When they arrived at the hotel, Smith was reaching for Noggle's coat-tail. Up-stairs the barber leaped, up-stairs after him Smith lumbered; along the hall toward Malvina's bedroom Noggle ran, shaking the house from shingle to foundation stone, and close behind his heels panted Smith, his eyes as red as hate.
Noggle jumped to the door like a swooping eagle, Smith a rod behind him. Within there was a glimpse of bare shoulders, a shower of unloosed red hair, and the sharp alarm of a woman's scream. Then the door was flung shut in Noggle's face and locked, and the terrible Smith was upon him, his obscene hand gathering a firm hold in the back of the seersucker coat.
Noggle felt a chill of fear crinkle his hair, and leaned and strained and pawed the floor in his struggle to break that hold. It broke, for seersucker is not as strong as fear in the heart of a coward naturally born, and away went Noggle again, on through the hall, down the back stairs, around the hotel, into the main street. He shaped his halfblind course for the door of his shop again, thinking frantically of a razor, beating the ground with his long flat feet until the cow ponies hitched along the way reared back on their halters, and plunged and snorted, raising a dust for a background to
