It was not till then that Johnnie understood what Big Tom meant to do. Crying out to him, "Oh, y' mustn't! Y' mustn't!" he rushed across to catch at the rope, and clung to it with all his might. Barber caught him up, and once more he threw him--so that Johnnie struck a wall, and lay for a moment, half stunned. Meanwhile, with his other hand, the longshoreman thrust Cis down into her chair. Then growling as he worked, he wound her in the rope as in the coils of a serpent, and bound her, body, ankles, and arms, to the kitchen table. Johnnie came crawling back, bruised, but scarcely knowing it; thinking only of Cis, of saving her from pain and indignity. "No, Mister Barber!" he pleaded. "Not Cis, Mister Barber! Please! It's all my fault! I fetched Mister Perkins here! I did! So blame me!" Barber straightened. He was breathing hard, but there was a satisfied shine in his bloodshot eyes. "All right, Mister Johnnie," he answered. His voice was almost playful, but still he did not look at the boy. "It's y'r fault, is it? Well, I guess maybe it jus' about is! So y' needn't t' worry! I'll attend t' y'--_no mistake_!" CHAPTER XXX DISASTER BARBER took his time. He even prepared to have a smoke before "attending" to Johnnie. He fumbled through his coat pockets to find his pipe, grinning all the while at Cis. Being bound had not subdued her. She looked back at him, her face quivering, her cheeks streaming with angry tears. "Oh, yes, he'll go after you!" she sobbed. "You needn't be afraid he won't! He likes to take somebody that's little and weak, and abuse him, just as he's abused me, because I'm a girl! You don't think, Johnnie, that he'd ever take anybody his own size!" "That'll do!" warned Big Tom. He had found the pipe, and now came a step nearer to her. "Y'd better keep y'r mouth shut, young lady!" "Don't talk, Cis! Don't!" begged Johnnie, half whispering. "I _will_ talk!" she declared. "All the years I've been here I've wanted to tell him what I think of him. And now I'm going to!--I _am_ a young lady. You great, big coward!" He struck her with the flat of one heavy hand. But as she instantly struggled, and frantically, throwing herself this way and that, and almost overturning the table upon herself, the longshoreman thought better of continuing the punishment, and crossed to the sink to empty his pipe. Again Cis fell to sobbing, and talking as she wept. "I'm going to see that Father Pat knows about this," she threatened. "And everybody in the whole neighborhood, too! They'll drive you out of this part of town--you see if they don't! And, oh, wait till One-Eye knows, and Mr. Perkins!" It was just then, as she paused for breath, that something happened which was unexpected, unforeseen, and terrible in its results. The longshoreman, to empty his pipe, rapped once on that pipe leading down into the sink from Mrs. Kukor's flat--then twice more--then once again. It was the book signal!