s face had undergone a transformation.
His jaw was set and his blue eyes flashed like live coals.

"Stand back, little folks!" he ordered, while the twin weapons revolved
in circles of reflected flame about his trigger fingers. "You seem to
want a show, and you shall have it!" The whirling circles vanished. A
deep report fell upon the silence, and a gaudy vase on the mantle flew
into a thousand pieces. "Stand back, people, or you might get hurt!"

Awed into dumb helplessness, the spectators stared with widening eyes;
but the spectacle had only begun. Like the reports of giant
fire-crackers, only seconds apart, the great revolvers spoke. A nudely
suggestive cast in the corner followed the vase. A quaintly carved clock
paused in its measure of time, its hands chronicling the minute of
interruption. A decanter of whiskey burst spattering over a table. Two
bacchanalian pictures on the wall suddenly had yawning wounds in their
centre. The portrait of a queen of the footlights leaped into the air.
One of the beer-bottles, which the madame had placed on a convenient
table, popped as though it were champagne. Fragments of glass and
porcelain fell about like hail. The place was lighted by a tuft of three
big incandescent globes; and, last of all, one by one, they crashed into
atoms, and the room was in total darkness. Then silence fell, startling
in contrast to the late confusion, while the pungent odor of burnt
gunpowder intruded upon the nostrils.

For a moment there was inaction; then the assembly broke into motion. No
thought was there now of retaliation or revenge; only, as at a sudden
conflagration or a wreck, of individual safety and escape. The hallway
was cleared as if by magic. Within the room the men and women jostled
each other in the darkness, or jammed imprecating in the narrow doorway.
In a few seconds Ben was alone. Calmly he thrust the empty revolvers
back into his pockets and followed leisurely into the hall. There the
dim light revealed an empty space; but here and there a lock turned
gratingly, and from more than one room as he passed came the sound of
furniture being hastily drawn forward as a barricade.

No human being ever knew what occurred behind the locked door of Ben
Blair's room at the hotel that night. Those hours were buried as deep as
what took place in his mind during the months intervening between the
coming of Florence Baker to the city and his own decision to follow her.
By nature a solitary