Part 76

Farr, towering above him, beamed down on him with tolerant indifference and did not answer.

“That Lochinvar business may sound good in a poem, but it doesn't go here in Marion--not when it's my business and my girl.”

Dodd raised his voice. He seemed about to become a bit hysterical.

Farr set slow, gripping, commanding clutch about the young man's elbow.

“If your business with me can possibly be any talk about a lady,” he advised, “you'd better come along into the reading-room.”

“It is about a lady,” persisted Dodd when they had swung in behind a newspaper-rack. The room was apparently empty. “You understand what you came butting in upon, don't you?”

“I took it to be a rehearsal of a melodrama, crudely conceived and very poorly played.”

“Say, you use pretty big words for a low-lived iceman.”

“State your business with me if you have any,” Farr reminded him. “I have something else to do besides swap talk with a drunken man--and your breath is very offensive.”

Dodd began to tap a finger on Farr's breast.

“I want you to understand that I've got a full line on you; you have been chumming with a Canuck rack-tender, you deserted a woman, and she committed suicide, and you took the brat--”

Farr's big hand released the elbow and set itself around Mr. Dodd's neck. Thumb and forefinger bored under the jaw and Mr. Dodd's epiglottis ceased vibrating.

“I don't like to assault a man, but talk doesn't seem to fit your case and I can't stop long enough to talk, anyway. This choking is my comment on your lies.” He pushed Mr. Dodd relentlessly down into the nearest chair and spanked his face slowly and deliberately with the flat of his hand. “And this will indicate to you just how much I care for your threats. You'll remember it longer than you will recollect words.”

He finished and went away, leaving his victim getting his breath in the chair. Dodd, peering under the rack, saw him hasten and join the Honorable Archer Converse in the hotel lobby and they went up the broad stairs together.

The chief clerk of the state treasury sat there and smoothed his smarting face with trembling hands and worked his jaws to dislodge the grinding ache in his neck. But the stinging, malevolent rancor within him burned hotter and hotter. He started to get up out of the chair and sat back again, much disturbed.

A man who had been hidden by an adjoining rack of newspapers was now leaning forward, jutting his head past the ambuscade. He was an elderly man with an up-cocked gray mustache, and there was a queer little smile in his shrewd blue eyes. Dodd knew him; he was one Mullaney, a state detective.

“What are you doing here--practicing your sneak work?” demanded the young man. As a state official he did not entertain a high opinion of the free-lance organization to which Mullaney belonged.

“I'm here reading a paper--supposed it's what the room is for,” returned Detective Mullaney. “But excuse me--I'll get out. Room seems to be reserved for prize-fighters.”

“You keep your mouth shut about that--that insult.”

“I never talk--it would hurt my business.”

“I don't fight in a public place. I'm a gentleman. I want you to remember what you saw, Mullaney! I'll get to that cheap bum in a way he won't forget.”

“Do you mind telling me who your friend is?” asked the detective.

Dodd shot him a sour side-glance and muttered profanity.

“I couldn't help wondering what particular kind of business you and he could have, seeing how it was transacted,” pursued the detective.

Dodd glowered at the floor. “Look here, Mullaney! There's a whole lot about that man I want to know, if you can help me and keep your mouth closed. I haven't got much confidence in the work you fellows do--they tell me you can't detect mud on your own boots.”

Mr. Mullaney pulled his chair out from behind the papers and leaned back in it and crossed his hands over his stomach and smiled without a trace of resentment.

“I might tell you something right now about that tall friend of yours that would jump you, Mr. Dodd--I'm that much of a detective!”

“Tell me, then.”