Garrick bent down and managed to wedge the hook into the little
space between the sill and the bottom of the ice-box door. Then he
began pumping on the handle, up and down, up and down, as hard as
he could.
Meanwhile the crowd that had begun to collect was getting larger.
Dillon went through the form of calling on them for aid, but the
call was met with laughter. A Tenderloin crowd has no use for
raids, except as a spectacle. Between us we held them back, while
Garrick worked. The crowd jeered.
It was the work of only a few seconds, however, before Garrick
changed the jeers to a hearty round of exclamations of surprise.
The door seemed to be lifted up, literally, until some of its
bolts and hinges actually bulged and cracked. It was being
crushed, like the flimsy outside door, before the unwonted attack.
Upwards, by fractions of an inch, by millimeters, the door was
being forced. There was such straining and stress of materials
that I really began to wonder whether the building itself would
stand it.
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