Farr's big hand released the elbow and set itself around Mr. Dodd's neck. Thumb and forefinger bored under the jaw and Mr. Dodd's epiglottis ceased vibrating.
“I don't like to assault a man, but talk doesn't seem to fit your case and I can't stop long enough to talk, anyway. This choking is my comment on your lies.” He pushed Mr. Dodd relentlessly down into the nearest chair and spanked his face slowly and deliberately with the flat of his hand. “And this will indicate to you just how much I care for your threats. You'll remember it longer than you will recollect words.”
He finished and went away, leaving his victim getting his breath in the chair. Dodd, peering under the rack, saw him hasten and join the Honorable Archer Converse in the hotel lobby and they went up the broad stairs together.
The chief clerk of the state treasury sat there and smoothed his smarting face with trembling hands and worked his jaws to dislodge the grinding ache in his neck. But the stinging, malevolent rancor within him burned hotter and hotter. He started to get up out of the chair and sat back again, much disturbed.
A man who had been hidden by an adjoining rack of newspapers was now leaning forward, jutting his head past the ambuscade. He was an elderly man with an up-cocked gray mustache, and there was a queer little smile in his shrewd blue eyes. Dodd knew him; he was one Mullaney, a state detective.
“What are you doing here—practicing your sneak work?” demanded the young man. As a state official he did not entertain a high opinion of the free-lance organization to which Mullaney belonged.
“I'm here reading a paper—supposed it's what the room is for,” returned Detective Mullaney. “But excuse me—I'll get out. Room seems to be reserved for prize-fighters.”
“You keep your mouth shut about that—that insult.”
“I never talk—it would hurt my business.”
“I don't fight in a public place. I'm a gentleman. I want you to remember what you saw, Mullaney! I'll get to that cheap bum in a way he won't forget.”