table, kept on to a door between the platform and the bar,
opened it, and went out into a lighted hallway, at one end of which a
door opened onto the street, and at the other a stairway led above.

The Runt joined him. "Wot's de row, Larry?" inquired the Runt.

"Nuthin' much," said Jimmie Dale. "Only I t'ought I'd let youse know.
I was passin' Moriarty's an' got de tip. Say, some guy's croaked Jake
Metzer dere."

"Aw, ferget it!" observed the Runt airily. "Dat's stale. Was wise to dat
hours ago."

Jimmie Dale's face fell. "But I just come from dere," he insisted; "an'
de harness bulls only just found it out."

"Mabbe," grunted the Runt. "But Metzer got his early in de
afternoon--see?"

Jimmie Dale looked quickly around him--and then leaned toward the Runt.

"Wot's de lay, Runt?" he whispered.

The Runt pulled down one eyelid, and, with his knowing grin, the
cigarette, clinging to his upper lip, sagged down in the opposite corner
of his mouth.

Jimmie Dale grinned, too--in a flash inspiration had come to Jimmie
Dale.

"Say, Runt"--he jerked his head toward the street door--"wot's de fly
cops doin' out dere?"

The grin vanished from the Runt's lips. He stared for a second wildly at
Jimmie Dale, and then clutched at Jimmie Dale's arm.

"De WOT?" he said hoarsely.

"De fly cops," Jimmie Dale repeated in well-simulated surprise. "Dey was
dere when I come in--Lansing an' Milrae, an--"

The Runt shot a hurried glance at the stairway, and licked his lips as
though they had gone suddenly dry.

"My Gawd, I--" He gasped, and shrank hastily back against the wall
beside Jimmie Dale.

The door from the street had opened noiselessly, instantly. Black forms
bulked there--then a rush of feet--and at the head of half a dozen men,
the face of Inspector Clayton loomed up before Jimmie Dale. There was
a second's pause in the rush; and, in the pause, Clayton's voice, in a
vicious undertone:

"You two ginks open your traps, and I'll run you both in!"

And then the rush passed, and swept on up the stairs.

Jimmie Dale looked at the Runt. The cigarette dangled limply; the Runt's
eyes were like a hunted beast's.

"Dey got him!" he mumbled. "It's Stace--Stace Morse. He come to me after
croakin' Metzer, an' he's been hidin' up dere all afternoon."

Stace Morse--known in gangland as a man with every crime in the calendar
to his credit, and prominent because of it! Something seemed to go
suddenly queer inside of Jimmie D