of the other two—and, under cover of the Cherub’s body, Clarkie Munn’s hand seemed to be stealing in the direction of his hip pocket.
Billy Kane seemed suddenly to go to pieces and to lose his nerve. His tongue circled his lips with nervous repetition. He put out his hands in an imploring attitude, and stumbled a step forward toward the Cherub, and caught a glint of light on a revolver barrel in Clarkie Munn’s hand, as it came stealing now from the latter’s pocket.
“Wait—wait a minute, Cherub!” Billy Kane whispered thickly, and licked at his lips again, and stumbled forward another step. “Wait!” he whispered—and then, swift as the winking of an eye, Billy Kane flung his body forward with all his weight upon the Cherub, hurling the Cherub back upon Clarkie Munn, and whirling, whipped a lightning left full into Gypsy Joe’s face on the other side. There was a flash, the deafening roar of a report, as the Cherub reeled into Clarkie Munn’s revolver; then a scream of agony, and the Cherub, grasping at his leg with both hands, went to the floor.
“The switches there—beside you!” Billy Kane shouted at the girl. “Put out the lights—both switches! Quick! Run for it!”
Gypsy Joe, recovering his balance, and with a bellow like a maddened bull was charging forward; Clarkie Munn’s hand had swung upward again—and then the place was in darkness. A second late, Clarkie Munn’s revolver cut a vicious flame-tongue through the black, but Billy Kane had flattened himself out on the floor, and was wriggling rapidly backward toward the door and the now dark passageway.
There was a moan, then a shrill scream in the Cherub’s voice, and coincidentally a torrent of blasphemy from Gypsy Joe, as the latter, quite obviously, in his rush and in the blackness now, had stumbled none too gently into the wounded man.