"Get your hat. Quick!' I jobbed him, gentle and encouraging.
"Age allus commands respect. Therefore the sight of a six-foot, grizzled Klondiker in a wide hat, benevolently prodding the night editor in the short ribs and apple sauce, with eight bright and chilly inches, engendered a certain respect in the reportorial staff.
"'You're going to tell Mrs. Morrow all about the pretty pictures,' I says, like a father.
"'Let me go, damn you!' he frothed, but I wedged him into a corner of the cab and took off his collar—in strips. It interfered with his breathing, as I couldn't get a holt low enough to regulate his respiration. He kicked out two cab windows, but I bumped his head agin the woodwork, by way of repartee. It was a real pleasure, not to say recreation, experimenting with the noises he made. Seldom I get a neck I give a cuss to squeeze. His was number fifteen at first, by the feel; but I reduced it a quarter size at a time.
"When we got there I helped him out, one hand under his chin, the other back of his ears. I done it as much from regard of the neighbours as animosities to him, for it was the still, medium small hours. I tiptoed in with my treatise on the infamies of photography gurgling under my hand, but at the door I stopped. It was ajar; and there, under the light, I spied Morrow. In his arms I got glimpses of black lace and wavy, brown hair, and a white cheek that he was accomplishing wonders with. They wouldn't have heard a man-hole explosion.
"'He's still fitting to be my pardner,' I thinks, and then I heard Struthers's teeth chatter and grind. I looked at him, and the secret of the whole play came to me.
"Never having known the divine passion, it ain't for me to judge, but
I tightened on his voice-box and whispered:
"'You've outlived your period of usefulness, Struthers, and it's time to go. Let us part friends, however.' So I bade him Godspeed from the top step.
"Looking back on the evening now, that adieu was my only mistake. I limped for a week—he had a bottle in his hip pocket."