All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 110: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

820 Crabbe and Paler took up their po- sitions on the stairway. Rollins’s knees threatened to give way. ‘There was no fight in him, and Campbell practically dragged him to the door, though the sound of rushing feet in the hall below made a chill creep down my spine. Some one came pounding up the basement stairs, and in the second or two that I turned my head to see that Crabbe and Paler were quite ready for the intruders, a lot of red and yellow was suddenly pushed out into the vestibule. The door closed, and Campbell stood with his back to it. I thought I heard dim sounds of laughter come from the street, but I may have been mistaken; and, in any case, I lost them in a sudden growling command from the stairs: “ Put up your hands!” Beans, rounding the baluster, jerked back upon his heels, almost as if a bullet from one of the glittering muz- zles so near his head had actually hit him. His dusty face was black as thun- der, and his eyes, sweeping about him like lightning—at me—at Campbell— and up at the men who were so calm it seemed to hurt—shrank from the command in their hands. For just a second he hesitated, then his arms: rose slowly to the accom- paniment of much unpleasant vitupera- tive that isn’t worth repeating, and he marched in sullen anger at the order toward the center of the hall, followed by the evil-eyed Crabbe. Paler hung back, waiting for Della; and I thought perhaps she had been afraid to come up. Crabbe, slapping Beans’s pockets in the most matter-of-fact fashion, ex- tracted a murderous-looking revolver. “Tt’s all right, Beansy,” Crabbe as- sured him. “Mac helped you out once, an’ I’m jus’ helpin’ him do it again. If you wanna croak the guy, do it where it won't harm nobody but him an’ you.” THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. A dull flush crept over Beans’s face and forehead. Campbell, with his hands in his pockets and showing little signs of perturbation, left his post at the door and came walking leisurely forward. Crabbe gave him Beans’s revolver, which he carefully ‘ broke,” and, ex- tracting the charges, handed it back to its owner just as I caught a suggestion of millinery and petticoats at the top of the main stairway, and heard, with- out a doubt this time, laughter and jeers come from the street. “Not here,” Campbell declared very . quietly. “I don’t allow—” A muffled roar from without drowned the rest of it, and it was fol- lowed by a shriek that, in the dark si- lences of the nights, I hear again and shudder. There was another shot, and then a third. Then a moment of awful quiet that chilled. Beans smiled. In an instant, with his lips drawn tightly together and his eyes aflame in wrath and amazement mingled, Camp- bell wheeled sharply to the door, and, choking in horrified expectancy, fear- fully glancing toward the stairs, I fol- lowed him. A screaming riot had risen without. I was probably a foot behind Camp- bell when he reached the vestibule, but I think he jumped the steps to the side- walk, as windows flew up and heads popped out and heavy feet and three heavy men sprang into the limelight from opposite directions. Midway down the steps I stopped and looked down in shrinking horror upon a kilted figure lying huddled and still beside the open door of a taxicab. And there was a wild-eyed, tousled- haired girl hysterically screaming at a stoop-shouldered, bearded man who brandished a smoking revolver. ** Beat it, dad, for Gawd’s sake! ”’ But old man Borrowman ignored the advice. Instead, he stood frothily daring Rollins to get up. comiicloooks.com