“I was thinking the same of you; always playing safe.  You ought to know better than to pull a bluff like that on me.  But if that is your game, I call.  I want White-Eye.”

Pony Baxter had plenty of nerve.  But he knew The Spider.  “I haven’t seen White-eye for over three years,” he said, turning to his desk.  He tore a memorandum slip from a pad and wrote something on it and handed it to The Spider.  It was simply a number on Aliso Street.  The Spider glanced at it and tore the slip in two.

“He’s stayin’ with friends?” queried The Spider.

“Yes.  And I think you know most of them.”

“Thanks for the tip, Pony.”

“You going down there alone, Jim?”

“I might.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Baxter.

“I know dam’ well you wouldn’t,” laughed The Spider.

Scarcely had The Spider stepped into the cab when four men slouched from a dark stairway entrance a few doors down the street and watched the cab turn a distant corner.

“Well, you missed a good chance,” said one of the men, as they moved slowly toward the entrance to Pony Baxter’s.

“How about you?  If you ain’t forgetting it was the first one of us that seen him was to get him.”

“And White-Eye, here, seen him first, when he crawled out of that rig.  If we’d ‘a’ gone up, instead of standin’ here lettin’ our feet git cold—­”

“He must ‘a’ had his roll with him,” said Pino, one of White-Eye’s companions and incidentally a member of that inglorious legion, “The Men Who Can’t Come Back.”

“’T ain’t his roll I want,” said White-Eye.

“Too dam’ bad about you not wantin’ his roll.  Any time—­”

“Any time you git The Spider’s roll, you got to git him,” asserted another member of this nocturnal quartette, a man whose right arm and shoulder sagged queerly.

“The Spider ain’t no kid, neither,”—­and White-Eye paused at the dimly lighted stairway entrance.

The man with the deformed shoulder cursed White-Eye.  The others laughed.

“Let’s go git a drink—­and then we’ll have a talk with Pony.  Come on, Steve.”

They turned and drifted on up the street.  Presently they were back at the stairway entrance.  “Pony won’t stand for no rough stuff,” advised White-Eye as they turned and climbed the stair.  “I’ll do the talkin’.”

“I reckon he’ll stand for anything we hand him,” said Pino.  “Fancy clothes don’t cut any figure with me.”

“Nobody that ever got a good look at you would say so,” asserted White-Eye.  He paused at the head of the stairs.  “I aim to find out what The Spider wanted up here.”

“Go to it!”—­and Pino grinned.

As they entered the “office,” Baxter was talking with his partner, with whom he exchanged a significant glance as he realized who his visitors were.  The partner excused himself and stepped into the room beyond.