All sound had ceased with her entrance.  She saw her father standing near the center of the room.

He was standing alone, in sinister isolation.  Singleton was facing him, about a dozen feet distant.  A few feet from Singleton stood another man—­dark of face, with cruel lips, and eyes that held a wanton light.  A little farther away—­close to the bar—­stood Gary Warden.

Her father seemed to be the only man in the room who had not seen her.  A terrible rage had gripped him; he seemed to have undergone a strange transformation since she had seen him last; that manhood which she had thought had departed from him appeared to have returned.

For he made a striking figure as he stood there.  He was rigid, alert; he seemed to dominate every man that faced him, that stood within sound of his voice.  He had been talking when Ruth entered; he was still talking, unaware of her presence.

His voice was pitched high, it carried a note of defiance; it was vibrant with passion.  Fascinated by the change in him, Ruth stood motionless, listening.

“So that’s what you brought me here for?” he said, his voice shaking with rage.  He was looking at Singleton and the man who stood near the latter.  “You brought me here because you wanted to be sure there’d be enough of you to down me.  Well, damn you—­get goin!”

His voice rose to a screech of awful rage; and while it still resounded through the room he dropped his right hand and dragged at the pistol at his hip.

It was done so swiftly that Ruth could make no movement to interfere.  And yet as swiftly as her father’s hand had dropped to the holster at his side, the dark-faced man who stood near Singleton anticipated the movement.  His right hand moved like a streak of light.  It went down, then up again with the same motion.  The air rocked with a crashing report, mingled with Ruth’s scream of terror.  And Hamlin’s gun loosened in his hand, his knees doubled and he tumbled headlong, to fall face down at the feet of the dark-faced man who stood, sneering, some blue-white smoke curling upward in mocking laziness from the muzzle of his pistol.

Ruth had moved with the report of the pistol; she was at Hamlin’s side when he fell, grasping one of his arms; and she went down with him, to one knee, dazed from the suddenness of the thing; palzied with horror, the room reeling around her.

How long she knelt at her father’s side she did not know.  It seemed only a second or two to her when she raised her head and looked around with dumb, agonized grief at the faces that seemed to fill the place.  Then she heard Warden’s voice; he spoke to the dark-faced man who had killed her father, and his voice was vibrant with a mocking, Satanic satisfaction.

“You’ve wanted her, Slade—­take her!”

The dark-faced man grinned at her, bestially.  She leaped to her feet at the expression of his eyes, and started to run toward the door.  But terror shackled her feet; it seemed that some power was dragging at her, holding her back from the door.  She had not taken more than half a dozen steps when Slade was upon her.