But he looked again at the back of Sumner Smith. It was a solid back. It suggested, like the man's inscrutable round face, quiet power. Peter decided on flight via that front door.
He moved slowly across the room. Then he heard a voice that chilled his hot blood.
“Mann,” said this voice.
He turned. One or two men glanced up from their papers, then went on reading.
Peter stood wavering. Sumner Smith's eye was full on him from the barroom door; Sumner Smith's head was beckoning him with a jerk. He went.
“What'll you have?” he asked hurriedly, in the barroom.
“What'll I have?” mimicked Sumner Smith in a voice of rumbling calm. “You're good, Maun. But if anybody was to buy, it'd be me. The joke, you see, is on me. Only nobody's buying at the moment. You send me out—an Evening Earth man!—to pull off a murder for the morning papers. Oh, it's good! I grant you, it's good. I do your little murder; the morning papers get the story. Just to make sure of it you send Jimmie Markham around after me. It's all right, Mann. I've done your murder. The Continental's getting the story now—a marvel of a story. There's a page in it for them to-morrow. As for you—I don't know what you are. And I don't care to soil any of the words I know by putting 'em on you!”
Even Peter now caught the rumble beneath the calm surface of that voice. And he knew it was perhaps the longest speech of Sumner Smith's eventful life. Peter's stomach, heart, lungs and spine seemed to drop out of his body, leaving a cold hollow frame that could hardly be strong enough to support his shoulders and head. But he drew himself up and replied with some dignity in a voice that was huskier and higher than his own:
“I can't match you in insults, Smith. I appear to have a choice between leaving you and striking you. I shall leave you.”
“The choice is yours,” said Smith. “Either you say.”