hy no you, Heppel?" demanded Koppy. "I had no time."

"Time wasn't hanging about loose when he let drive," grinned Lefty
Werner.

"Mr. Conrad took your knife, Koppy," soothed Heppel. "You couldn't."

Morani, unobserved, had drawn from some hidden part of him a long
stiletto and was whetting it slowly on the palm of his hand.
Fascinated, they watched.

"We were a hundred to two," reflected Koppy in a low voice; and his
eyes were puzzled.

That was as far as they ever got in the solution of the eternal puzzle
of how one man holds a hundred under his thumb and sleeps the sleep of
the unafraid.

"Which ain't quite to the point," Werner reminded them, "with this
meeting due in half an hour. In the first place, are you sure the boss
ain't on?"

The Pole lifted his shoulders haughtily.

"I do it--I, the president of the Independent Workers of the World."

"All right, old cock, but _what_ do you do?"

"The orchestra." Morani waved a satisfied hand toward the music. "It
play. No come-a to meeting."

"Can't say I'm sorry," muttered Werner under his breath.

"Men--many men--they play cards where boss can see," said Heppel,
mildly chiding the lack of faith in his fellow-conspirator. "Camp
same, boss think. Meeting in bush same time. Everything fine."

The local president of the Workers of the World spread his hands out in
modest deprecation of such applause. Werner seemed convinced.

"You'd pull the wool over the eyes of a professional burglar, Koppy,
while you stole his jemmy. But what's the idea of the meeting
to-night? A crash--right off the bat?"

Koppy shrugged his shoulders; everything was in the lap of the gods;
inspiration was one of his holds on his followers.

"'Cause every damn one of them will do what you say," Werner assured
him, "from waiting to say grace before tackling the soup, to blowing
that trestle to perdition. That is, if they can do it in the dark."

"In dark--it is our way," returned the leader crisply. "Laws? Bah!
For the bosses they are, like everything else. We work down here." He
passed a flat hand low above the floor.

"A bit lower than that, ain't it?" said Werner, hiding a smile.

"We cut off the feet of our bosses so they fall."

"Everybody take a high seat and keep your feet out of the water!" cried
the irrepressible one. "But you want to make sure you don't cut so low
the bosses hop out of the way. But I guess you're right--you're always
right, Koppy. We