Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/310

 was the witness of a remarkable and inexplicable occurrence. From the throat of the huge-shouldered peddler, not two paces away from him, he heard come a hoarse and brutish cry, a cry strangely like the bawl and groan of a branded range-cow. At the same moment the gigantic green-draped figure exploded into sudden activity. He seemed to catapult out at the stooping dapper figure, bearing it to the sidewalk with the sheer weight of his unprovoked assault.

There the struggle continued. There the two strangely diverse bodies twisted and panted and writhed. There the startlingly agile dapper figure struggled to throw off his captor. The arch of gas-pipe went over. Glue-bottles showered amid the shattered glass and crockery. But that once placid-eyed old cement seller struck to the unoffending man he had so promptly and so gratuitously attacked, stuck to him as though he had been glued there with his own cement. And before the patrolman could tug the combatants apart, or even wedge an arm into the fight,