"Nothing doing!" Wolvert spoke through set teeth in a tone which the listening girl remembered with a shudder. "You don't beat it unless you take that with you!"
"Oh, don't I?" snarled Mike, leaping to his feet in swift rage. "I'll show you, my fine gentleman, that you ain't dealin' with a skirt now, to bully or soft-soap as you feel like it! I wouldn't be here if I wasn't through takin' orders from nobody—!"
"Easy there with the bluff!" Wolvert interrupted coolly. "You can't get along without me, you know. What you've got there is just so much waste paper to you, if I don't negotiate it for you. Don't be a quitter!"
"Nobody ain't ever called me that yet, but I'm hep that there's somethin' wrong. Give it up, Jack, an' let's lay the plant—"
"Here it is!" Wolvert swooped down upon a single folded paper and waved it exultantly. "Take it, Mike, and keep it well; it's a gold mine! Now come on and set the stage."
Before Betty's amazed eyes a curious scene was enacted. Seizing one after another of the heavy leather chairs which were grouped about the room, Wolvert and his accomplice noiselessly overturned them, easing them gently to the floor where they lay at grotesque angles. Next they turned their attention to the smokers' stand, rolling the smaller articles upon it in every direction until the rug was strewn with cigarettes and matches. The stand itself they placed upon its side against the wall as if it had been flung there with violence.
"How about the piano?" Mike's eyes travelled speculatively to the shadowed corner and Betty's senses reeled. "Gonna bang it up a little?"
"No, don't overdo the wreckage. Just move the center table over against it." Wolvert was busy scattering the remaining contents of the safe about before it. "Too bad we can't smash that bit of crockery; it would be the last finishing touch."
He gestured toward a priceless Royal Worcester vase which stood upon a teakwood taboret near the portrait, and Mike grinned.
"That's easy! Watch me knock it to smithereens!"