Kilo : being the love story of Eliph' Hewlitt, book agent

by Ellis Parker Butler

T. J. ground his nails into the palms of his hands. He meant to retain possession of his temper, but it was boiling within. He said nothing as the attorney indolently arose from his seat on the desk; he was resolved to do nothing, but when the attorney brushed against him in passing, turning his superior smile full in his face, he raised his arm. The next moment the two men were lying beside the press, struggling and gasping, locked fast and fighting for advantage, legs intertwined and each grasping the other by a wrist. The editor was on top, but the heavier attorney was working with the energy of hate, and as they panted and struggled the door opened and Eliph' Hewlitt entered.

There was strength in his wiry arms, and he threw himself upon the upper man and dragged him backward. The attorney loosened his hold and the two men stood up, panting and gulping, and soon began to brush their clothes and look at the floor for dropped articles, as men do who have fought inconclusively and are not sorry to have been parted. The only real damage seemed to have been done to Eliph's spectacles, which he had shaken off in his efforts, and which had been crushed beneath a heel. The attorney presently smiled, but it was a silly smile, and then he went out of the door and down the street.

Eliph' coughed gently behind his hand, as if to excuse his intrusion.

“Quarreling?” he suggested. “I used to wrestle some when I was a boy. But not much. I hadn't then the rules, given on page 554 of Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art, including “How to Wrestle, How to Defend Oneself Against Sudden Attack, Jui Jitsu,” et cetery, with wood cuts showing the best holds and how to get them. All this being but one of one thousand and one subjects treated of in this work, the price of which is but five dollars, neatly bound in cloth.”

The editor had turned his back and was staring angrily out of the window—sulkily tremulous would be a better description, perhaps—when he suddenly cried out. Eliph' searched hurriedly in his pockets for another pair of spectacles, found them and put them on, and looked where the editor pointed. Across the street the attorney, backed up against the wall of the bank, was defending his face with one arm, and with his right hand seeking to grasp a whip that was raining blows upon his face and head. Someone grasped the whip from behind and wrenched it from the hand of the attorney's assailant, and as the man turned angrily, the two in the window saw that it was Colonel Guthrie.

They heard him cursing those who had taken the whip from him, ending by loudly justifying himself for what he had done to the attorney, and saw the attorney step forward to quell the Colonel's hot words. The Colonel put up both his hands and shouted, and some from the crowd, grasping the attorney about the waist and arms, as if the feared he was about to attack the older man, hurried him away, speaking soothing words to him.

The Colonel rioted on. Nothing could have stopped him. He pulled a copy of the TIMES from his pocket and slapped it with his hand as he abused the attorney for having given T. J. Jones the facts of the article.

He lit it be plainly known, in his anger, that the article called him a giver of graft. The crowd stood silent, as crowds stand about some drunken man, for the Colonel was drunk with wrath, and wordy with it, talking to himself as drunken men do. He finished, and the crowd opened a passage through itself to let him pass, and Skinner, who, in apron and bare arms, had viewed his rival's wrath from a safe place on the edge of the group, backed away. The Colonel, mumbling, caught sight of him, and with one swift motion of the arm grasped him by the shirt band.

“You!” he shouted, pulling the shirt band until Skinner grew purple in the face. “You! You done it! Why couldn't you buy them fire-extinguishers like a man? You made me buy up that Dutchman. I wouldn't 'a' had to do it but for you.”

He gave the choking butcher an extra shake, and raised his hand to strike him, but again the crowd interfered, and seized the Colonel, and hurried him away.