“Soak him!  Kill de guy!  He’s croaked Dago Jim!  Put a hole in him, de—­”

Yells, a chorus of them, took up the refrain—­then the rush of following feet—­and the passageway seemed to racket as though a Gatling gun were in play with the fusillade of revolver shots.  But Jimmie Dale was at the opening now—­and, like a base runner plunging for the bag, he flung himself in a low dive through and into the open cellar beyond.  He was on his feet, over the boxes, and dashing up the stairs in a second.  The door above opened as he reached the top—­Jimmie Dale’s right hand shot out with clubbed revolver—­and with a grunt Chang Foo went down before the blow and the headlong rush.  The next instant Jimmie Dale had sprung through the tea shop and was out on the street.

A minute, two minutes more, and Chinatown would be in an uproar—­Chang Foo would see to that—­and the Wowzer would prod him on.  The danger was far from over yet.  And then, as he ran, Jimmie Dale gave a little gasp of relief.  Just ahead, drawn up at the curb, stood a taxicab—­waiting, probably, for a private slumming party.  Jimmie Dale put on a spurt, reached it, and wrenched the door open.

“Quick!” he flung at the startled chauffeur.  “The nearest subway station—­there’s a ten-spot in it for you!  Quick man—­quick!  Here they come!”

A crowd of Chinese, pouring like angry hornets from Chang Foo’s shop, came yelling down the street—­and the taxi took the corner on two wheels—­and Jimmie Dale, panting, choking for his breath like a man spent, sank back against the cushions.

But five minutes later it was quite another Jimmie Dale, composed, nonchalant, imperturbable, who entered an up-town subway train, and, choosing a seat alone near the centre of the car, which at that hour of night in the downtown district was almost deserted, took the crushed letter from his pocket.  For a moment he made no attempt to read it, his dark eyes, now that he was free from observation, full of troubled retrospect, fixed on the window at his side.  It was not a pleasant thought that it had cost a man his life, nor yet that that life was also the price of his own freedom.  True, if there were two men in the city of New York whose crimes merited neither sympathy nor mercy, those two men were the Wowzer and Dago Jim—­but yet, after all, it was a human life, and, even if his own had been in the balance, thank God it had been through no act of his that Dago Jim had gone out!  The Wowzer, cute and cunning, had been quick enough to say so to clear himself, but—­Jimmie Dale smiled a little now—­neither the Wowzer, nor Chang Foo, nor Chinatown would ever be in a position to recognise their uninvited guest!

Jimmie Dale’s eyes shifted to the letter speculatively, gravely.  It seemed as though the night had already held a year of happenings, and the night was not over yet—­there was the letter!  It had already cost one life; was it to cost another—­or what?