Teal was at the foot of the Albany steps, and Storm was well inside the Court, before either of them noticed an extraordinary thing. It was very dark, for the electric light mains had been wrecked by the land mine, and one almost had to grope one's way along, foot by foot. And then the moon came out from behind a bank of cloud and drenched everything under its eye in a flood of nebulous silver light, and Storm yelled a warning to Teal which made that slothful man spin round with the agility of an antelope. _The deep shadows cast by the three walls of the Court were alive with men!_ Teal took in the situation at a glance. In a fraction of a second he had leapt up the steps, obeying Storm's shouted command, and as he sprang he jerked his automatic from his pocket. In those days, Storm did not rely upon one gun--he carried two, and both of them were in his hands now. The promise of action had driven the last vestige of sluggishness from Arden's brain, and almost without conscious thought he had remembered the words of the Era advertisement and the orders of the Apex given over the loud-speaking telephone that night. Teal was to be killed, and he, Storm, was merely to be captured. Therefore Storm had roared to Teal to make for cover and not stop to give battle; and Teal, being a law-enforcing machine whose first instinct was obedience, had obeyed automatically before he even grasped the significance of the order. _Crack!... Crack!..._ The enemy fired the first shots, and the din double-echoed resonantly in the confined space. Storm retaliated with one gun at each of the two flashes he saw, and a yelp of pain told him that at least one of his bullets had found asylum. Teal had halted at the top of the steps, and his gun blazed back at a third flash which barked in the echo of Storm's twin reprisal. By then, the detective's intelligence had made itself heard above the commands of discipline, and Teal was not the man to run away from a fight to save his precious skin and leave another man to face the music. Teal's stance was simply asking for trouble. He stood exactly in the right place for the moonshine to pick him out as a beautifully illuminated target. Storm saw the danger and yelled another order as he raced across to join the detective. But the smell of battle and the sight of those sinister shadows closing in upon his chief had made Teal go pig-headed, and he stood his ground obstinately. In Piccadilly a police whistle screamed. Teal fired again into the murky shapes which rushed upon Storm from all directions. And then one of the shapes turned its course and shot back twice at the detective. Storm saw Teal stagger and go down. An instant later Storm himself had other things to think of.