With a snort of fury, the diplomat struck backward.  The glasses and the solemn face behind them dodged smartly.  The next moment, Herr von Plaanden felt his neck encircled by a clasp none the less warm for being not precisely affectionate.  He was pinned.  Twisting, he worked one arm loose.

“Be careful!” warned the cool voice of Polly Brewster, addressing her defender.  “He’s trying to draw his sword.”

The gogglesome one’s grip slid a little lower.  The car had now stopped, and the conductor came forward, brandishing what was apparently the wand of authority, designed to be symbolic rather than utile, since at no point was it thicker than a man’s finger.  From a safe distance on the running-board, he flourished this, whooping the while in a shrill and dissuasive manner.  Somewhere down the street was heard a responsive yell, and a small, jerky, olive-green policia pranced into view.

Thereupon a strange thing happened.  The rescuing knight relaxed his grip, leaped the back of his seat, dropped off the car, and darted like a hunted hare across a compound, around a wall, and so into the unknown, deserting his lady fair, if not precisely in the hour of greatest need, at least in a situation fraught with untoward possibilities.  Indeed, it seemed as if these possibilities might promptly become actualities, for the diplomat turned his stimulated wrath upon the girl, and was addressing her in tones too emphatic to be mistaken when a large angular form interposed itself, landing with a flying leap on the seat between them.

“Move!” the newly arrived one briefly bade Herr von Plaanden.

Herr von Plaanden, feeling the pressure of a shoulder formed upon the generous lines of a gorilla’s, and noting the approach of the policia on the other side, was fain to obey.

“Don’t you be scared, miss,” said Cluff, turning to the girl.  “It’s all over.”

“I’m not frightened,” she said, with a catch in her voice.

“Of course you ain’t,” he agreed reassuringly.  “You just sit quiet—­”

“But I—­I—­I’m mad, clean through.”

“You gotta right.  You gotta perfect right.  Now, if this was New York, I’d spread that gold-laced guy’s face—­”

“I’m not angry at him.  Not particularly, I mean.”

“No?” queried her friend in need.  “What got your goat, then?”

Miss Brewster shot a quick and scornful glance over her shoulder.

“Oh, him” interpreted the athlete.  “Well, he made his get-away like a man with some reason for being elsewhere.”

“Reason enough.  He was afraid.”

“Maybe.  Being afraid’s a queer thing,” remarked her escort academically.  “Now, me, I’m afraid of a fuzzy caterpillar.  But I ain’t exactly timid about other things.”

“You certainly aren’t.  And I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Aw, that’s awright, miss.  What else could I do?  Our departed friend, Professor Goggle-Eye, when he made his jump, landed right in my shirt front.  ‘Take my place,’ he says; ’I’ve got an engagement.’  Well, I was just moving forward, anyway, so it was no trouble at all, I assure you,” asserted the doughty Cluff, achieving a truly elegant conclusion.