"There's nothing doing now," he explained. "You go away and come back
to-night. It'll be a good game then."

"Tha'ss a lie," said Foyle, with an assumption of drunken gravity. "Old
Bill Reid he says to me, he says----"

But Jim had lost the remainder of his small stock of patience. He jerked
the door again in Foyle's face, pulled off the chain and leapt out, his
intention of throwing the other into the street and so ending the
argument once for all written on every line of his stalwart figure.

That was his programme. But Foyle had also his programme. He had got the
door open. All that remained between him and the entrance was the
muscular figure of Jim. He suddenly became sober. The door-keeper's hand
grasping at his collar clutched empty air. The detective's head dropped.
Jim was met half-way by a short charge and Foyle's shoulder caught him
in the chest. Both men were forced by the momentum of the charge back
through the open door and fell in a heap just within.

At ordinary times the two would have been fairly evenly matched. Both
were big men, though the door-keeper had slightly the advantage in size.
He had, however, been taken by surprise and received no opportunity to
utter more than a stifled oath before his breath was taken away. Inside
the house Foyle stood on no ceremony in order to silence his opponent
before those within could be alarmed. He had fallen on top of Jim.
Pressing down on him with head and knee, he swung his right fist twice.
Jim gave a grunt and his head rocked loosely on his neck. He had, in the
vernacular of the ring, been put to sleep.

The effects of a knockout blow, however deftly administered, do not last
long. The detective's first move was to close the street door, leaving
the bolts and chains undone, so that it was fastened merely by the
catches of the Yale locks. Then he whipped a handkerchief about the
unconscious man's mouth, and silently dragging him to a sitting posture,
handcuffed his wrists beneath his knees, so that he was trussed in the
position schoolboys adopt for cock-fighting. He surveyed his handiwork
critically, and, a new idea occurring to him, unlaced the man's boots,
and, taking them off, tied the laces round the ankles. That would
prevent the man rattling his boots on the floor when he came to, and so
have given the alarm.

The inner door had been left open by Jim, a lucky circumstance for
Foyle, as otherwise he would have been at a loss, for it was of stout