She was trying to placate him now. “Whose orders, deary?” she wheedled. “Who’s doing this to old Mother Moody, anyhow?”
“Mayor,” Jim told her; and she wailed:
“Wint Chase. Little Wint that I’ve put to bed here amany a time. He’d never go and do this, now. Who was it? Honest.”
“Mayor,” Jim repeated. “Straight goods. Hardiston has gone dry. This is serious, too. Don’t you go to start anything, ma’am. Because I always did hate to arrest a lady.”
“You’ll just have to—you might just as well take me right off to the poor farm, Jim Radabaugh. I’m not making ends meet, even right now.” Her withered old hands covered her face, and she rocked and wailed: “Eh, poor old Mother Moody! Poor old Mother Moody! You wouldn’t take me in if I sold just a little bit, would you, now?”
He said he would; and when she saw he meant it, she dropped her attempts to conciliate him; and she cursed him through the corridor and through the office; and she stood in the door of her hostelry and cursed him as long as he could hear, so that even Jim Radabaugh’s hardened ears turned red and burned with shame. It takes a brave man to face without inward shrinking the revilements of a thoroughly angry woman. Jim was glad to be rid of her.
He stopped, on the way back uptown, to warn a fly-by-nighter who ran a lunch cart near the station and served stronger drinks than coffee. This man denied any interest in Jim’s warning; and the marshal could find no liquor about the cart. Nevertheless he served notice, and made a mental memorandum to see to it that the notice was obeyed.
Remained only V. R. Kite. Radabaugh grinned as he thought of Kite. Kite would take this matter hard; and when V. R. Kite took a thing hard, the sight was worth seeing.
But Kite was not in the Bazaar when he got there, so Jim strolled back up street and dropped in on B. B. Beecham. The editor greeted him as courteously as he greeted every one. “Good morning,” he said. “Have a chair. Anything I can do for you?”
Radabaugh spat into the stove. “No,” he said, readjusting the bulge in his cheek. “Just dropped in. Waiting to see Kite.”