The cab drawing up to the curb, out P. Sybarite hopped, a dollar in hand for the chauffeur, and the admonition:  “I’m keeping you; wait till I come out, if I’m all night; and don’t let your motor die, ’cause I may be in a hurry.”

“Gotcha,” said the chauffeur tersely; pocketed the bill; lighted a cigarette....

P. Sybarite held back an instant to inspect the approach.

This being Sunday morning, Dutch House was decorously dull to the street; the doors to the bar closed, the lights within low and drowsy; even the side door, giving access to the “restaurant,” was closed much of the time—­when, that is to say, it wasn’t swinging to admit an intermittent flow of belated casuals and habitues of both sexes.

A row of vehicles lined the curb:  nighthawk taxicabs for the most part, with one or two four-wheelers, as many disreputable and dilapidated hansoms, and (aside from that in which P. Sybarite had arrived) a single taxicab of decent appearance.  This last stood, with door ajar, immediately opposite the side entrance, its motor pulsing audibly—­evidently waiting under orders similar to those issued by P. Sybarite.

Now as the latter advanced to enter Dutch House, shadows appeared on the ground glass of the side door; and opening with a jerk, it let out a gush of fetid air together with Respectability on the prowl—­Respectability incognito, sly, furtive of air, and in noticeable haste.

He paused for a bare instant on the threshold; affording P. Sybarite opportunity for a good, long look.

“Two-thirty,” said Respectability brusquely over his shoulder.

The man behind him growled affirmation:  “Two-thirty—­don’t worry:  I’ll be on the job.”

“And take care of that boy.”

“Grab it from me, boss, when he wakes up, he won’t know where he’s been.”

“Good-night, then,” said Respectability grudgingly.

“G’d-night.”

The door closed, and with an ineradicable manner of weight and consequence Respectability turned toward the waiting taxicab:  a man of, say, well-preserved sixty, with a blowsy plump face and fat white side-whiskers, a fleshy nose and arrogant eyes, a double chin and a heavy paunch; one who, in brief, had no business in that galley at that or any other hour of day or night, and who knew it and knew that others (worse luck!) would know it at sight.

All this P. Sybarite comprehended in a glance and, comprehending, bristled like a truculent game-cock or the faithful hound in the ghost-story.  The aspect of Respectability seemed to have upon him the effect of a violent irritant; his eyes took on a hot, hard look, his lips narrowed to a thin, inflexible crease, and his hands unconsciously closed.

And as Respectability strode across the sidewalk, obviously intending to bury himself in the body of his waiting cab as quickly as possible, P. Sybarite—­with the impudence of a tug blocking the fairway for an ocean liner—­stepped in his path, dropped a shoulder, and planted both feet firmly.