They burst into loud laughter at Dutchy's nonsense. The sound had
scarcely died away when the door opened and Dennin came in. All turned
to look at him. He was carrying a shot-gun. Even as they looked, he
lifted it to his shoulder and fired twice. At the first shot Dutchy sank
upon the table, overturning his mug of coffee, his yellow mop of hair
dabbling in his plate of mush. His forehead, which pressed upon the near
edge of the plate, tilted the plate up against his hair at an angle of
forty-five degrees. Harkey was in the air, in his spring to his feet, at
the second shot, and he pitched face down upon the floor, his "My God!"
gurgling and dying in his throat.

It was the unexpected. Hans and Edith were stunned. They sat at the
table with bodies tense, their eyes fixed in a fascinated gaze upon the
murderer. Dimly they saw him through the smoke of the powder, and in the
silence nothing was to be heard save the drip-drip of Dutchy's spilled
coffee on the floor. Dennin threw open the breech of the shot-gun,
ejecting the empty shells. Holding the gun with one hand, he reached
with the other into his pocket for fresh shells.

He was thrusting the shells into the gun when Edith Nelson was aroused to
action. It was patent that he intended to kill Hans and her. For a
space of possibly three seconds of time she had been dazed and paralysed
by the horrible and inconceivable form in which the unexpected had made
its appearance. Then she rose to it and grappled with it. She grappled
with it concretely, making a cat-like leap for the murderer and gripping
his neck-cloth with both her hands. The impact of her body sent him
stumbling backward several steps. He tried to shake her loose and still
retain his hold on the gun. This was awkward, for her firm-fleshed body
had become a cat's. She threw herself to one side, and with her grip at
his throat nearly jerked him to the floor. He straightened himself and
whirled swiftly. Still faithful to her hold, her body followed the
circle of his whirl so that her feet left the floor, and she swung
through the air fastened to his throat by her hands. The whirl
culminated in a collision with a chair, and the man and woman crashed to
the floor in a wild struggling fall that extended itself across half the
length of the room.

Hans Nelson was half a second behind his wife in rising to the
unexpected. His nerve processed and mental processes were slower than
hers. His