He turned a ghastly grin on his tormentors.  It was meant to propitiate them, to save the last scrap of his self-respect by the assumption that they were all good fellows together.  Feebly it suggested that after all a joke is a joke.

From the uptilted flask the whiskey poured into his mouth.  He swallowed, and the fiery liquid scorched his throat.  Before he could hand the liquor back to its owner, the ex-convict broke into a curse.

“Drink, you pink-ear.  Don’t play ’possum with me,” he roared.  Roy drank.  Swallow after swallow of the stuff burned its way into his stomach.  He stopped at last, sputtering and coughing.

“M—­much obliged.  I’ll be going now,” he stammered.

“Not quite yet, Mr. R. C. Street-Beaudry,” demurred Charlton suavely.  “Stay and play with us awhile, now you’re here.  No telling when we’ll meet again.”  He climbed on the shoe-shining chair that stood in the entry.  “I reckon I’ll have my boots shined up.  Go to it, Mr. Beaudry-Street.”

With a whoop of malice the rest of them fell in with the suggestion.  To make this young fellow black their boots in turn was the most humiliating thing they could think of at the moment.  They pushed Roy toward the stand and put a brush into his hand.  He stood still, hesitating.

“Git down on yore knees and hop to it,” ordered Charlton.  “Give him room, boys.”

Again Beaudry swore to himself that he would not do it.  He had an impulse to smash that sneering, cruel face, but it was physically impossible for him to lift a hand to strike.  Though he was trembling violently, he had no intention of yielding.  Yet the hinges of his knees bent automatically.  He found himself reaching for the blacking just as if his will were paralyzed.

Perhaps it was the liquor rushing to his head when he stooped.  Perhaps it was the madness of a terror-stricken rat driven into a corner.  His fear broke bounds, leaped into action.  Beaudry saw red.  With both hands he caught Charlton’s foot, twisted it savagely, and flung the man head over heels out of the chair.  He snatched up the bootblack’s stool by one leg and brought it crashing down on the head of Meldrum.  The ex-convict went down as if he had been pole-axed.

There was no time to draw guns, no time to prepare a defense.  His brain on fire from the liquor he had drunk and his overpowering terror, Beaudry was a berserk gone mad with the lust of battle.  He ran amuck like a maniac, using the stool as a weapon to hammer down the heads of his foes.  It crashed first upon one, now on another.

Charlton rushed him and was struck down beside Meldrum.  Hart, flung back into the cigar-case, smashed the glass into a thousand splinters.  Young Rutherford was sent spinning into the street.

His assailants gave way before Beaudry, at first slowly, then in a panic of haste to escape.  He drove them to the sidewalk, flailing away at those within reach.  Chet Fox hurdled in his flight a burro loaded with wood.