But the janitor on this particular morning had been fed up with trouble.  One of the tenants had complained of him to the agent of the place.  Another had moved away without tipping him for an hour’s help in packing he had given her.  He was sulkily of the opinion that the whole world was in a conspiracy to annoy him.  Just now the approaching rube typified the world.

A little flirt of the hose deluged Clay’s newly shined boots and the lower six inches of his trousers.

“Look out what you’re doing!” protested the man from Arizona.

“I tank you better look where you’re going,” retorted the one from Sweden.  He was a heavy-set, muscular man with a sullen, obstinate face.

“My shoes and trousers are sopping wet.”

“Yust you bate it oop street.  I ant look for no trouble with no rubes.”

“I believe you did it on purpose.”

“Tank so?  Val, yust one teng I lak to tell you.  I got no time for damn fule talk.”

The Westerner started on his way.  There was no use having a row with a sulky janitor.

But the Swede misunderstood his purpose.  At Clay’s first step forward he jerked round the nozzle and let the range-rider have it with full force.

Clay was swept back to the wall by the heavy pressure of water that played over him.  The stream moved swiftly up and down him from head to foot till it had drenched every inch of the perfect fifty-five-dollar suit.  He drowned fathoms deep in a water spout.  He was swept over Niagara Falls.  He came to life again to find himself the choking center of a world flood.  He sputtered furiously while his arms flailed like windmills to keep back the river of water that engulfed him.

The thought that brought him back to action was one that had to do with the blue serge.  The best fifty-five-dollar suit in New York was ruined in this submarine disaster.

He gave a strangled whoop and charged straight at the man behind the hose.  The two clinched.  While they struggled, the writhing hose slapped back and forth between them like an agitated snake.  Clay had one advantage.  He was wet through anyhow.  It did not matter how much of the deluge struck him.  The janitor fought to keep dry and he had not a chance on earth to succeed.

For one hundred and seventy-five pounds of Arizona bone and muscle, toughened by years of hard work in sun and wind, had clamped itself upon him.  The nozzle twisted toward the janitor.  He ducked, went down, and was instantly submerged.  When he tried to rise, the stream beat him back.  He struggled halfway up, slipped, got again to his feet, and came down sitting with a hard bump when his legs skated from under him.

A smothered “Vat t’ell!” rose out of the waters.  It was both a yelp of rage and a wail of puzzled chagrin.  The janitor could not understand what was happening to him.  He did not know that he was being treated to a new form of the water cure.