“You can’t see my left hand,” I went on.
His eyes were slits, but he said nothing.
“There’s an automatic in it,” I wound up.
“Well?” he asked contemptuously.
“Nothing—only—get funny, and I’ll let your guts out.”
“Ach!”—he didn’t take me seriously—“and after that?”
“I don’t know. Think it over carefully, Einarson. I’ve deliberately put myself in a position where I’ve got to go ahead if you don’t give in. I can kill you before you do anything. I’m going to do it if you don’t give Grantham his crown now. Understand? I’ve got to. Maybe—most likely—your boys would get me afterward, but you’d be dead. If I back down now, you’ll certainly have me shot. So I can’t back down. If neither of us backs down, we’ll both take the leap. I’ve gone too far to weaken now. You’ll have to give in. Think it over. I can’t possibly be bluffing.”
He thought it over. Some of the color washed out of his face, and a little rippling movement appeared in the flesh of his chin. I crowded him along by moving the raincoat enough to show him the muzzle of the gun that actually was there in my left hand. I had the big heaver—he hadn’t nerve enough to take a chance on dying in his hour of victory. A little earlier, a little later, I might have had to gun him. Now I had him.
He strode across the platform to the desk at which the redhead sat, drove the redhead away with a snarl and a gesture, leaned over the desk, and bellowed down into the chamber. I stood a little to one side of him, a little behind, close enough so no one could get between us.
No Deputy made a sound for a long minute after the Colonel’s bellow had stopped. Then one of the anti-revolutionists jumped to his feet and