yes or no, or a brief direction. Every night at about nine-thirty he
rose, yawned, and, unattended, walked back through the beer-garden to
the alley, where he stood for some five minutes. This was his retreat
for uninterrupted thought, and when he came back from it he had the
day's developments summed up and the necessary course of action
resolved upon.

On the second night after the attempted assault upon Bobby he had no
sooner closed the alley door behind him than a man sprang upon him
from either side, a heavy hand was placed over his mouth, and he was
dragged to the ground, where a third brawny thug straddled his chest
and showed him a long knife.

"See it?" demanded the man as he passed the blade before Stone's eyes.
"It's hungry. You let 'em clip my brother in stir for a three-stretch
when you could have saved him with a grunt, and if I wasn't workin'
under orders, in half an hour they'd have you on slab six with ice
packed around you and a sheet over you. But we're under orders. We're
part of the reform committee, we are," and all three of them laughed
silently, "and there's a string of us longer than the Christmas
bread-line, all crazy for a piece of this getaway coin. And here's the
little message I got to give you. This time you're to go free. Next
time you're to have your head beat off. This thuggin' of peaceable
citizens has got to be stopped; see?"

A low whistle from a man stationed at the mouth of the alley
interrupted the speech which the man with the knife was enjoying so
much, and he sprang from the chest of Stone, who had been struggling
vainly all this time. As the man sprang up and started to run, he
suddenly whirled and gave Stone a vicious kick upon the hip, and as
Stone rose, another man kicked him in the ribs. All three of them ran,
and Stone, scrambling to his feet with difficulty, whipped his
revolver from his pocket and snapped it. Long disused, however, the
trigger stuck, but he took after them on foot in spite of the pain of
the two fearful kicks that he had received. Instead of darting
straight out of the alley, the men turned in at a small gate at the
side of a narrow building on the corner, and slammed the gate behind
them. He could hear the drop of the wooden bolt. He knew perfectly
that entrance. It was to the littered back yard of a cheap saloon, at
the side of which ran a narrow passageway to the street beyond, where
street-cars passed every half-minute.

Just as he came furio