The whipping report of a rifle slapped against the walls. With a queer,
animal whine, the bony Skell shrank back, his bullet grazed hand
dripping red.
For a moment paralysis seemed to grip the assembled Council of Scorpia.
Then through tense silence the voice of Don Winslow cut like a knife.
“Hold it, Cho-San! We’ve got every exit covered. You’d better give up!”
Quick as a cat, the big Chinese leaped. Outside the spotlight, his
figure was a swift vanishing blur. The slam of an automatic pistol came
seconds too late, as Michael Splendor charged onto the stage at the head
of twenty fighting men.
Leaping down across the footlights, Don Winslow, Red Pennington and a
dozen of Hammond’s men lined up with ready guns. Yet in the face of that
threat more than half the Scorpion assembly had drawn concealed pistols.
A single shot would touch off a battle to the death. None knew it better
than Michael Splendor as he perched on the shoulders of a powerful
deputy, full in the spotlight’s glare. He knew also that men and women,
however desperate, can sometimes be bluffed.
“Every exit to this room is blocked by armed men!” he announced in a
ringing voice. “Throw down your weapons and ye’ll take no harm. Fight
and ye’ll get licked anyway. Which will ye choose?”
A low muttering began among the trapped councilmen of Scorpia. Above the
babel of whispers a single voice rose clear.
“Cho-San escaped!” rang the defiant shout. “The secret corridors are NOT
blocked. We will scatter—and catch these fools in their own trap!”
A roar of approval went up from the crowd. In three scrambling groups
the assembly broke for the sides and rear of the auditorium, avoiding
the platform. A few of the nearest kept their eyes and pistols trained
on the line of riflemen, but they clearly wished to postpone the
shooting.
To the mob’s angry surprise, this means of escape had been forestalled.
When the paneled exit doors slid back, a squad of deputies barred each
opening with clubbed guns. At the same time Splendor’s bellow rose above
the tumult.
“On with your gas masks, boys!” he ordered. “We’ll have these wastrels
chokin’ for breath in two minutes.”
Suiting action to words, the veteran pulled the ring of a tear gas
grenade and flung it. Twice more he repeated the motion before bullets
from the ranks of Scorpia drilled him and his human mount. With a groan
the big deputy sank to his knees, spilling his wounded chief to the
floor.
From the embattled exits more gas grenades were being hurled, but there
the press of fighting bodies was too close for pistol work. The same
sort of struggle was taking place where Don Winslow and his squad of
fighters held back a rush for the stage exits.
The only shooting appeared to be aimed at Splendor and the fallen
deputy, sprawled in the white glare of the spotlight.
It was Mercedes Colby who acted in the nick of time to save them.
Already she had cut loose the racked body of Count Borg and freed his
sobbing companion. Now, braving the bullets that clipped across the
stage, she started to drag Michael Splendor out of the light.
At that moment two Malay councilmen broke through Don’s thin line of
fighting deputies. Maddened by the smart of tear gas they leaped onto
the platform, armed with long, glittering knives. Their yells of
tigerish fury announced that they had gone _amok_.
Bullets could not have stopped them in time, yet Mercedes sprang to face
them. Her left hand pistol barked. White smoke from the tear gas
cartridges belched in the face of her attackers.
Their yells ended in choking grunts. Clawing at their blinded eyes, the
Malays staggered back to plunge over the platform’s edge.