He had hardly spoken before Mirka, his habitual lassitude dropping from him like a discarded cloak, made a quick leap that brought him half across the bar. The glasses crashed, the bottle was overturned, and in the Austrian's waving, clenched right hand there flashed a knife. It was a moment of action, but a moment only. From one side of the bar, Angel had gripped Mirka by the waist and was pulling him backward; on the other, the powerful German had caught the threatening fist and now, with a quick twist, sent the knife plunging into the tub below the beer-spigots. Spluttering obscenities, the Austrian was dragged to the position from which he had made his attack. "You keepa quiet!" commanded Angel of the one combatant, and to the other: "You getta more fresh with your mouth an' I getta you fired." Hermann had recovered the knife and was now calmly drying it upon a bar-towel. Such incidents were not unusual in his occupation and, now that this one was closed, he could afford to smile his answer to Rafael. Mirka, on the other hand, though still tightly embraced by Angel, was trembling with rage. "I'll get you for this, Dutchie!" he declared. "So?" said Hermann. He still smiled, but he was tired of being called Dutchie, and his tongue ran just a hair's breadth ahead of his caution. "Try it," he concluded; "try it, you dirty Austrian loafer, und I'll somevheres go vhere dose names you've been makin' oud vill get you vhat you deserve." "Whata you say?" Angel kept his hold upon his friend, but the reference to their recent occupation brought a glint of anger into his own eyes. By way of beginning his reply, Hermann smilingly returned the knife to its owner, who seized it with a growl of malice. "Neffer mind vhat I say den," he answered. "Vhat I say now is 'Goot-nighd.' You two get oud." He raised his thick arm to point to the door, but in the manner of its raising there was another significance. For a moment Angel and Mirka met hotly his steady gaze. Then the bar-keeper raised carelessly his other hand: it held a stout bung-starter. The two men, with a common impulse, turned and silently left the place. Hermann was not afraid of them. He knew that his threat of betrayal had been idle, for the excellent reason that there was no quarter in which betrayal would be effective, and he told himself that, as soon as their anger and their drunkenness had in some measure subsided, the plotters would recognize this. So he whistled complacently as he polished the bright surface of the bar and did not hesitate, when he began at last to wash and put away the glasses, to turn his back to the swinging door of the saloon. The campaign was not one that was considered important and, personally, he cared but little about it or what enmities it might awaken.