A whistling, shrill and metallic, brought the fight to a sudden end.  The crowd drew back sullen and reluctant, no longer shouting and cursing, but muttering, explaining, and discreet.

Barbara took from her lips the whistle which Kid Shannon had given her.  She was very white, but her eyes blazed with the light of success and power.  The bringing of the whistle had been an accident, the blowing it an act of desperation:  but perceiving the sudden effect of that blowing she could not but feel that she had done something strategically good and in the nick of time.  Savage began to straighten his collar and necktie, Bruce to nurse a sprained thumb.  The second cab came up.  Ely the and Morton Haddon got out and, full of perplexity but not unamused, fell to asking questions of their dishevelled friends.  These, winded and bruised, could give but an ejaculatory explanation, mostly of what they would do to such and such a one if they could isolate him from his fellow cutthroats for five minutes; and Blythe and Haddon, not bruised and winded, told them to pull themselves together.  Meanwhile the crowd had disintegrated before the possible arrival of Kid Shannon; had vanished like a lump of sugar in a cup of tea.  Even the little child who had been the cause of the uproar had disappeared.  So a colony of prairie-dogs vanishes into its burrows at the shadow of a hawk.

The short street was deserted save for the figure of a rapidly approaching policeman.  Why this guardian of the peace had not been upon his beat during the fracas could have been best explained perhaps by the proprietor of a disorderly house, from whom at the time he had been levying a weekly stipend of lust money and a glass of beer.  For his lapse of duty, however, he made such amends as were possible.  In short, he took the numbers of both taxicabs, the names of their occupants, and told them, with stern condescension, that they were now at liberty to pursue their interrupted way.

But first Barbara received praise for having blown the whistle, and Bruce and Savage were made to say repeatedly that they insisted on going on with the evening’s entertainment; that they were not really hurt, and that they wouldn’t think of being driven to a doctor.  Everybody wanted to know more about Kid Shannon, and in just what consisted the terror and efficacy of his name.  But Barbara could only say that he was a friend of hers, and a sort of henchman of their host for the evening.  Then she said, smiling: 

“I’m sorry he didn’t come himself, but anyway his whistle is a perfectly good whistle, and another time I’ll know enough to blow it before anybody gets hurt.”

Mrs. Bruce insisted on having her husband ride with her, so Blythe took his place in Barbara’s cab, and they reached Marrow Lane without further molestation.  Indeed, it seemed as if rumor had gone ahead of them, saying that they were not as other swells, but East-Siders in disguise, integral parts of the master’s organization, armed with the whistle of his lieutenant.  They were stared at, it is true, and commented upon, but with awe now and childish admiration.