Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/36

 entangled and struggling trio apart in one breath, as a child separates a puzzle-picture. He flung back the clubbing patrolman. He swept aside the still fighting second figure. He dragged the fallen operator to his feet, with a sharp question or two at the other man, who was blowing his nose on a handkerchief maculated with blood. Then he called out to the waiting cab-driver: "To the police station, straight!" and all but carried the dazed operator back into the waiting carriage.

He turned at the step, before following the operator into that cab, and spoke a crisp word or two to the still blinking patrolman. Then he lurched angrily and impatiently into the cab and slammed the door shut as they went clattering and swinging away through the heavy fog.

He left the patrolman gazing after him through the gloom, his idle night-stick dangling from his wrist like a bird's broken wing.

"Can you beat it!" gasped the astounded officer to the other man busy prodding and feeling his own body, very much as a housewife might explore a market-fowl.

"You'd beat it, all right!" retorted the other, disgustedly, with seismic-like rumblings of the chest. "You hare-brained bulls'd beat anything!"