Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/35

 to the street. There was no longer any doubt as to that intruder's immediate intention.

The wireless operator's one passion was to escape, to fight his way back to freedom. He remembered his ship and his waiting station, and how Heilig, the engineer, would have the laugh on him.

He was fighting like a terrier by this time, striking out blindly, in a frenzy of sheer panic. He was stung by the injustice of it all, and kept calling and shouting for help as he fought, fortified by the memory that his hands were clean, that he had done nothing amiss.

He was dazed and bruised, but he still fought and shouted, imagining it was his opponent's mad intention to kill him. He saw the shifting figures of men appear through the fog, and stand about in a circle, impassively watching his struggles. But still he fought and shouted.

His cries brought a patrolman with a night-stick in his hand. He could see the circle disrupted and scattered. He could hear the relieving sound of the falling club on the body of the brute above him, and sharp oaths and grunts, and then cries and counter-cries.

Then a fourth figure pushed peremptorily in through the re-formed circle of onlookers, a figure not in uniform, but quick-acting and authoritative. This newcomer seemed to pull the