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 that moment. He interfered between the two, pushing Tom back with one arm, the lengthy citizen with the other.

"Can't you take a joke?" said Kane, contemptuously severe, turning his malevolent red-edged eyes on Simpson. "Damn fool! can't you take a joke?"

"No, you bloody little crab, not if that's what you call a joke," Simpson replied.

Kane's anger was up in a flash. He ducked and rushed, grabbing Simpson by his effective, if not entirely original, bouncer hold, rushing him toward the door. But there was where Eddie Kane made one of the greatest miscalculations of his career.

Simpson slipped the hold with a wrench. He sidestepped and crouched, and shot out a fist that clipped Kane at the hinge of the jaw, flooring him as if he had been tapped with a bung-starter, that famous weapon once in such wide favor among bartenders up and down this undoubtedly cultured land.

Kane was a tough man, and a rough and ready man. He was floored flatter than he had been stretched in many a day, but he came out of it with steel-legged spring, white in his fury, and his friends moved back to give him room. Simpson took him on as he came, so nimble on his feet, so bewildering in his movements that Kane rushed from one stiff punch to another, roaring and cursing, every blow baffled, every trick of his railroad strategy vain.

The lookout at the faro game came down from his high seat, the bartenders edged each around his end of the counter, but they kept hands off, knowing Kane too well