"There is nothing more important this day and date," insisted Kit.
"Well, if you were as strictly a white dove advocate as Papa Singleton is, and as neutral, and then saw a full page Sunday supplement of your pet picture fraulein, working for your pet charity and sifting poison into hospital bandages and powdered glass in jellies for the soldiers of the Allies, I reckon you would change your mind."
"Powdered glass!--in _feed_!" repeated Kit, stunned at the words and the sudden thought they suggested. "Great God, girl, you don't have to go to the eastern papers for _that_! You've got the same trick right here in Granados this minute! Why--damn you!"
The receiver fell from his hand as a crushing blow was dealt him from the door at his back. He heard a girl's scream in the distance as he grappled with Conrad and saved himself a second blow from the automobile wrench in the manager's hands. It fell to the tiles between them, and Rhodes kicked it to one side as he struck and struck again the white, furious face of Conrad.
"The wrench! Tomas, the wrench! Give it to him! The Americano would murder me!" shouted Conrad.
Tomas had other things to think of. He had heard as much as Conrad of the telephone discourse, and was aware of his pinto standing placidly not fifty feet away, with all the damning evidence in the case tied to the back of the saddle!
Juanito, however, ran like a cat at his master's call and caught up the wrench, but halted when Pike closed on his shoulder and pressed a cold little circle of blue steel against his ribs.
"Not this time, _muchacho_!" he shrilled, "drop it! This is a man's game, and you're out."
The men came running, and others attempted to interfere, but the little old man waved the gun at them and ordered them to keep their distance.
"No crowding the mourners!" he admonished them gleefully. "I've a hunch your man started it, and my man will finish it. I don't know what it's about, Kit, but give him hell on suspicion! Go to it, boy,--do it again! Who-ee!--that was a sock-dolager! Keep him off you, Kit, he's a gouger, and has the weight. Give it to him standing, and give it to him good! That's it! Ki-yi! Hell's bells and them a-chiming!"
For the finale of that whirl of the two striking, staggering, cursing men, was unexpectedly dramatic. They had surged out into the open, but Conrad, little by little and step by step, or rather stagger by stagger, had given way before the mallet-like precision of the younger man's fists until Kit's final blow seemed actually to lift him off his feet and land him--standing--against the adobe wall. An instant he quivered there, and then fell forward, glassy eyed and limp.