CHAPTER TWELVE
I WAITED until Copperhead Kate had edged half-way through the heavy folds of brocaded velour, with her pistol hand still inside the lighted room. Then I decided to get ready for her.
Those portières, I saw, would keep her extended right hand from making any rapid movement toward the rear. So I reversed the hold on my own automatic and raised it above my head. As the figure in the rain-coat pushed still deeper in through the swaying draperies I brought that heavy mass of metal down on the extended forearm with all the force I could put into the blow. At the same moment I pushed Copperhead Kate bodily and none too gently back into the lighted room. She stumbled and fell forward, with a blasphemous little gasp, at almost the same moment that her pistol dropped to the floor.
I was after that pistol as quick as a lynx, and before my astounded friend Katie could so much as get to her feet, and even before the astounded line at the far side of the room could realize what had
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