ct faster in
emergencies than Sonntag ever had been able to do. Having drawn it
Sonntag should have used it. But having drawn it he had hesitated for a
space not to be measured in computable time--and that delay had been his
undoing.

The gun-pulling episode had taken place in Thirty-ninth Street, between
Sixth Avenue and Broadway, but nearer Broadway than Sixth Avenue, at a
moment when that block of Thirty-ninth Street was as near empty as ever
it gets to be. The meeting in the darkened place, just where the portico
at the side entrance of the old Jollity Theatre, extending out across
the sidewalk, made a patch of obscurity in the half-lit street, had been
a meeting by chance so far as Trencher was concerned. He had not been
looking for Sonntag; hadn't wanted to see Sonntag. Whether Sonntag had
been seeking him was something which nobody probably would ever know
this side the hereafter.

To the best of Trencher's belief there had been but one possible
eyewitness to the actual shooting. Out of the tail of his eye, just
before he and Sonntag came to grips, he had caught a glimpse of this
surmisable third party. He had sensed rather than seen that an elderly
bearded man, perhaps the watchman of the closed theatre, passed along
the sidewalk, going east. It was Trencher's impression that the man had
gone on by without halting. However, on that point he could not be sure.
What the onlooker had seen--if indeed there were an onlooker--could have
been only this: Two men, one fairly tall and dressed in a sprightly
fashion, one short and dark, engaged in a vehement but whispered quarrel
there in the cloaking shadow close up to the locked double doors of the
Jollity; a sudden hostile move on the part of the slighter man, backing
away and reaching for his flank; a quick forward jump by the taller man
to close with the other; a short sharp struggle as the pair of them
fought for possession of the revolver which the dark man had jerked from
his flank pocket; then the tall man, victorious, shoving his antagonist
clear of him and stepping back a pace; and on top of this the three
sharp reports and the three little spurts of fire bridging the short gap
between the sundered enemies like darting red hyphens to punctuate the
enacted tragedy.

Now the tall man, the one conspicuously dressed, had been Trencher. The
shooting accomplished he stood where he was only long enough to see
Sonntag fold up and sink down in a slumped shape in the d