Chick pocketed his revolver and started to walk stiffly across the room when Liza’s ample figure appeared in the doorway. In her hands she bore a wooden mixing bowl, brimming with cake batter. The whites of her eyes gleamed dangerously, as she glared at Chick; then she waddled into the room and halted just behind Eddie’s chair.
“I done heard what yo’all said jes’ now, bald man—” She shook her head slowly from side to side and stared down at the gangster’s hairless pate. “Seems ter me you was talkin’ ’bout bumpin’ somebuddy!”
With his gun covering the three prisoners, Eddie was unable to look up at her. Chick undoubtedly hailed Liza’s appearance as relief from the painful necessity of a walk to the kitchen. He sat down on the edge of a chair opposite Eddie and scowled at her sourly. Eddie took up the conversation with the angry woman behind him.
“That’s right, nigger,” he chuckled hoarsely. “We want some clothesline, to tie up these here nuisances—an’ if you don’t cough some up right now—I’ll bump you off, see?”
“Reckon you got your names mixed—” Without warning Liza brought the solid mixing bowl down upon his unprotected skull.
Eddie collapsed beneath the forceful blow and as he crumpled to the floor, Liza flung the bowl and its contents in Chick’s face. Then with an agility surprising in one so cumbersomely made, she catapulted herself at the astonished ruffian. Over went his chair and they crashed in a tangled heap of broken furniture, waving legs and cake batter.
Bill broke into a roar of laughter, but Dorothy wasted no time in being amused at this spectacle. She dove for Bill’s gun which Eddie had not bothered to retrieve. She ran over the struggling pair on the floor and held the muzzle to Chick’s head.
“Stop fighting!” she commanded. “Stop it at once—”
Chick sat up and tried to scrape the batter out of his eyes. “I ain’t fightin’,” he growled, “I’m half blind and I’m fair smothered. An’ if me back ain’t broke it oughter be! Take that Mack truck offen my legs—I can’t move, much less put up a scrap!”
“Get up, Liza!” Dorothy had to smile at the fellow’s plight. With Bill’s help she got the stout negress planted on her feet again. Uncle Abe stood guard with a poker over Eddie. That glum gentleman was heralding his return to consciousness with the most remarkable series of coughing grunts.