Almost at the same instant the stranger in the cab sprang out of it,
leaving it rocking upon the stones of the road. He clutched the blue railings
of the garden, and peered eagerly over them in the direction of the noise.
He was a small, loose, yet alert man, very thin, with a face that seemed
made out of fish bones, and a silk hat quite as rigid and resplendent
as Warner's, but thrust back recklessly on the hinder part of his head.
"Murder!" he shrieked, in a high and feminine but very penetrating voice.
"Stop that murderer there!"
Even as he shrieked a second shot shook the lower windows
of the house, and with the noise of it Dr. Herbert Warner came
flying round the corner like a leaping rabbit. Yet before
he had reached the group a third discharge had deafened them,
and they saw with their own eyes two spots of white sky drilled
through the second of the unhappy Herbert's high hats.
The next moment the fugitive physician fell over a flowerpot,
and came down on all fours, staring like a cow. The hat with
the two shot-holes in it rolled upon the gravel path before him,
and Innocent Smith came round the corner like a railway train.
He was looking twice his proper size--a giant clad in green,
the big revolver still smoking in his hand, his face sanguine
and in shadow, his eyes blazing like all stars, and his yellow
hair standing out all ways like Struwelpeter's.
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