“It’s a collar!” had sounded through the room, the moment we had appeared at the door, and it was now empty.

I wondered whether the letter which Garrick had found might not, after all, have brought us straight to the last resort of those whom we sought.

“Where have they gone?” I panted, as the door opened at last, and we found only one man in the place.

There he stood apparently ready to be arrested, in fact courting it if we could show the proper authority, since he knew that it would be only a question of hours when he would be out again and the game would be resumed, in full blast.

The man shook his head blankly in answer to my question.

“There must be a trap door somewhere,” cried Garrick.  “It is no use to find it.  They are all on the street by this time.  Quick—­ before anyone catches us in the rear.”

We had been not a moment too soon in gaining the street.  Though we had done nothing but attempt to get into the stuss room, ostensibly as players, the crowd in the cafe was pressing forward.

On the street, we saw men filing quickly from a cellar, a few doors down the block.  We mingled with the excited crowd in order to cover ourselves.

“That must have been where the trap door and passage led,” whispered Garrick.

A familiar figure ducked out of the cellar, surrounded by others, and the crowd made for two taxicabs standing on the opposite side of the street near a restaurant which was really not a tough joint but made a play at catering to people from uptown who wanted a taste of near-crime and did not know when they were being buncoed.

Another cab swung up to the stand, just as the first two pulled away.  Its sign was up:  “Vacant.”

Quick as a flash, Garrick was in it, dragging me after him.  The driver must have thought that we, too, were escaping, for he needed only one order from Garrick to leap ahead in the wake of the cabs which had already started.

A moment later, Garrick’s head was out of the window.  He had drawn his revolver and was pegging away at the tires of the cabs ahead.  An answering shot came back to us.  Meanwhile, a policeman at a corner leaped on a passing trolley and urged the motorman to put on the full power in a vain effort to pursue us as we swept by up the broad avenue.

Even the East Side, accustomed to frequent running fights on the streets between rival gunmen and gangs, was roused by such an outburst.  The crack of revolver shots, the honking of horns, the clang of the trolley bell, and the shouts of men along the street brought hundreds to the windows, as the cars lurched and swayed up the avenue.

The cars ahead swerved to dodge a knot of pedestrians, but their pace never slackened.  Then the rearmost of the two began to buck and almost leap off the roadway.  There came a rattle and roar from the rear wheels which told that the tires had been punctured and that the heavy wheels were riding on their rims, cutting the deflated tubes.  At a cross street the first car turned, just in time to avoid a truck, and dodged down a maze of side streets, but the second ran squarely into the truck.