you've done to me and my girl! But for
Larry Brainard you, Jimmie Carlisle, would have succeeded in your scheme
to make my girl a crook! I'd like to give you a thousand years of agony,
you damned rat--but that's beyond me!" His right hand shifted swiftly
from Old Jimmie's arm to his throat. "But I'm going to choke your rat's
life out of you!--your lying, sneaking devil's life out of you!"

Old Jimmie squirmed and twisted with those long fingers clamped
mercilessly around his throat, his eyes rolling, and his mouth gaping
with voiceless cries. He was indeed being shaken as a rat might be
shaken.

"Don't!--Don't!" cried the frantic Maggie, and started to seize her
father to pull him away. But she was halted by her arm being caught by
Barney.

"Let Jimmie have it!" he said fiercely to her, and flung her to the
farthest corner of the room. And grimly exultant over what seemed to be
Old Jimmie's doom, he started for the door to make his own escape.

Up to the moment of Joe Ellison's eruption Larry had felt bound to
remain a mere spectator where he was: long as the time had seemed to
him, it had in fact been less than half an hour. He had felt bound at
first by his promise to Maggie to let her work out her plan; and bound
later by his sense that this situation belonged to Joe Ellison. But now
this swift crisis dissolved all such obligations. He sprang from his
closet to take his part in the drama that was so swiftly unfolding.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Larry caught and whirled around Barney Palmer just as the hand of the
escaping Barney was on the knob of the outer door.

"No, you don't, Barney Palmer!" he cried. "You stay right here!"

Startled as Barney was by this appearance of his dearest enemy, he
wasted no precious time on mere words. He swung a vicious blow at Larry,
intended to remove this barrier to his freedom. But the experienced
Larry let it glance off his forearm, and with the need of an
instantaneous conclusion he sent a terrific right to Barney's chin.
Barney staggered back, fell in a crumpled heap, and lay motionless.

Sparing only the fraction of a second to see that Barney was momentarily
out of it, Larry sprang upon Joe Ellison and tried to break the deadly
grips Joe held upon Old Jimmie.

"Stop, Joe--stop!" he cried peremptorily. "Your killing Jimmie Carlisle
isn't going to help things!"

Without relaxing his holds, Joe turned upon this interferer.

"Larry Brainard! How'd you come in here?"