ice.

Almost gaily Kennedy swung along toward Broadway. At the corner he
hesitated, glanced up and down, caught sight of the furniture-van in the
middle of the next block. The driver was tugging at the harness of the
horses, apparently fixing it. We walked along and stopped beside it.

"Drive around in front of the Vesper Club slowly," said Kennedy as the
driver at last looked up.

The van lumbered ahead, and we followed it casually. Around the corner
it turned. We turned also. My heart was going like a sledgehammer as the
critical moment approached. My head was in a whirl. What would that gay
throng back of those darkened windows down the street think if they knew
what was being prepared for them?

On, like the Trojan horse, the van lumbered. A man went into the Vesper
Club, and I saw the negro at the door eye the oncoming van suspiciously.
The door banged shut.

The next thing I knew, Kennedy had ripped off his disguise, had flung
himself up behind the van, and had swung the doors open. A dozen men
with ages and sledge-hammers swarmed out and up the steps of the club.

"Call the reserves, O'Connor," cried Kennedy. "Watch the roof and the
back yard."

The driver of the van hastened to send in the call.

The sharp raps of the hammers and the axes sounded on the thick
brass-bound oak of the outside door in quick succession. There was a
scurry of feet inside, and we could hear a grating noise and a terrific
jar as the inner, steel door shut.

"A raid! A raid on the Vesper Club!" shouted a belated passer-by.
The crowd swarmed around from Broadway, as if it were noon instead of
midnight.

Banging and ripping and tearing, the outer door was slowly forced. As
it crashed in, the quick gongs of several police patrols sounded. The
reserves had been called out at the proper moment, too late for them
to "tip off" the club that there was going to be a raid, as frequently
occurs.

Disregarding the melee behind me, I leaped through the wreckage with the
other raiders. The steel door barred all further progress with its
cold blue impassibility. How were we to surmount this last and most
formidable barrier?

I turned in time to see Kennedy and O'Connor hurrying up the steps
with a huge tank studded with bolts like a boiler, while two other men
carried a second tank.

"There," ordered Craig, "set the oxygen there," as he placed his own
tank on the opposite side:

Out of the tanks stout tubes led, with stopcocks and ga