He decided to play a lone hand except for such help as Johnnie could give him.

Clay took a downtown car and rode to the cross-street mentioned in the letter for a preliminary tour of investigation.  The street designated was one of plain brownstone fronts with iron-grilled doors.  The blank faces of the houses invited no confidence.  It struck him that there was something sinister about the neighborhood, but perhaps the thought was born of the fear.  Number 121 had windows barred with ornamental grilles.  This might be to keep burglars out.  It would serve equally well to keep prisoners in.

At the nearest grocery store Clay made inquiries.  He was looking, he said, for James K. Sanger.  He did not know the exact address.  Could the grocery man help him run down his party?  How about the folks living at Number 121?

“Don’t know ’em.  They’ve been in only for a few days.  They don’t trade here.”

Clay tried the telephone, but Information could tell him only that there was no ’phone at 121.

On the whole Clay inclined to think that the letter was not a forgery.  In his frank, outdoor code there was no reason why Durand should hate him enough to go to such trouble to trap him.  The fellow had more than squared accounts when he had beaten him up outside the Sea Siren.  Why should he want to do anything more to him?  But he had had two warnings that the ex-prize-fighter was not through with him—­both of them from members of the police force, one direct from the sergeant who had helped rescue him, the other by way of the Runt from headquarters.  When he recalled the savage hatred of that flat, pallid face he did not feel so sure of immunity.  Clay had known men in the West, wolf-hearted killers steeped in a horrible lust for revenge, who never forgot or forgave an injury—­until their enemy had paid the price in full.  Jerry Durand might be one of this stamp.  He was a man of a bad reputation, one about whom evil murmurs passed in secret.  Not many years ago he had been tried for the murder of one Paddy Kelly, a rival gangsman in his neighborhood, and had been acquitted on the ground of self-defense.  But there had been a good deal of talk about evidence framed in his behalf.  Later he had been arrested for graft, but the case somehow had never been acted upon by the district attorney’s office.  The whisper was that his pull had saved him from trial.

The cattleman did not linger in that street lined with houses of sinister faces.  He did not care to call attention to his presence by staying too long.  Besides, he had some arrangements to make for the night at his rooms.

These were simple and few.  He oiled and loaded his revolver carefully, leaving the hammer on the one chamber left empty to prevent accidents after the custom of all careful gunmen.  He changed into the wrinkled suit he had worn when he reached the city, and substituted for his shoes a pair of felt-soled gymnasium ones.