They were waiting.  Sometimes they talked in low voices.  For the most part they were silent, their eyes on the door of the trap that had been baited for a man Clay knew and was much interested in.  Something evil in the watchfulness of the three chilled momentarily his veins.  These fellows were the gunmen of New York he had read about—­paid assassins whose business it was to frame innocent men for the penitentiary or kill them in cold blood.  They were of the underworld, without conscience and without honor.  As he looked at them through the keyhole, the watcher was reminded by their restless patience of mountain wolves lying in wait for their kill.  Gorilla Dave sat stolidly in his chair, but the other two got up from time to time and paced the room silently, always with an eye to the door of the other room.

Then things began to happen.  A soft step sounded in the corridor behind the man at the keyhole.  He had not time to crawl away nor even to rise before a man stumbled against him.

Clay had one big advantage over his opponent.  He had been given an instant of warning.  His right arm went up around the neck of his foe and tightened there.  His left hand turned the doorknob.  Next moment the two men crashed into the room together, the Westerner rising to his feet as they came, with the body of the other lying across his back from hip to shoulder.

Gorilla Dave leaped to his feet.  The other two gunmen, caught at disadvantage a few feet from the table, dived for their automatics.  They were too late.  Clay swung his body downward from the waist with a quick, strong jerk.  The man on his back shot heels over head as though he had been hurled from a catapult, crashed face up on the table, and dragged it over with him in his forward plunge to the wall.

Before any one else could move or speak, Lindsay’s gun was out.

“Easy now.”  His voice was a gentle drawl that carried a menace.  “Lemme be boss of the rodeo a while.  No, Gorilla, I wouldn’t play with that club if I was you.  I’m sure hell-a-mile on this gun stuff.  Drop it!” The last two words came sharp and crisp, for the big thug had telegraphed an unintentional warning of his purpose to dive at the man behind the thirty-eight.

Gorilla Dave was thick-headed, but he was open to persuasion.  Eyes hard as diamonds bored into his, searched him, dominated him.  The barrel of the revolver did not waver a hair-breadth.  His fingers opened and the blackjack dropped from his hand to the floor.

“For the love o’ Mike, who is this guy?” demanded one of the other men.

“I’m the fifth member of our little party,” explained Clay.

“Wot t’ell do youse mean?  And what’s the big idea in most killin’ the chief?”

The man who had been flung across the table turned over and groaned.  Clay would have known that face among a thousand.  It belonged to Jerry Durand.