“Something up,” muttered Jimmie Dale to himself.  “Lansing, of headquarters, and the other looks like Milrae.”

Jimmie Dale pushed in through the door of the Pagoda.  A bedlam of noise surged out at him—­a tin-pan piano and a mandolin were going furiously from a little raised platform at the rear; in the centre of the room a dozen couples were in the throes of the tango and the bunny-hug; around the sides, at little tables, men and women laughed and applauded and thumped time on the tabletops with their beer mugs; while waiters, with beer-stained aprons and unshaven faces, juggled marvelous handfuls of glasses and mugs from the bar beside the platform to the patrons at the tables.

Jimmie Dale’s eyes swept the room in a swift, comprehensive glance, fixed on a little fellow, loudly dressed, who shared a table halfway down the room with a woman in a picture hat, and a smile of relief touched his lips.  The Runt at last!

He walked down the room, caught the Runt’s eyes significantly as he passed the table, kept on to a door between the platform and the bar, opened it, and went out into a lighted hallway, at one end of which a door opened onto the street, and at the other a stairway led above.

The Runt joined him.  “Wot’s de row, Larry?” inquired the Runt.

“Nuthin’ much,” said Jimmie Dale.  “Only I t’ought I’d let youse know.  I was passin’ Moriarty’s an’ got de tip.  Say, some guy’s croaked Jake Metzer dere.”

“Aw, ferget it!” observed the Runt airily.  “Dat’s stale.  Was wise to dat hours ago.”

Jimmie Dale’s face fell.  “But I just come from dere,” he insisted; “an’ de harness bulls only just found it out.”

“Mabbe,” grunted the Runt.  “But Metzer got his early in de afternoon—­see?”

Jimmie Dale looked quickly around him—­and then leaned toward the Runt.

“Wot’s de lay, Runt?” he whispered.

The Runt pulled down one eyelid, and, with his knowing grin, the cigarette, clinging to his upper lip, sagged down in the opposite corner of his mouth.

Jimmie Dale grinned, too—­in a flash inspiration had come to Jimmie Dale.

“Say, Runt”—­he jerked his head toward the street door—­“wot’s de fly cops doin’ out dere?”

The grin vanished from the Runt’s lips.  He stared for a second wildly at Jimmie Dale, and then clutched at Jimmie Dale’s arm.

“De wot?” he said hoarsely.

“De fly cops,” Jimmie Dale repeated in well-simulated surprise.  “Dey was dere when I come in—­Lansing an’ Milrae, an—­”

The Runt shot a hurried glance at the stairway, and licked his lips as though they had gone suddenly dry.

“My Gawd, I—­” He gasped, and shrank hastily back against the wall beside Jimmie Dale.

The door from the street had opened noiselessly, instantly.  Black forms bulked there—­then a rush of feet—­and at the head of half a dozen men, the face of Inspector Clayton loomed up before Jimmie Dale.  There was a second’s pause in the rush; and, in the pause, Clayton’s voice, in a vicious undertone: