But they were three, and there were a dozen men in the room besides the fallen redhead. One of them stepped forward now, a swarthy little man whose face was stubbled in blue-black save for the white streak of an old knife scar.
“You shouldn’t ought to of done that,” he said. “Red didn’t mean you no harm, not personal. No roughhouse, see? And if you listen to reason, why, OK.”
“And if I don’t?” MacVeagh asked tersely.
“If you don’t? Well, then it looks like we’re going to have to smash up that pretty press of yours, mister. But there don’t nobody need to get hurt. You ain’t got a chance against the bunch of us. You might as well admit it if you don’t want us to have to smash up that pretty puss of yours too.”
“What can we do?” Molly whispered. “He’s right; we can’t stand them all off. But to smash the press—”
Luke Sellers waved his wrench and issued wholesale invitations to slaughter.
Scarface grinned. “Call off the old man, mister. He’s apt to get hurt. Well, how’s about it? Do you let us in nice and peaceable or do we smash down the door?”
MacVeagh opened a drawer of the desk and put his hand in. “You can try smashing,” he said, “if you don’t mind bullets.”
“We don’t mind bluffs,” said Scarface dryly. “OK, boys!”
MacVeagh took his empty hand from the drawer. There was only one thing to do, and that was to fight as long as he could. It was foolish, pointless, hopeless. But it was the only thing that a man could do.
The men came. Scarface had somehow managed wisely to drop to the rear of the charge. As they came, MacVeagh stooped. He rose with the wreck of the typewriter and hurled it. It took the first man out and brought the second thudding down with him. MacVeagh followed it with his fists.
Luke Sellers, as a long-standing authority on barroom brawls, claimed that the ensuing fight lasted less than a minute. It seemed closer to an hour to MacVeagh, closer yet to an eternity. Time vanished and there was nothing, no thinking, no reasoning, no problems, no values, nothing but the ache in his body as blows landed on it and the joy in his heart as his own blows connected and the salt warmth of blood in his mouth.
From some place a thousand light-years away he heard a voice bellowing, “Quit it! Lay off!” The words meant nothing. He paid no more attention to them than did the man who at the moment held his head in an elbow lock and pummeled it with a heavy ring-bearing fist. The voice sounded again as MacVeagh miraculously wriggled loose, his neck aching with the strain, and delivered an unorthodox knee blow to the ring wearer. Still the voice meant nothing.
But the shot did.
It thudded into the ceiling, and its echoes rang through the room. The voice bellowed again, “Now do you believe I mean it? Lay off. All of you!”
The sound and smell of powder wield a weighty influence in civilian reactions. The room was suddenly very still. MacVeagh wiped sweat and blood from his face, forced his eyes open, and discovered that he could see a little.
He could see a tall gaunt man with crudely Lincolnian features striding toward him. He recognized the labor leader. “Sergeant Bricker, I presume?” he said grog8‘ly‘
Bricker looked his surprise. “Sergeant? MacVeagh, you’re punchy.”
“Uh-huh.” MacVeagh cast dim eyes on the two armed bodyguards at the door and at the restlessly obedient men of the company’s police. “Don’t you know? You’re the U. S. Marines.”
Then somebody pulled a black-dotted veil over the light, which presently went out altogether.
At first John MacVeagh thought it was a hangover. To be sure, he had never had a hangover like this. To be equally sure, he resolved that he never would again. A convention of gnomes was holding high revels in his skull and demonstrating the latest rock-drilling gadgets.
He groaned and tried to roll over. His outflung arm felt emptiness, and his body started to slip. A firm hand shoved him back into place.
He opened his eyes. They ached even more resolutely when open, and he quickly dropped his lids. But he had seen that he was on the narrow couch in the back office, that Molly’s hand had rescued him from rolling off, and that it was daylight.
“Are you OK, boss?” Molly’s voice was softer than usual.
“I’ll be all right as soon as they shovel the dirt in on me.”
“Can you listen while I tell you things?”
“I can try. Tell me the worst. What did I do? Climb chandeliers and sing bawdy ballads to the Ladies’ Aid?”
He heard Molly laugh. “You weren’t plastered, boss. You were in a fight. Remember?”
The shudder that ran through him testified to his memory. “I remember now. Hitchcock’s little playmates. And Bricker showed up and staged the grand rescue and I passed out. Fine, upstanding hero I am. Can’t take it—”
“You took plenty. Doc Quillan was worried about a concussion at first. That’s why he had us keep you here—didn’t want to risk moving you home. But he looked at you again this morning and he thinks you’ll be OK.”
“And I never even felt it. Exalted, that’s what I must’ve been. Wonderful thing, lust of battle. This morning! Sunlight.” He forced his eyes open and tried to sit up. “Then it’s Friday! The paper should be—”
Molly pushed him back. “Don’t worry, boss. The Sentinel came out this morning. Everything’s hunky-dory. Bricker lent us a couple of men to help, and it’s all swell.”
“Bricker— Where’d we be without him? A god out of the machinists’ union. And the paper’s out . . .” Suddenly he tried to sit up again, then decided against it. “Molly!”
“Yes, boss?”
“Have you been in Courthouse Square this morning?”
“No, boss. Doc Quillan said I ought to— I mean, there’s been so
