I dodged and groped back to the wall where I felt the light-switch to be. I had my fingers actually on the switch when an arm like the arm of a derrick itself swung about through the darkness, and at one stroke knocked the breath out of my body and flattened me against the wall.

Before I could recover my breath, a second movement spun me half around and lifted me clear off my feet. By this time the great arm was close about me, pinning my hands down to my side.

Before I could cry out or make an effort to escape, the great hulk holding me had shifted his grip, bringing me about directly in front of him and holding me there with such a powerful grasp that it made breathing a thing of torture. And as he held me there, he reached out and turned on the light with his own hand. I knew, even before I actually saw him, that it was the third man.

I also knew, even before that light came on, what his purpose was. He was holding me there as a shield in front of him. This much I realized even before I saw the revolver with which he was menacing the enemy in front of him. What held my blinking and bewildered eyes was the fact that Creegan himself, on the far side of the room, was holding the struggling and twisting body of the man called Redney in precisely the same position.

But what disheartened me was the discovery that Creegan held nothing but a night-stick in his left hand. All the strength of his right hand, I could see, was needed to hold his man. And his revolver was still in his pocket.

I had the presence of mind to remember my own revolver. And my predicament made me desperate. That gang had sown their dragon teeth, I decided, and now they could reap their harvest.

I made a pretense of struggling away from my captor's clutch, but all the while I was working one elbow back, farther and farther back, so that a hand could be thrust into my coat pocket. I reached the pocket without being noticed. My fingers closed about the b.u.t.t of the revolver. And still my purpose had not been discovered.

As I lifted that firearm from my pocket I was no longer a reasoning human being. At the same time I felt this red flash of rage through my body, I also felt the clutch about my waist relax. The big man behind me was e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. a single word. It was "_Creegan!_"

Why that one shout should have the debilitating effect on Creegan which it did, I had no means of knowing. But I saw the sweat-stained and blood-marked face of my colleague suddenly change. His eyes stared stupidly, his jaw fell, and he stood there, panting and open-mouthed, as though the last drop of courage had been driven out of his body.

I felt that he was giving up, that he was surrendering, even before I saw him let the man he had been holding fall away from him. But I remembered the revolver in my hand and the ignominies I had suffered.

And again I felt that wave of something stronger than my own will, and I knew that my moment had come.

I had the revolver at half-arm, with its muzzle in against the body crushing mine, when Creegan's voice, sharp and short as a bark, arrested that impending finger-twitch.

"Stop!" he cried, and the horror of his voice puzzled me.

"Why?" I demanded in a new and terrible calm. But I did not lower my revolver.

"Stop that!" he shouted, and his newer note, more of anger than fear, bewildered me a bit.

"Why?"

But Creegan, as he caught at the coat collar of the man called Redney, did not answer my repeated question. Instead, he stared at the man beside me.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" he finally murmured.

"What t' h.e.l.l are _you_ doin' here?" cut in the big man as he pushed my revolver-end away and dropped his own gun into his pocket. "I've been trailin' these guys for five weeks--and I want to know why you're queerin' my job!"

Creegan, who had been feeling his front teeth between an investigatory thumb and forefinger, blinked up at the big man. Then he turned angrily on me.

"Put down that gun!" he howled. He took a deep breath. Then he laughed, mirthlessly, disgustedly. "You can't shoot _him_!"

"Why can't I?"

"He's a stool pigeon! A singed cat!"

"And what's a stool pigeon?" I demanded. "And what's a singed cat?"

Creegan laughed for the second time as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"He's a Headquarters gink who stays on the fence, and tries to hunt with the hounds the same time he's runnin' with the hares--and gener'ly goes round queerin' an honest officer's work. And I guess he's queered ours. So about the only thing for us to do, 's far as I can see, is for us to crawl off home and go to bed!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE DUMMY-CHUCKER

It was unquestionably a momentous night, that night I discharged Latreille. I had felt the thing coming, for weeks. But I had apparently been afraid to face it. I had temporized and dallied along, dreading the ordeal. Twice I had even bowed to tacit blackmail, suavely disguised as mere advances of salary. Almost daily, too, I had been subjected to vague insolences which were all the more humiliating because they remained inarticulate and incontestable. And I realized that the thing had to come to an end.

I saw that end when Benson reported to me that Latreille had none too quietly entertained a friend of his in my study, during my absence. I could have forgiven the loss of the cigars, and the disappearance of the _cognac_, but the foot-marks on my treasured old San Domingoan mahogany console-table and the overturning of my Ch'ien-lung lapis bottle were things which could not be overlooked.

I saw red, at that, and promptly and unquaveringly sent for Latreille.

And I think I rather surprised that cool-eyed scoundrel, for I had grown to know life a little better, of late. I had learned to stand less timorous before its darker sides and its rougher seams. I could show that designing chauffeur I was no longer in his power by showing that I was no longer afraid of him. And this latter I sought to demonstrate by promptly and calmly and unequivocally announcing that he was from that day and that hour discharged from my service.

"You can't do it!" he said, staring at me with surprised yet none the less insolent eyes.

"I have done it," I explained. "You're discharged, now. And the sooner you get out the better it will suit me."

"And you're ready to take that risk?" he demanded, studying me from under his lowered brows.

"Any risks I care to a.s.sume in this existence of mine," I coolly informed him, "are matters which concern me alone. Turn your keys and service-clothes and things in to Benson. And if there's one item missing, you'll pay for it."

"How?" he demanded, with a sneer.

"By being put where you belong," I told him.

"And where's that?"

"Behind bars."

He laughed at this. But he stopped short as he saw me go out to the door and fling it open. Then he turned and faced me.

"I'll make things interesting for you!" he announced, slowly and pregnantly, and with an ugly forward-thrust of his ugly pointed chin.

It was my turn to laugh.

"You _have_ made them interesting," I acknowledged. "But now they are getting monotonous."

"They won't stay that way," he averred.

I met his eye, without a wince. I could feel my fighting blood getting hotter and hotter.

"You understand English, don't you?" I told him. "You heard me say get out, didn't you?"

He stared at me, with that black scowl of his, for a full half minute.

Then he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.

I wasn't sorry to see him go, but I knew, as he went, that he was carrying away with him something precious. He was carrying away with him my peace of mind for that whole blessed night.

Sleep, I knew, was out of the question. It would be foolish even to attempt to court it. I felt the familiar neurasthenic call for open s.p.a.ces, the necessity for physical freedom and fresh air. And it was that, I suppose, which took me wandering off toward the water-front, where I sat on a string-piece smoking my seventh cigarette and thinking of Creegan and his singed cat as I watched the light-spangled Hudson.