While Percival was rapidly calling out orders from above, he broke out recklessly again, addressing the stern-faced banker.
"Are you my friend or not ?" he snarled.

"What kind of a man are you?
Speak up! Tell them I'm all right." "Keep quiet," warned Malone.
Landover's eyes met the searching, questioning gaze of the Portuguese.
Manuel Crust apparently was satisfied with what he read in them, for a quick gleam of confidence leaped into his own.

His chest swelled with a tremendous intake of breath.
The remarkable personality,--or perhaps the magnetism,--of the "boss," again asserted itself.

He made no allusion to the thing uppermost in his mind as he spoke hurriedly, emphatically to the tense throng.

When he directed Randolph Fitts to take a few picked men with him up into the woods to bring down the captive, there were mutterings but no move on the part of the crowd either to anticipate or to follow the detachment.
A few terse words to Buck Chizler sent that active young man after Fitts, the bearer of instructions.