dips that congregated nightly there under the protection of

the powerful politician who owned the place were commencing

to assemble. Billy knew them all, and nodded to them

as they passed him. He noted surprise in the faces of several

as they saw him standing there. He wondered what it

was all about, and determined to ask the next man who

evinced even mute wonderment at his presence what was

eating him.

Then Billy saw a harness bull strolling toward him from

the east. It was Lasky. When Lasky saw Billy he too opened

his eyes in surprise, and when he came quite close to the

mucker he whispered something to him, though he kept his

eyes straight ahead as though he had not seen, Billy at all.

In deference to the whispered request Billy presently

strolled around the corner toward Walnut Street, but at the

alley back of the saloon he turned suddenly in. A hundred

yards up the alley he found Lasky in the shadow of a telephone

pole.

"Wotinell are you doin' around here?" asked the patrolman.

"Didn't you know that Sheehan had peached?"

Two nights before old man Schneider, goaded to desperation

by the repeated raids upon his cash drawer, had shown

fight when he again had been invited to elevate his hands,

and the holdup men had shot him through the heart. Sheehan

had been arrested on suspicion.

Billy had not been with Sheehan that night. As a matter

of fact he never had trained with him, for, since the boyish

battle that the two had waged, there had always been ill

feeling between them; but with Lasky's words Billy knew

what had happened.

<<BackPagesTo menuNext>>