“You would, would you?” said Webster reproachfully, and jerked the fellow violently around. The man he had rescued promptly struck Pop-eye a terrible blow in the face with his left hand and broke loose from the grip that had so nearly been his undoing; whereupon Webster tapped the assassin a meditative tap or two on the top of his sinful head for good measure and to awaken in him some sense of the impropriety and futility of resistance, after which Webster turned to discuss a similar question of ethics with Pucker-eye.
The scar-cheeked man was on his knees, groping groggily for his knife, for he had received a severe kick under the chin, and for the nonce was far from dangerous. Stooping, Webster picked up the knife; then with knife and cane grasped in his left hand he seized Pucker-eye by the nape with his right and jerked him to his feet. The assassin stood glowering at him in a perfect frenzy of brutish, inarticulate fury.
“Take the knife away from the other fellow before he gets active again,” Webster called over his shoulder. “I'll manage this rascal. We'll march them over to the market and turn them over to the police.” He spoke in Spanish.
“Thanks, ever so much, for my life,” the young man answered lightly, and in English, “but where I come from it is not the fashion to settle these arguments in a court of law. To call an officer is considered unclublike; to shoot a prisoner in this country is considered murder, and consequently I have but one alternative and I advise you, my good friend, to have a little of the same. I'm going to run like the devil.”
And he did. He was in full flight before Webster could glance around, and in an instant he was lost to sight among the trees.
“That advice sounds eminently fair and reasonable,” Webster yelled after him, and was about to follow when he observed that the young man had abandoned his pretty little silver-chased walking stick.
“That's too nice a little stick to leave to these brigands,” he thought, and forthwith possessed himself of it and the pop-eyed man's knife, after which he tarried not upon the order of his going but went, departing at top speed.
The young man he had saved from being butchered was right. An entangling alliance with the police was, decidedly, not to John Stuart Webster's liking, for should, he, unfortunately, form such an alliance, he would be haled into court as a witness and perhaps miss the steamer to San Buenaventura.
“Drat it,” he soliloquized, as he emerged from the square and observed his taxi parked at the entrance to the market, “I came through that square so fast I haven't the slightest idea what the last half of it looks like. That's what I get for mixing in a little Donnybrook that's none of my business.”
He had planned to spend an hour in the market, drink a cup of café noir, smoke a cigarette, and return to his hotel in time for a leisurely breakfast, but his recent bout with grim reality had blunted the edge of romance. He ordered his driver to take him back to the hotel, sprang inside and congratulated himself on his lucky escape.