Although he heard raised, terse voices, he paid no attention.
Gibson walked across the courtyard with Lamberth following closely behind him. They passed William Elam, who was headed into his hotel. Although he heard raised, terse voices, he paid no attention. As Gibson walked through the waisthigh gate at the edge of the courtyard, he suddenly turned and faced Lamberth head on. Wielding a revolver pulled quickly from his coat pocket, Gibson shouted he was going to kill Lamberth and immediately began firing. Horrified guests were aghast as the young, sandy-haired Inspector with a slightly receding hairline and wire-rimmed spectacles collapsed on the ground just inside the gate. Gibson hurriedly walked away into the night, gun in hand. With kerosene lanterns and cries for help, hotel guests began attending to the wounded man and searching the area for the gun responsible for three terrible explosions that, for an instant, had lit up the courtyard and the east wall of the hotel. The town doctor was summoned along with the county sheriff over in Purdy, probably notified by way of the hotel’s handcranked telephone. Until this relatively new invention made its appearance in Stantonville, emergency calls were dispatched by horseback, or in larger towns, by telegraph. Although Gibson had disappeared into the hot, balmy August night, another family member made an unexpected appearance. Gibson’s wife walked through the gate and into the pale yellow glow of the kerosene lanterns. Claiming she wanted to check on the young Inspector’s condition, she knelt beside him, then got up and walked out the same gate from which her husband had retreated only minutes earlier.