It was well that the policemen were close upon his heels, for they found him locked in desperate conflict with a huge, half-naked Sicilian, who fought with the silent wickedness of a wolf at bay.
The chamber was squalid and odorous; a tumbled couch, from which the occupant had leaped, showed that he had been calmly sleeping upon the scene of his crime. Through the dim-lit filth of the place the cobbler whirled them, struggling like a man insane. A table fell with a crash of dishes, a stove was wrecked, a chair smashed, then he was pinned writhing to the bed from which he had just arisen.
"Close the front door—quick!" Norvin panted. "Keep out the crowd!"
One of the policemen dashed to the front of the hovel barely in time to bar the way.
Larubio, as he crouched there in the half-light, manacled but defiant, made a striking figure. He was a patriarchal man. His hairy, naked chest rose and fell as he fought for his breath, a thick beard grew high upon his cheeks, lending dignity to his fierce aquiline features, a tangled mass of iron-gray hair hung low above his eyes. He looked more like an Arab sheik than a beggarly Sicilian shoemaker.
"Why are you here?" he questioned, in a deep voice.
Blake answered him in his own language:
"You killed the Chief of Police."
"No. I had no part—"
"Don't lie!"