It was four o’clock then; at nine Lanagan ceased writing. He had made in longhand 6,000 words of as clean-cut, brilliant a narrative story of its kind as, under similar pressure, has ever appeared in print. As in all of Lanagan’s stories, it was “the police” who had learned this and that. Lanagan has made several detective sergeants in his time. “Leslie will meet us here at one o’clock. We must keep the smash until two, fire the story at Sampson by telephone to lead off my stuff with; hold them in the room until three, and we beat the town again.” He hurried out to return in half an hour. He had telephoned to Sampson that the story would break about two o’clock and to hold the paper until he had heard from us; then he had sent his copy down by messenger boy and loaded up on a bundle of the choicest of the rank brand of Manilas he chose at times to affect. I noticed as he lit a match that his hands shook. I wanted him to lie down until one, but his only answer was to fix me with those eyes of his, glowing like a cat’s in the darkness (we were smoking with the lighted ends of our cigars held inside our hats, so careful was Lanagan lest any trace be given to the opposite room), and he laughed that curious laugh of his. “When this is over, Norrie,” he said, “I’ll sleep for a week. Half that $5,000 is mine; you and Leslie and the others can divide the rest.” Really, I saw Lanagan in my mind’s eye already snooping and prying around those Paris byways; it sounded too assured as he said it. I wondered whether I cared for blood money; figured that I would accept it, and began pleasantly in the gloom to spend my “bit” with much contentment. I concluded I would accompany Lanagan on that Paris trip. One o’clock came, and with it Leslie, Brady, Wilson, and Maloney. Brady was put at the aperture. A faint light in the opposite room brought the two figures out into bold relief. The rest of us moved to the outer room, where the plain-clothes men slipped their revolvers to their side coat pockets. I wished lonesomely that I had brought two and that I might feel braver, although I had as much chance of shooting a revolver with my left hand without disaster as of sailing an aeroplane with either. At that I believe I would have felt more in the picture with two. The plan was to pull a fire alarm, and as soon as the engines clattered into the street, scatter to the top story, rap on the door as if to warn the occupants, take them off their guard when the door was opened, and the thing was done. That programme was carried out. When the apparatus swung up from O’Farrell, filling the still night air with those strident bells of terror and alarm, we sped to the top floor and made the corridor. “_Fire! Fire!_”