Finally he spoke slowly.  “All right,” he said, as if at last the die were cast and Garrick had carried his point, “but how are you going to do it?  Won’t you need some men with axes and crowbars?”

“No, indeed, almost shouted Garrick as Dillon made a motion as if to find out who were available.  “I’ve been preparing a little surprise in my office this afternoon for just such a case.  It’s a rather cumbersome arrangement and I’ve brought it along stowed away in a taxicab outside.  I don’t want anyone else to know about the raid until the last moment.  Just before we begin the rough stuff, you can call up and have the reserves started around.  That is all I shall want.”

“Very well,” agreed Dillon, after a moment.

He did not seem to relish the scheme, but he had promised at the outset to play fair and he had no disposition to go back on his word now in favor even of his judgment.

“First of all,” he planned, “we’ll have to drop in on a judge and get a warrant to protect us.”

Garrick hastily gave me instructions what to do and I started uptown immediately, while they went to secure the secret warrant.

I had been stationed on the corner which was not far from the Forty-eighth Street gambling joint that we were to raid.  I had a keen sense of wickedness as I stood there with other loiterers watching the passing throng under the yellow flare of the flaming arc light.

It was not difficult now to loiter about unnoticed because the streets were full of people, all bent on their own pleasure and not likely to notice one person more or less who stopped to watch the passing throng.

From time to time I cast a quick glance at the house down the street, in order to note who was going in.

It must have been over an hour that I waited.  It was after ten, and it became more difficult to watch who was going into the gambling joint.  In fact, several times the street was so blocked that I could not see very well.  But I did happen to catch a glimpse of one familiar figure across the street from me.

It was Angus Forbes.  Where he kept himself in the daytime I did not know, but he seemed to emerge at night, like a rat, seeking what to him was now food and drink.  I watched him narrowly as he turned the corner, but there was no use in being too inquisitive.  He was bound as certainly for the gambling joint as a moth would have headed toward one of the arc lights.  Evidently Forbes was making a vocation of gambling.

Just then a taxicab pulled up hurriedly at the curb near where I was standing and a hand beckoned me, on the side away from the gambling house.

I sauntered over and looked in through the open window.  It was Garrick with Dillon sunk back into the dark corner of the cab, so as not to be seen.

“Jump in!” whispered Garrick, opening the door.  “We have the warrant all right.  Has anything happened?  No suspicion yet?”