out. Benton's
flashlight gun boomed and a brilliant white light blazed, turning night
into day for a fraction of a second.

The mayor raced the motor as Benton and Brennan dashed toward the
automobile and sprang to the running board. John saw Gibson and
Cummings, recovering from their surprise, rush after them. Cummings was
tugging at something in his right hip pocket.

With a roar from its exhaust, the automobile lunged forward. He heard
the mayor curse as he shifted the gears fiercely, each move of his hand
giving the car accelerated speed.

"Duck your heads," Brennan yelled.

An automatic pistol cracked out its sharp reports and a bullet tore
through the top of the car and shattered the windshield glass to
splinters as the automobile lurched out of the alley.

* * * * *

Murphy sat tilted back in a chair, his feet braced against the sill of
the only window of his room. Cigarette butts were heaped in a tarnished
brass souvenir ash tray on a table at his side. The Sunday newspapers,
from which he had extracted the sporting sections to peruse every line,
were scattered on the floor around his chair.

His scraggy hair tousled on his head, a growth of black, wiry beard
covering his face, coatless and collarless, he was a picture of coarse
self-indulgence. Returning to his room at three o'clock in the morning
after separating from the mayor, Brennan, John and Smith following their
escape from "Gink" Cummings' pistol shots, he had slept until noon. He
went to the cheap dairy lunch near his rooming house for a heavy
breakfast of ham and eggs, purchased the Sunday papers and came back to
smoke and read.

The room with its disordered bed, drab walls dotted with sporting
prints, dusty, rickety furnishings, threadbare carpet and grimy lace
curtains, was a dreary, prison-like place. But to Murphy it was the
place of his content, as much of a home as he had ever had. He had slept
in alleys and deserted shacks and basements. So to him the room brought
no discomfort and was as luxurious in his unimaginative mind as a suite
at the Ambassador or the Alexandria. No invitation to the restful
mountains or the sparkling ocean, its beaches lined with gay Sunday
crowds, floated to him on the breeze that drifted in through the open
window. He was enjoying a roustabout's day of rest.

After a while, perhaps, when dusk falling over the city heralded
brooding night, he would emerge from his room to vis