“I’ve got him!” he cried, joyously.  “He’s out!’

“Higgins!” Anthony exclaimed, sharply.  “What the devil—­” Then the dead weight in his arms, the lolling head and sagging jaw of the stranger, sobered him like a deluge of ice-water.

“You’ve done it this time,” he muttered.

“Good God!” Locke cried.  “Let’s get away!  He’s hurt!”

“Here, you!” Anthony shot a command at the speaker that checked him half-way across the room.  “Ringold, take the door and don’t let anybody in or out.”  To Higgins he exclaimed, “You idiot, didn’t you see I had his hands?”

“No.  Had to get him,” returned Higgins, with vinous dignity.  “Wanted to rob my old friend, Mr.—­What’s his name?”

“We’ve got to leave quick before we get in bad,” Locke reiterated, nervously, but Anthony retorted: 

“We’re in bad now.  I want Padden.”  He stepped to the door and signaled a passing waiter.  A moment later the proprietor knocked, and Ringold admitted him.

“What’s the—­” Padden started at sight of the motionless figure on the floor, and, kneeling beside it, made a quick examination, while Anthony explained the circumstances leading up to the assault.

“Thief, eh?  I see.”

“Is he badly hurt?” queried Locke, bending a pale face upon them.

“Huh!  I guess he’s due for the hospital,” the owner of the Austrian Village announced.  “He had his nerve, trying to turn a trick in my place.  I thought I knew all the dips, but he’s a stranger.”  With nimble fingers he ran through the fellow’s pockets, then continued: 

“I’m glad you got him, but you’d better get together and rehearse before the police—­” He stopped abruptly once more, then looked up curiously.

“What is it?” questioned the man from Missouri.

Padden pointed silently to the lapel of the fellow’s vest, which he had turned back.  A nickeled badge was pinned upon it.  “He’s no thief; he’s a detective—­a plain-clothes man!”

“Wha’d I tell you!” Higgins exulted.  “I can smell ’em!”

The crowd looked nonplussed, with the exception of Jefferson Locke, who became calmer than at any time since the waiter had first whispered into his ear.

“We didn’t know who he was,” he began, hurriedly, “You must square it for us, Padden.  I don’t care what it costs.”  He extended a bulky roll of bank-notes toward the gray-haired man.  “These boys can’t stand this sort of thing, and neither can I. I’ve got to sail at ten o’clock this morning.”

“Looks to me like you’ve croaked him,” said the proprietor, ignoring the proffered money.

“It’s worth a thousand dollars to me not to miss my boat.”

“Wait a minute.”  Padden emptied the unconscious man’s pockets, among other things of some telegrams and a legally folded paper.  The latter he opened and scanned swiftly, then turned his little eyes upon Locke without a word, whereupon that gentleman, with equal silence, took from his inside pocket a wallet, and selected a bill, the denomination of which he displayed to the; proprietor before folding it inside the bundle he held.