Hardened though they were to scenes of violence, the clients of the dive had stilled in apprehension the moment November lifted his voice in anger; while P. Sybarite’s first overtly offensive move had struck them all dumb in terror.

Red November was one who had shot down his man in cold blood on the steps of the Criminal Courts Building and, through the favour of The Organisation that breeds such pests, escaped scot-free under the convenient fiction of “suspended sentence”; and knowing well the nature and the power of the man, the primal concerted thought had been to flee the place before bullets began to fly.  In blind panic like that of sheep, they rose as one in uproar and surged toward the outer doors.  November himself, struggling up from beneath the table, was caught and swept on willy-nilly in the front rank of the stampede.  In a thought he found himself wedged tight in a press clogging the door.  Before his enraged vision P. Sybarite was winning away with the boy.

Maddened, the gang leader managed to free his right arm and send a haphazard shot after them.

Only the instinctive recoil of those about him deflected his aim.

The report was one with a shock of shattered plate-glass:  the soft-nosed bullet, splashing upon the glazed upper half of the door, caused the entire pane to collapse and disappear with the quickness of magic.

Halting, P. Sybarite wheeled and dropped a hand to the pocket wherein rested Mrs. Inche’s automatic.

“Get that door open!” he cried to the boy.  “I’ve got a taxi waiting—­”

His words were drowned out by the thunderous detonations set up by a second shot in that constricted space.

With a thick sob, the boy reeled and swung against the wall as sharply as though he had been struck with a sledge-hammer.

Whimpering with rage, P. Sybarite tugged at the weapon; but it stuck fast, caught the lining of his coat-pocket.

Most happily before he could get it in evidence, the door was thrust sharply in, and through it with a rush materialised that most rare of metropolitan phenomena—­the policeman on the spot.

Young and ardent, with courage as unique as his ubiquity, he blustered in like a whirlwind, brushing P. Sybarite to one side, the wounded boy to the other, and pausing only a single instant to throw back the skirts of his tunic and grasp the butt of the revolver in his hip-pocket, demanded in the voice of an Irish stentor: 

“What’s-all-this?  What’s-all-this-now?”

“Robbery!” P. Sybarite replied, mastering with difficulty a giggle of hysterical relief.  “Robbery and attempted murder!  Arrest that man—­Red November—­with the gun in his hand.”

With an inarticulate roar, the patrolman swung on toward the gangster—­and P. Sybarite plucked the boy by the sleeve and drew him quickly to the sidewalk.

By the never-to-be-forgotten grace of Kismet his taxicab was precisely where he had left it, the chauffeur on the seat.