“Dot’s a damned lie! Always when you let me, I handle Eitelbaum’s beer, the finest in the state, and since den I make my own beer. It is good! It is honest! ‘Hellish beverage!’ Dot you should judge of beer—dot a pig should judge poetry! Your Christ dot made vine, he vould like my beer!”
Elmer jumped forward with his great fist doubled. Only the sudden grip of the police sergeant kept him from striking down the blasphemer. He shrieked, “Take that foul-mouthed bum to the wagon! I’ll see he gets the limit!”
And Bill Kingdom murmured to himself, “Gallant preacher single-handed faces saloon full of desperate gun-men and rebukes them for taking the name of the Lord in vain. Oh, I’ll get a swell story. . . . Then I think I’ll commit suicide.”
VIII
The attendant crowd and the policemen had whispered that, from the careful way in which he followed instead of leading, it might be judged that the Reverend Lieutenant Gantry was afraid of the sinister criminals whom he was attacking. And it is true that Elmer had no large fancy for revolver duels. But he had not lost his delight in conflict; he was physically no coward; and they were all edified to see this when the raiders dashed into the resort of Nick Spoletti.
Nick, who conducted a bar in a basement, had been a prizefighter; he was cool and quick. He heard the crusaders coming and shouted to his customers, “Beat it! Side door! I’ll hold ’em back!”
He met the first of the policemen at the bottom of the steps, and dropped him with the crack of a bottle over his head. The next tripped over the body, and the others halted, peering, looking embarrassed, drawing revolvers. But Elmer smelled battle. He forgot holiness. He dropped his Bible, thrust aside two policemen, and swung on Nick from the bottom step. Nick slashed at his head, but with a boxer’s jerk of the neck Elmer slid away from the punch, and knocked out Nick with a deliberately murderous left.
“Golly, the parson’s got an awful wallop!” grunted the sergeant, and Bill Kingdom sighed, “Not so bad!” and Elmer knew that he had won . . . that he would be the hero of Zenith . . . that he was now the Sir Lancelot as well as the William Jennings Bryan of the Methodist Church.
IX
After two more raids he was delivered at his home by patrol wagon, and left with not entirely sardonic cheers by the policemen.