angered to see three rank outsiders from Twelfth Street beating

Patrolman Stanley Lasky with his own baton, the while

they simultaneously strove to kick in his ribs with their

heavy boots.

Now Lasky was no friend of Billy Byrne; but the officer

had been born and raised in the district and was attached

to the Twenty-eighth Precinct Station on Lake Street near

Ashland Avenue, and so was part and parcel of the natural

possession of the gang. Billy felt that it was entirely ethical

to beat up a cop, provided you confined your efforts to

those of your own district; but for a bunch of yaps from

south of Twelfth Street to attempt to pull off any such

coarse work in his bailiwick--why it was unthinkable.

A hero and rescuer of lesser experience than Billy Byrne

would have rushed melodramatically into the midst of the

fray, and in all probability have had his face pushed completely

through the back of his head, for the guys from

Twelfth Street were not of the rah-rah-boy type of hoodlum

--they were bad men, with an upper case B. So Billy crept

stealthily along in the shadows until he was quite close to

them, and behind them. On the way he had gathered up a

cute little granite paving block, than which there is nothing

in the world harder, not even a Twelfth Street skull. He was

quite close now to one of the men--he who was wielding

the officer's club to such excellent disadvantage to the officer

--and then he raised the paving block only to lower it

silently and suddenly upon the back of that unsuspecting head

--"and then there were two."

Before the man's companions realized what had happened

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