They stopped as if they had all been mounted on the same pair of legs.
I kicked my chair back, and stood up.
I didn’t like my position at all. The office was entirely too small for me. I had a gun, true enough, and whatever weapons may have been distributed among these other men were out of sight. But these four men were too close to me; and a gun isn’t a thing of miracles. It’s a mechanical contraption that is capable of just so much and no more.
If these men decided to jump me, I could down just one of them before the other three were upon me. I knew it, and they knew it.
“Put your hands up,” I ordered, “and turn around!”
None of them moved to obey. One of the inked men grinned wickedly; Soules shook his head slowly; the other two stood and looked at me.
I was more or less stumped. You can’t shoot a man just because he refuses to obey an order—even if he is a criminal. If they had turned around for me, I could have lined them up against the wall, and, being behind them, have held them safe while I used the telephone.
But that hadn’t worked.
My next thought was to back across the office to the street door, keeping them covered, and then either stand in the door and yell for help, or take them into the street, where I could handle them. But I put that thought away as quickly as it came to me.
These four men were going to jump me—there was no doubt of that. All that was needed was a spark of any sort to explode them into action. They were standing stiff-legged and tense, waiting for some move on my part. If I took a step backward—the battle would be on.