working for your pet charity and sifting poison
into hospital bandages and powdered glass in jellies for the soldiers
of the Allies, I reckon you would change your mind."

"Powdered glass!--in _feed_!" repeated Kit, stunned at the words and
the sudden thought they suggested. "Great God, girl, you don't have
to go to the eastern papers for _that_! You've got the same trick
right here in Granados this minute! Why--damn you!"

The receiver fell from his hand as a crushing blow was dealt him from
the door at his back. He heard a girl's scream in the distance as he
grappled with Conrad and saved himself a second blow from the
automobile wrench in the manager's hands. It fell to the tiles between
them, and Rhodes kicked it to one side as he struck and struck again
the white, furious face of Conrad.

"The wrench! Tomas, the wrench! Give it to him! The Americano would
murder me!" shouted Conrad.

Tomas had other things to think of. He had heard as much as Conrad of
the telephone discourse, and was aware of his pinto standing placidly
not fifty feet away, with all the damning evidence in the case tied to
the back of the saddle!

Juanito, however, ran like a cat at his master's call and caught up
the wrench, but halted when Pike closed on his shoulder and pressed a
cold little circle of blue steel against his ribs.

"Not this time, _muchacho_!" he shrilled, "drop it! This is a man's
game, and you're out."

The men came running, and others attempted to interfere, but the
little old man waved the gun at them and ordered them to keep their
distance.

"No crowding the mourners!" he admonished them gleefully. "I've a
hunch your man started it, and my man will finish it. I don't know
what it's about, Kit, but give him hell on suspicion! Go to it,
boy,--do it again! Who-ee!--that was a sock-dolager! Keep him off
you, Kit, he's a gouger, and has the weight. Give it to him standing,
and give it to him good! That's it! Ki-yi! Hell's bells and them
a-chiming!"

For the finale of that whirl of the two striking, staggering, cursing
men, was unexpectedly dramatic. They had surged out into the open, but
Conrad, little by little and step by step, or rather stagger by
stagger, had given way before the mallet-like precision of the younger
man's fists until Kit's final blow seemed actually to lift him off his
feet and land him--standing--against the adobe wall. An instant he
quivered there, and then fell forward, glassy eyed and limp.