A quick look of intelligence passed between Leroyd and the bartender.
“Ye’re tryin’ ter kick up a shindy in dis place, dat’s wot ye’re at!” declared the latter, rolling up his sleeves, belligerently.
“Yes, and I’ll kick up a bigger row before I’m through,” Caleb replied threateningly. “Now you run out and play, sonny, while I talk to my friend, Mr. Leroyd, here.”
This so angered the pugilistic looking man that he made a dash at the big sailor; but the consequences were exceedingly unpleasant.
Caleb’s hammer-like fist swung round with the force of a pile driver, and an ox would have fallen before that blow. As Mr. Brady himself would have put it, he was “knocked out in one round.”
But the treacherous Leroyd, taking advantage of his friend’s attack on the mate, sprang upon Caleb from the other side. This flank movement was totally unexpected, and, weakened by his long confinement in the hospital, the mate of the Silver Swan could not hold his own with his former shipmate.
Both went to the floor with a crash, and as they fell Leroyd tore open his antagonist’s coat and seized a flat leather case from the mate’s inside pocket. Dealing one heavy blow on the other’s upturned face, the scoundrel sprang up and disappeared like a shot through the door at the opposite end of the apartment.
“Stop him!” roared Caleb, and Brandon, who had stood utterly bewildered and helpless throughout the scene, sprang forward to the door.
“The papers! He’s stolen the papers!” he gasped, seizing the knob and trying to pull open the door.
But the key had been turned in the lock and the stout door baffled all his attempts upon it.