The next day Genaro suddenly decides to take a scene in the Kid's movie, and as we was under contract we had to stay. The third afternoon, Miss Vincent gets a terrible headache and the Kid has to sit on the hotel porch with her, readin' out loud her press notices from the movie magazines.
I kept out of it, but thinkin' about Arthur and that little nurse over there had me bitin' nails, and the next day I told the Kid if he didn't go out and trade wallops with Arthur, I was through as his pilot. I said that right out loud in front of Miss Vincent, lookin' her right in them famous baby-blue eyes of hers. But you can't figure women—she crossed me and tells the Kid to go and she'd go with him!
We went out in her racin' car, with me ridin' on the runnin' board and thinkin' 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 lookin' for a openin', like a guy with a pail of water tryin' to put out hell! Arthur hesitates, starin' wildly at the Kid, and then his face begins to change till it's almost human. He looks like he's tryin' to think.
"Come on!" bawls Scanlan—loud, to keep the crack out of his voice. "Come on!" He dances around Arthur and makes a pass at him. "I got some new ones to show you to-day!" he yells. "Hurry up, or we—won't—have—time—to—mix it!"