kin' what a fine thing accident insurance was for a guy of moderate
means. By dumb luck we missed crashin' into the scenery along the road
and stopped outside the iron gates of the sanitarium. We had hardly
got in the office, when from down the hall we heard what sounded like a
race riot, and a couple of orderlies goes past us so fast that I didn't
believe it could be done, although I seen 'em. The Kid runs down to
where the noise was comin' from and I tagged along in the rear,
stoppin' with him outside a big two-doored room, where from the sounds
that crashed out from inside they was puttin' on a dress rehearsal of a
race riot.

While we stood there lookin' at each other, a familiar deep snarlin'
voice roars out over the others--they was a scream, too, that made me
neck and neck with the Kid as we busted in the locked doors and went
sprawlin' inside.

Oh, boy!

A half dozen nurses and two or three doctors is lined up against the
wall on the far side, crouchin' back of an operatic table and tryin' to
force their bodies through the hard cement. The place looks like a
cyclone had hit it, with the walls scraped and scarred and the floor
covered with plaster and what not like the show-room of a junk shop.
Half on the floor and half on a chair is Miss Woods. I hoped she had
only fainted.

In the middle of the room and backin' against the doors is a big,
growlin', red-eyed killer that used to be Arthur.

Most of his clothes is torn off where some of them poor little human
bein's had tried to hold him, and over his head he's swingin' a iron
pole he'd torn from the fancy front gate outside. Each time he swings,
he comes nearer that bunch with nothin' between them and Heaven but a
white enameled table. He didn't seem to notice Scanlan, who slid
almost to his feet, and rightin' himself like a cat, stepped back to
size the thing up. Then with a growl, Arthur chops at the operatin'
table with the pole and crumbles it like a berry box. The women
screamed--I think one of 'em fainted. The doctors spread in front of
them, as Arthur raised the pole to finish the job.

And then Scanlan, poppin' up from somewheres, jumps in front of Arthur,
his face the color of that busted table, but his body as steady as the
Rockies, as he plants himself there before the big guy, swingin' his
head back easily before that tremblin' iron pole. The Kid throws his
hands up in a fightin' position and dances from one foot to the other
looki