When the young man turned slowly the operative stuck out his hand. "I'm
agreeing with you--no grudges! Let's shake!"
"Yes, you did it," said Latisan. He did not raise his voice. He was
talking as much to himself as to Crowley. "A tip to me, you called it."
"We have to do those things to get quick results," Crowley agreed,
patronizingly. "Give us your hand, boy!"
Crowley got what he asked for. He was not prepared for the amazing
suddenness of the open-handed blow that fell on the side of his head and
sent him staggering into a corner.
Mern grabbed up the telephone. Latisan leaped and tore the instrument
from the chief's grasp, ripped it loose from its fastenings, and hurled
it through the ground-glass door.
Mern was a big man; he had been invincible as a police officer. But when
he leaped and struck at Latisan, the latter countered with his
toil-hardened fist and knocked Mern down. Crowley had also served with
the police. But he was no match for the berserker rage which had
transformed the man from the woods. Latisan whirled again to Crowley,
beat him to his knees, set his foot against the antagonist's breast and
drove him violently backward, and he fell across Mern.
But Latisan was not through. Men who had viewed John Latisan in the old
days when he came roaring down to town, had they been present in the
Vose-Mern offices that day, would have recognized in the grandson the
Latisan temperament operating in its old form and would not have been
surprised. The avenger picked up Mern's desk chair. He swung it about
him, smashing everything in the room which could be smashed. He flung
away the fragments of the chair and rushed into the outer office.
The fat girl was calling for central, for police.
"Hand it over!" he commanded. "And you'd all better step outside," he
suggested, after he had torn loose the wires. "I'm using the office
right now."
He picked up the chair from which she fled. It was heavy and he used it
to smash other furniture. Then he began to beat out the glass which shut
off the other private rooms which adjoined the main office. In that
process he brought the terrified Craig into view. He dropped the chair,
reached in, and dragged Craig over the sill of the compartment. "This
has been coming to you on the Noda waters! I'm glad you're here now to
get it!" He held the Three C's director helpless in utter dismay, at the
full length of a left arm, and pummeled him senseless with a right fist.
Then he dragged him to the door of the chief's office and flung him
across the two men who were stirring.
"It's a fifty-fifty wreck--this office and me--pretty nigh total!"
He walked out. Youth, strength, and an incentive which did not animate
the others, had enabled him to prevail.
Mern and Crowley struggled weakly from under the man who was pinning
them down.
"I'll get word to the cops," stuttered Crowley, holding his hand to his
battered and bleeding lips.
"Wait till Craig comes to!" protested Mern. "He may want us to hush the
thing. He has been hollering for soft pedal all the time. He seems bad!
Get a doctor!"
The physician who came confirmed Mern's opinion as to the condition of
the field director; Craig himself was querulously emphatic on the point
when he had been brought to consciousness. But he insisted on postponing
consideration of the proper action to take in Latisan's case until he
had time to forget his aches and compose his thoughts.