"You —— ——!" he cursed. "Try to bean me, will you? Damn you! You've made your last soap-box spiel!"
"Come on, now, boys, out with him, an' no more rag-chewin'!" the policeman exclaimed. "Git him in the wagon, an' away, before a gang piles in here! You, Caffery, take his feet. I'll manage his head. Jesus, but he's some big guy, though, the —— —— of a ——!"
Together, the battered policeman and the detective who still had some strength left in him, raised Gabriel's limp body and carried it from the room. The woman, meanwhile, stood there inhaling cigarette-smoke and laughing viciously to herself.
"You easy mutt!" she exclaimed. "Dead baby, room-rent due, wanted to get home to sister—and you fell for that old gag with whiskers on it! You're some wise guy all right, all right, I don't think. Well, as a stall it was a beaut. And I must say I never screamed better in all my life. And that wallop I handed out, was a peach. If I don't pull down five hundred for this night's work—"
"Shut up, you ——!" snarled Caffery, as he turned into the stairway. "Keep that lip o' yours quiet, will you, or—"
The woman stared at him a moment, then laughed insolently and snapped her smoke-yellowed fingers at him in defiance.
"Mind you show up in court, in the mornin'!" panted the officer, staggering downstairs under the weight of Gabriel's huge shoulders.
"Better arrest her now," suggested Caffery, "an' hold her."
"You will, like Hell!" retorted the woman.
"Shhh! In one door an' out the other," the second detective whispered in her ear, as she stood there in the doorway. "I'll see to it you get fifty extra for that!"