with an iron bar, while a fourth, Mock Ding, fired four shots at his crumpling body with a revolver one of which glanced off and fractured a very costly Chien Lung vase and ruined four boxes of mandarin-blossom tea.  In his excitement he ducked behind the counter, and when sufficiently revived he crawled forth to find what had once been Quong lying across the threshold, the murderers gone, and the Italian woman prostrate and shrieking with a hip splintered by a stray bullet.  On the sidewalk outside the window lay the remnants of the bag of pepper, a knife broken short off at the handle, a heavy bar of soft iron slightly bent, and a partially emptied forty-four-caliber revolver.  Quong’s suit of mail had effectually protected him from the knife thrust and the revolver shots, but his skull was crushed beyond repair.  Thus was the murder of Wah Sing avenged in due and proper form.

Detective Mooney, distant not more than two hundred feet, rushed back to the corner at the sound of the first shot—­just in time to catch a side glimpse of Mock Hen as he raced across Pell Street and disappeared into the cellar of the Great Shanghai Tea Company.  The Italian woman was filling the air with her outcries, but the detective did not pause in his hurtling pursuit.  He was too late, however.  The cellar door withstood all his efforts to break it open.

Bull Neck Burke, the wrestler, who tied Zabisko once on the stage of the old Grand Opera House in 1913, had been promenading with Mollie Malone, of the Champagne Girls and Gay Burlesquers Company.  Both heard the fusillade and saw Mock—­a streak of flying blue—­pass within a few feet of them.

“God!” ejaculated Mollie.  “Sure as shootin’, that’s Mock Hen—­and he’s murdered somebody!”

“It’s Mock all right!” agreed Bull Neck.  “That puts us in as witnesses or strike me!” And he looked at his watch—­four one.

“Here, Burke, put your shoulder to this!” shouted Mooney from the cellar steps.  “Now then!”

The two of them threw their combined weight against it, the lock flew open and they fell forward into the darkness.  Three doors leading in different directions met the glare of Mooney’s match.  But the fugitive had a start of at least four minutes, which was three and a half more than he required.

* * * * *

Mock Hen took the left-hand of the three doors and crept along a passage opening into an empty opium parlor back of the Hip Leong clubroom.

Diving beneath one of the bunks he inserted his body between the lower planking at the back and the cellar wall, wormed his way some twelve feet, raised a trap and emerged into a tunnel by means of which and others he eventually reached the end of the block and the rooms of his friend Hong Sue.

Here he changed from the Oriental costume according to Chinese etiquette necessary to the homicide, into a nobby suit of American clothes, put on a false mustache, and walked boldly down Park Row, while just behind him Doyers and Pell Streets swarmed with bluecoats and excited citizenry.