"Why, Nella says--" P. Sybarite began deliberately; and paused to cough politely behind his hand; and leaned confidentially over the table.

At this juncture the boy pushed back his chair and rose.

"Pardon me, m' dear," he said thickly to the woman; "'m goin' home."

"Ah, sit down," November interrupted quickly, pitching his protean accents to a key of cajolery--"sit down and have another. What's your hurry?"

His eyes caught the woman's.

"That's right, dearie," she chimed in hurriedly, laying a soft detaining hand on the boy's forearm. "Be a good fellow. Stake me to just one more pint--"

"No," the boy insisted, shaking free--"I'm going home. Le' me alone."

"Nella," P. Sybarite interpolated in an imperative tone, momentarily distracting November's attention--"Nella says to tell you she wants you--now--immediately. Do you get that?"

"d.a.m.n Nella!" snapped the gang leader. "Tell her to go to the devil.

And you"--he menaced P. Sybarite with a formidable look--"you slide outa here--in a hurry! See?"

With this, rising in his place, he put forth a hand to detain the boy, who was sullenly pushing past the woman.

"Wait!" he insisted. "You can't go before you pay up--"

Whipping from his pocket a note (of what denomination he never knew--but it was large) P. Sybarite slapped it down upon the table.

"That'll pay whatever he owes," he announced, and to the boy: "Clear out--quick--do you hear!--while you've got a chance--"

"What t'ell business is it of yours?" November demanded, turning upon him furiously.

With an enigmatic smile, P. Sybarite dexterously tipped up his side of the table and, overturning it, caught the gangster unprepared for any such manoeuvre and pinned him squirming in the angle of wall and floor.

Immediately the woman came to her feet shrieking; while the little man seized the befuddled boy and swung him toward the door actually before he realised what was happening.

Simultaneously, November's henchmen at the adjoining table leapt into the brawl with an alacrity that sent their chairs clattering back upon the floor.

But in his magnificent a.s.surance 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 a.s.sailant 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 bra.s.s-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 w.i.l.l.y-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-gla.s.s: the soft-nosed bullet, splashing upon the glazed upper half of the door, caused the entire pane to collapse and disappear with the quickness of magic.

Halting, P. Sybarite wheeled and dropped a hand to the pocket wherein rested Mrs. Inche's automatic.

"Get that door open!" he cried to the boy. "I've got a taxi waiting--"

His words were drowned out by the thunderous detonations set up by a second shot in that constricted s.p.a.ce.

With a thick sob, the boy reeled and swung against the wall as sharply as though he had been struck with a sledge-hammer.

Whimpering with rage, P. Sybarite tugged at the weapon; but it stuck fast, caught the lining of his coat-pocket.

Most happily before he could get it in evidence, the door was thrust sharply in, and through it with a rush materialised that most rare of metropolitan phenomena--the policeman on the spot.

Young and ardent, with courage as unique as his ubiquity, he bl.u.s.tered in like a whirlwind, brushing P. Sybarite to one side, the wounded boy to the other, and pausing only a single instant to throw back the skirts of his tunic and grasp the b.u.t.t of the revolver in his hip-pocket, demanded in the voice of an Irish stentor:

"_What's-all-this? What's-all-this-now?_"

"Robbery!" P. Sybarite replied, mastering with difficulty a giggle of hysterical relief. "Robbery and attempted murder! Arrest that man--Red November--with the gun in his hand."

With an inarticulate roar, the patrolman swung on toward the gangster--and P. Sybarite plucked the boy by the sleeve and drew him quickly to the sidewalk.

By the never-to-be-forgotten grace of _Kismet_ his taxicab was precisely where he had left it, the chauffeur on the seat.

"Quick!" he ordered the reeling boy--"into that cab unless you want to be treated by a Bellevue sawbones--held as a witness besides. Are you badly hurt?"

"Not badly," gasped the boy--"shot through the shoulder--can wait for treatment--must keep out of the papers--"

"Right!" P. Sybarite jerked open the door, and his charge stumbled into the cab. "Drive anywhere--like sin," he told the chauffeur--"tell you where to stop when we get clear of this mess--"

Privately he blessed that man; for the cab was in motion almost before he could swing clear of the sidewalk. He tumbled in upon the floor, and picked himself up in time to close the door only when they were swinging on two wheels round the corner of Seventh Avenue.

XV

SUCH STUFF AS PLOTS ARE MADE OF

"How is it?" P. Sybarite asked solicitously.