ck upon
the floor.

But in his magnificent assurance P. Sybarite had foreseen and planned
cunningly against precisely that same contingency. No sooner had he
sent the boy staggering on his way than he whirled completely round
with a ready guard--and in no more than the very wink of exigence.

Already one of the creatures was almost on his back--the other hanging
off and singularly employed (it seemed, considering) with his hands;
just what he was up to P. Sybarite had time neither to see nor to
surmise.

Sidestepping a wild swing, he planted a left full on the nose of the
nearer assailant and knocked him backwards over a sprawling chair.
Then turning attention to the other, he was barely in time to duck an
uppercut--and out of the corners of his eyes caught the glint of
brass-knuckles on the fist that failed to land.

Infuriated, he closed in, sent a staggering left to the thug's heart
and a murderous right to his chin, so that he reeled and fell as if
shot--while P. Sybarite with a bound again caught the boy by the arm
and whirled him out through the doorway into the hall.

"Hurry!" he panted. "We've one chance in ten thousand--"

Beyond doubt they had barely that.

Hardened though they were to scenes of violence, the clients of the
dive had stilled in apprehension the moment November lifted his voice
in anger; while P. Sybarite's first overtly offensive move had struck
them all dumb in terror.

Red November was one who had shot down his man in cold blood on the
steps of the Criminal Courts Building and, through the favour of The
Organisation that breeds such pests, escaped scot-free under the
convenient fiction of "suspended sentence"; and knowing well the
nature and the power of the man, the primal concerted thought had been
to flee the place before bullets began to fly. In blind panic like
that of sheep, they rose as one in uproar and surged toward the outer
doors. November himself, struggling up from beneath the table, was
caught and swept on willy-nilly in the front rank of the stampede. In
a thought he found himself wedged tight in a press clogging the door.
Before his enraged vision P. Sybarite was winning away with the boy.

Maddened, the gang leader managed to free his right arm and send a
haphazard shot after them.

Only the instinctive recoil of those about him deflected his aim.

The report was one with a shock of shattered plate-glass: the
soft-nosed bullet, splashing upon the glazed upper ha