ghtly where a scared oboe player had been squatted a
moment before; Mink breasted the gutterlike edging of the footlights and
leaped upward, teetering a moment in space. One of his hands grabbed out
for a purchase and closed on the leg of our table and jerked it almost
from under us.

At that Devore either lost his head or else indignation made him
reckless. Still half sitting, he kicked out at the wriggling bulk at his
feet, and the toe of his shoe took Mink Satterlee in his chest. It was a
puny enough kick; it didn't even shake Mink Satterlee loose from where
he clung. He gave a bellow and heaved himself up on the stage and,
before any of us could move, grabbed Devore by the throat with his left
hand and jammed him back, face upward, on the table until I thought
Devore's spine would crack. His right hand shot into his coat pocket,
then, quick as a snake, came out again, showing the fat fist armed with
a set of murderously heavy brass knucks, and he bent his arm in a
crooked sickle-like stroke, aiming for Devore's left temple. I've always
been satisfied--and so has Devore--that if the blow had landed true his
skull would have caved in like a puff-ball. Only it never landed.

Above me a shadow of something hung for the hundredth part of a second,
something white flashed over me and by me, moving downward whizzingly;
something cracked on something; and Mink Satterlee breathed a gentle
little grunt right in Devore's face and then relaxed and slid down on
the floor, lying half under the table and half in the tin trough where
the stubby gas jets of the footlights stood up, with his legs protruding
stiffly out over its edge toward his friends. Subconsciously I noted
that his socks were not mates, one of them being blue and one black;
also that his scalp had a crescent-shaped split place in it just between
and above his half-closed eyes. All this, though, couldn't have taken
one-fifth of the time it has required for me to tell it. It couldn't
have taken more than a brace of seconds, but even so it was time enough
for other things to happen; and I looked back again toward the center of
the stage just as Fighting Dave Dancy seized startled old Judge Barbee
by the middle from behind and flung him aside so roughly that the old
man spun round twice, clutching at nothing, and then sat down very hard,
yards away from where he started spinning.

Dancy stooped for the gavel, which had fallen from the judge's hand,
being minded, I th