Three hours of patient waiting had passed and gone. The darkness had fallen, the streets were still, save for the faint hum of life coming from districts afar, and the time for action had come at last. Cleek rose and put on his hat. "I think we may safely venture to remove our prisoner now, Mr. Narkom," he said, "and if you will slip out the back way and get Lennard to bring the limousine around to the head of that narrow alley----" "They're there already, dear chap. I stationed Lennard there when I went across to look into that business about the painted blind. It seemed the least conspicuous place for him to wait." "Excellent! Then, if you will run on ahead and have the door of it open for me and everything ready so that we may whisk him in and be off like a shot, and Mr. Trent will let one of these good chaps here run down to the man's room and fetch him a hat, I'll attend to his removal." "Here's one here, sir, that'll do at a pinch and save time," suggested one of the men, picking up a cavalryman's hat from the wreck of the ruined tableau and dusting it by slapping it against his thigh. "I don't think he'll resist much, sir; he seems to have gone clear off his biscuit and not to know enough for that; but if you'd like me and my mate to lend a hand----" "No, thanks; I shall be able to manage him myself, I fancy," said Cleek, serenely. "Get him on his feet, please. That's the business! Now then, Mr. Narkom nip off; I'm following." Mr. Narkom "nipped off" without an instant's delay, and two minutes later saw him slipping out through the rear door of the building with Cleek and the jabbering, unresisting prisoner at the bottom of the last flight of stairs not twenty yards behind. But the passage of the next half minute saw something of more moment still; for, as Narkom ran on tiptoe up the dim alley to the waiting limousine standing at its western end, and unlatching the vehicle's door, swung it open to be ready for Cleek, out of the stillness there roared suddenly the shrill note of a dog-whistle, and all in a moment there was--mischief. A crowd of quick-moving Apache figures sprang up from sheltering doors and, scudding past him, headed full tilt down the narrow alley, calling out as they ran that piercing "La, la, loi!" which is the war cry of their kind. A blind rage--all the more maddening in that it was impotent, since he had neither weapon to defend nor the power to slay--swept down upon the superintendent as he realized the import of that mad rush, and, ducking down his head, he bolted after them, into the thick of them--punching, banging, slogging, shouting, swearing--an incarnate Passion, the Epitome of Man's love for Man--a little fat Fury that was all a whirl of flying fists as it swept onward and that seemed to go absolutely insane at what he looked up the alley and saw.