The policeman still leading the way, three of them went down a rickety stair, not much better than a ladder, and found themselves in a sort of storehouse.

“They don’t keep things to eat here!” exclaimed Hamilton, scarcely able to breathe the foul air and the exhalations from decaying food-stuffs.

“Sure,” the reporter answered.  “Cheerful, isn’t it?”

Hamilton gave a little shiver of repugnance, but taking out his schedule, asked the underground store-keeper all the personal questions on it.  Then, realizing that he would be able to know about his customers, the lad quickly made enough inquiries to assure him that there was no fault to find with the work, and started for the upper air.  Just as they passed out of the stairway, the policeman, who was the last, still being on the steps, Hamilton heard a shot, and a bullet came whizzing by his head.  It was answered by a fusillade of shots.

The boy’s first instinct was to duck back under the cover of the staircase from which he had just come out, but the policeman, as he left it, roughly gave him a push, as much as to say, “Keep out of there,” and started on a dead run for the group where the firing was going on.

“That’s the Hip Sings,” the reporter said, pulling Hamilton into the shadow of a doorway, “the Ong Leongs have been waiting for them, ever since that affair in the theater.”

“What was that?” asked Hamilton, although more interested in the immediate excitement than the story.

“Time of the Chinese New Year,” the reporter answered in short, crisp sentences.  “There was a gala performance in the theater with suppers and banquets before and after.  Everybody brought fire-crackers to the theater, and at a certain time all the fire-crackers were set off.  When the noise stopped eighteen men were found shot dead, all members of the Ong Leong Tong.  The Hip Sing men were blamed for it, but none ever caught.”

“What’s up now?” cried Hamilton, in alarm.

As he spoke two men dashed out of a building near by, and fired at the group beyond.  The others turned and made a rush.  The two newcomers cut across the street, thus for a moment diverting the line of fire which had been perilously close to where the two boys were standing.

“This is too hot for me,” said the reporter, “we’d better get out of here as fast as we know how.  We’ll go to the end of this street and turn to the right.  Are you ready?  Come along.”

Out from the doorway like a couple of frightened hares the two lads bolted, pursued by a few shots which, they flew so far over their heads, Hamilton surmised were intended as a warning to keep out of the way rather than as attempts to shoot them.  In the few seconds that had elapsed it seemed that the streets had become full of running policemen, and Hamilton looked back.

As he did so, he saw one of the men in the nearest group stagger sideways and stand for an instant alone in the center of the street.  There was the sharp bark of a sawed-off revolver, and the wounded man just reached the shelter of a doorway as the bullet sang over the spot on which he had stood a second before.