"Mind yer own business," snapped the Austrian.
"Dot's what I'm doing," answered Hermann, calmly reaching for the empty glasses. "You're drunk."
He had hardly spoken before Mirka, his habitual lassitude dropping from him like a discarded cloak, made a quick leap that brought him half across the bar. The glasses crashed, the bottle was overturned, and in the Austrian's waving, clenched right hand there flashed a knife.
It was a moment of action, but a moment only. From one side of the bar, Angel had gripped Mirka by the waist and was pulling him backward; on the other, the powerful German had caught the threatening fist and now, with a quick twist, sent the knife plunging into the tub below the beer-spigots.
Spluttering obscenities, the Austrian was dragged to the position from which he had made his attack.
"You keepa quiet!" commanded Angel of the one combatant, and to the other: "You getta more fresh with your mouth an' I getta you fired."
Hermann had recovered the knife and was now calmly drying it upon a bar-towel. Such incidents were not unusual in his occupation and, now that this one was closed, he could afford to smile his answer to Rafael.
Mirka, on the other hand, though still tightly embraced by Angel, was trembling with rage.
"I'll get you for this, Dutchie!" he declared.
"So?" said Hermann. He still smiled, but he was tired of being called Dutchie, and his tongue ran just a hair's breadth ahead of his caution. "Try it," he concluded; "try it, you dirty Austrian loafer, und I'll somevheres go vhere dose names you've been makin' oud vill get you vhat you deserve."