"Look at that big stiff tryin' to make the dame!" pipes one of the extrys, a big husky grabbed up off the wharves in Frisco. He points at De Vronde. "If I was built like he is, I'd eat arsenic!"
Adams walks over to him.
"Why?" he says, very cool and hard.
"Heh?" says the super. "Why, look at 'im. Lookit the lace shirt he's wearin' and them pink socks. Why—"
"Shut up!" snarls Adams. "I know your kind—you think because a man bathes, shaves, speaks English and wears clean linen, that there's something wrong with him! You roughnecks resent the—"
"Well, I'd hate to be the family that brung that up!" interrupts the super. "Gawd! It makes a man sick to look at 'im!"
It all happened so quick that even Miss Devine and De Vronde didn't get it. They's just a sudden swish—a crack of bone meetin' bone, and the big super is flat on his ear! The rest of the gang mills around, shoutin' and yellin', and Adams prods the super with the toe of his shoe. I see Duke runnin' over with a couple of camera men which is so excited they've even brought their machines along.
"Listen!" spits out Adams, bendin' over the fallen gladiator. "Don't make any more remarks like that about—about Mister De Vronde, while I'm in this camp! If you do, I'll hammer you to mush! If you don't believe that, get up now and I'll illustrate it!"
The super plays dead, and Adams turns away.
By this time, Miss Devine and De Vronde, on the outskirts of the mob, has seen some of it.