and embedded itself in the wall. The shot
had been aimed from the street for his head. The noisy room instantly
hushed. Spectators sat glued to their chairs. White-faced players
leaned motionless against the tables. De Spain alone had acted; all
that the bartenders could ever remember after the single rifle-shot
was seeing his hand go back as he whirled and shot instantly toward
the heavy report. He had whipped out his gun and fired sidewise
through the window at the sound.

That was all. The bartenders breathed and looked again. Men were
crowding like mad through the back doors. De Spain, at the cigar case,
looked intently into the rainy street, lighted from the corner by a
dingy lamp. The four men near him had not stirred, but, startled and
alert, the right hand of each covered the butt of a revolver. De Spain
moved first. While the pool players jammed the back doors to escape,
he spoke to, without looking at, the bartender. "What's the matter
with your curtains?" he demanded, sheathing his revolver and pointing
with an expletive to the big sheet of plate glass. "Is this the way
you build up business for the house?"

Those close enough to the window saw that the bare pane had been cut,
just above the middle, by two bullet-holes. Curious men examined both
fractures when de Spain and Lefever had left the saloon. The first
hole was the larger. It had been made by a high-powered rifle; the
second was from a bullet of a Colt's revolver; it was remarked as a
miracle of gun-play that the two were hardly an inch apart.

In the street a few minutes later, de Spain and Lefever encountered
Scott, who, with his back hunched up, his cheap black hat pulled well
down over his ears, his hands in his trousers pockets and his thin
coat collar modestly turned against the drizzling rain, was walking
across the parkway from the station.

"Sassoon is in town," exclaimed Lefever with certainty after he had
told the story. He waited for the Indian's opinion. Scott, looking
through the water dripping from the brim of his seasoned derby, gave
it in one word. "Was," he amended with a quiet smile.

"Let's make sure," insisted Lefever. "Supposing he might be in town
yet, Bob, where is he?"

Scott gazed up the street through the rain lighted by yellow lamps on
the obscure corners, and looked down the street toward the black
reaches of the river. "If he's here, you'll find him in one of two
places. Tenison's----"

"But we've just come from