“See here, Bradley,” he said thickly. “Tha’s no go! I no stan’ f’r raw business like tha’!”
“Shut up, you booze pup!” Bradley snapped at him. “What we’re doing, we’re doing as much for you as anybody else. She’s always played you rotten, ain’t she? Well, we’re just fixing her so she’ll be showed up in public for what she really is—and so she can’t squeeze any dough out of you, and so’s you have it easy getting a divorce. So back up, you boob!”
He glanced at the group at the table. “Get your things on, Burdette and Hilton,” he ordered. He turned again to Mary and her keeper: “All ready, Slim,” he announced sharply.
His slow taunting of his prisoner now changed to swiftest action. He drew from a pocket a heavy strap which he threw in a loop over Mary’s head and with his huge strength buckled tightly at her elbows. In the same instant Slim seized her head from behind, and with a fierce, practiced grip forced a gag into her mouth, which the next instant he tied.
“Where’s that cloak?” Bradley demanded. Nan Burdette handed it to him, and he flung it about Mary. “Slim, got your car all ready?”
“Yes.”
“Then gimme that motor-veil, Slim.” It was handed over. “And you keep out of this, Morton,—remember we’re doing it to help you. Just hold her, Loveman.”
Nan Burdette and Hilton stepped forward and held apart the curtains—while Jack, his face still wine-flushed, looked on waveringly, Nina holding his arm.
Bradley threw the veil over Mary’s head and began to knot it behind. “Get ready, there, to take her out!” he ordered sharply.
“Why doesn’t Jimmie Kelly come?” Clifford’s wild suspense cried within him.