“Don’t exactly know myself yet. Going according to orders,” offered Mr. Swinton Welch. “One shovelful at a time is my motto. Don’t make no mistakes that way. What’s eating you, bo? I tell you it’s all O. K. or I wouldn’t be——”
The alleged contractor was stopped in the middle of his defense by the glare lifted to his face from the sheet of paper. An unofficial, yet official acting thumb was jerked over-shoulder.
“Out!” bellowed a voice of command—Pape’s. “You don’t go wrecking this park with an order that’s a year old, signed by a commissioner that’s already in the discard—leastways you don’t while I’m above sod. Call off your men and beat it!”
“I’ll call off nobody nor nothing.” Evidently the “boss” wasn’t amenable to being bossed. “I know my rights and I’ll stand on ’em in spite of all the plain-clothes crooks out of Sing Sing. That permit’s good until it’s been used. If you had half an eye in your head you’d see that it’s never been canceled.”
Pape folded the slip and tucked it into his coat pocket. “You’ll get off lighter if you call it canceled,” he advised. Turning to the laborers, he added: “Go home, you—no matter what lingo you speak. Beat it—make tracks—vamoose!”
The huskies did not look to their foreman for advice. To them the voice of him who had appeared upon the thunder-bike was fuller of authority than a noon whistle. Shouldering their implements, they straggled toward the nearest exit. Their wage? The boss of their boss would produce that. Sufficient unto the day was the pay thereof. Weren’t they muscle workers—weren’t they therefore always paid?
“You give me your number—I dare you—your number!”
The small foreman had lost the sangfroid of his type. Like a cockroach inadvisedly investigating a hot griddle, he danced toward the taller man.
“You don’t need to dare me twice. My number’s a darned good one for you to know. I’m 23—that means skidoo!”
Pape’s sidewise spring he had learned from one of his Hellroaring cayuses. It brought within his reach this second disturber of Jane Lauderdale’s peace and quiet. Only one wrench did he need to apply to the wrist of the hand which he had interrupted on its way into a side pocket of a sack coat.