The group gathered closer, voices were heard in excited altercation, there were long intervals of silence.  The group had shrunken and become compact.  All were stooping.  Their preoccupation seemed intense.  They had forgotten all about the lookout.  Occasionally some civilian passed along the distant alley and guilty instinct caused one or another of the group to glance thither to give a hasty appraisal of his mission and character.  And so the wicked game went on.  And the sports of Barrel Alley never knew that their stronghold had been invaded by the boy scouts.

Then around the distant corner appeared two figures in civilian clothes, strangers in Barrel Alley.  They were County Detectives Slippett and Spotson.  They strolled down the alley innocently.  Keekie Joe, whose activities were chiefly local, knew them not.  But Pee-wee Harris, Scout, knew them.  On one of his long hikes he had seen them arrest a motorist in Northvale.  He had seen them loitering in the post office at Little Valley.

They did duty in the various municipalities of the county where the familiar faces of the local officials were a stumbling block to the apprehension of wrongdoers.  They were going to break up this ring of gambling rowdies, and so forth and so forth and so forth . . .

Pee-wee’s first impulse was to shout, but on second thought it occurred to him that the army of invasion consisting of two, one of them might make a flank move on hearing his warning voice, and that one detective could thus drive the criminals into the very arms of the other, as they passed through the back yard of Chin Foo’s laundry.  Chin Foo’s back yard was a sort of trap.

So instead of shouting he descended from the fence with lightning agility and ran across the field as fast as his legs would carry him, and pell-mell into the group.

“Two detectives are coming down the alley,” he panted.  “Beat it over that way and then you’ll sure not run into one of them because they’ve got—­got—­a lot of strat—­strat—­strat—­strat—­egy—­they have—­you’d better hurry up.”

The time it required for the group to disperse can not be indicated by any word in the English language.  They were there and then they were not there.  As Pee-wee stood amid scattered coins and dice he was conscious of distant forms scaling fences, wriggling through holes, and of one pair of legs disappearing majestically over a dilapidated roof.  As a disorderly retreat it was a masterpiece.

It was not in Pee-wee’s nature to run from anything or anybody.  So there he stood amid the telltale mementoes of the dreadful game while Detectives Slippett and Spotson strolled into the field.  They were just in time to behold a fleeting vision of forms wriggling through fences, gliding around buildings, and scrambling over roof tops.