John Steele seemed oblivious.  He moved into a doorway and drawing from his pocket a cigar, unconcernedly lighted a match.  The fellows looked at him, at the tiny flame; it flickered and went out.  They hesitated; he felt in his pocket, giving them time to move by.  They did not do so; in a moment the others from the main highway would join them.  As if disappointed in not finding what he sought, Steele, looking around, appeared to see for the first time the evil-looking miscreants who had came from the direction of the Thames, and striding toward them asked bruskly for a light.  One of the fellows thus unceremoniously addressed had actually begun to feel in his shabby garments for the article required when his companion uttered a short derisory oath.

It served as a sudden stimulus to him against whom it was directed; the old precept that he who strikes first strikes best, John Steele seemed fully to appreciate.  His heavy stick flashed in the air, rang hard; the way before him cleared, he did not linger.  But close behind now the others came fast; his door, however, was near.  Now he reached it, fitted the heavy key.  Had it turned as usual, the episode would have been brought to a speedy conclusion, but, as it was, the key stuck.  The foremost of those who had been trailing fell upon Steele but soon drew back; one of them, unable to repress a groan, held his hand to a broken wrist, while from his helpless fingers a knife dropped to the ground.

A hoarse voice in thieves’ jargon, unintelligible to the layman, cursed them for cowards; John Steele on a sudden laughed loudly, exultantly; whereupon he who had thus spoken from the background stared.  A ponderous, hulking fellow, about six feet three, with a shock of red hair and a thick hanging lip,—­obviously this one of his assailants possessed immense, unusual strength.  In appearance he was the reverse of pleasing; his bloodshot eyes seemed to shine like coals from the darkness, the huge body to quiver with rage or with lust for the conflict.

“Let me at him, ye—!” he cried in foul and flash tongue, when John Steele suddenly called him by name, said something in that selfsame dialect of pickpurses and their ilk.

Whatever the words or their portent, the effect was startling.  Steele’s bulky assailant paused, remained stock-still, his purpose arrested, all his anger gone out of him.

“How the—?  Who—?” the man began.

“Call off your fellows!” John Steele’s voice seemed to thrill; a fierce elation shone from his glance.  “I want to talk with you.  It’ll be more worth your while than any prigging or bagging you’ve ever yet done.”

“Well, I’m blowed!” The man’s tone was puzzled; surprise, suspicion gleamed from the bloodshot eyes.  “How should a swell gent like you know—?  And you want to talk with me?  Here’s a gamey cove!”

“I tell you I must talk with you!  And it will be better for you, my man—­” a sharp metallic click told that the speaker had turned the key in the lock behind him—­“to step in here with me.  You needn’t be afraid I’m going to nab you; I’ve got a lay better than hooking you for the dock.  As for the others, they can go, for all of me.”