Immediately the others closed in upon him, supremely confident of overcoming by concerted action that smallish, pale, and terrified body.  Whereupon P. Sybarite’ stepped quickly to one side and, avoiding the rush of one, directly engaged the other.  Ducking beneath a windmill play of arms, he shot an accurate fist at this aggressor’s jaw; there was a click of teeth, the man’s head snapped back, and folding up like a tripod, he subsided at length.

Then swinging on a heel, P. Sybarite met a second onset made more dangerous by the cooler calculations of a more sophisticated antagonist.  Nevertheless, deftly blocking a rain of blows, he closed in as if eager to escape punishment, and planted a lifted knee in the large of the detective’s stomach so neatly that he, too, collapsed like a punctured presidential boom and lay him down at rest.

Success so egregious momentarily stupefied even P. Sybarite.  Gazing down upon those two still shapes, so mighty and formidable when sentient, he caught his breath in sharp amazement.

“Great Heavens!  Is it possible I did that?” he cried aloud—­and the next moment, spurred by alert discretion, was scaling the fence with the readiness of an alley-cat.

Instantaneously, as he poised above the abyss of Stygian blackness on the other side, not a little daunted by its imperturbable mystery, a quick backward glance showed him figures moving in the basement hallway of the gambling house; and easing over, he dropped.

Hard flags received him with native impassivity:  stumbling, he lost balance and sat down with an emphasis that drove the breath from him in one mighty “Ooof!”

There was a simultaneous confusion of new, strange voices on the other side of the fence; cries of surprise, recognition, excitement: 

“Feeny, by all that’s holy!”

“Mike Grogan, or I’m a liar!”

“What hit the two av urn?”

“Gawd knows!”

“Thin ‘tis this waay thim murdherous divvles is b’atin’ ut!”

“Gimme a back up that fince!...”

P. Sybarite picked himself up with even more alacrity that if he’d landed in a bed of nettles, tore across that terra-incognita, found a second fence, and was beyond it in a twinkling.

Swift as he was, however, detection attended him—­a voice roaring: 
“There goes wan av thim now!”

Other voices chimed in spendthrift with suggestions and advice....

Blindly clearing fence after fence without even thinking to count them, P. Sybarite hurtled onward.  Noises in the rear indicated a determined pursuit:  once a voice whooped—­“Halt or I fire!”—­and a shot, waking echoes, sped the fugitive’s heels....

But in time he had of necessity to pause for breath, and pulled up in the back-yard of a Forty-sixth Street residence, his duty—­to find a way to the street and a shift from that uniform of unhappy inspiration—­as plain as the problem it presented was obscure.