Lanagan paused before a corner door. He and Wilson braced against it. My bulk backed Wilson. Brady towered above us, standing free to have a clear sweep with both guns. He turned the light on full, taking every chance of making targets of us all for the one chance of getting a drop on Slim without bloodshed. From an adjacent room a clock ticked loudly; somebody rolled over in bed, and the sounds came so clearly that it seemed my heart must have beat as loudly as a trip hammer. Yet it was not exactly fear, as I recall it; it was a sort of nervous tension to have it over with if it had to come. “Slim! Slim!” It was a soft, sibilant whisper, and I could scarcely believe my ears. It was Lanagan at the keyhole. Then he rapped four times in quick, soft staccato, and then four times more. It was some code he had learned, possibly from Monahan. There was a prolonged pause, and the sound of someone from within turning in bed, and another long pause. The strain on me was terrific. From the corner of my eye I caught the black muzzle of Brady’s left-hand gun. It was as steady as though held in a vise, and I had time to marvel. “Slim! Slim! They’re after me! It’s Larry Bowman’s pal, Shorty!” Another nerve-racking pause, and then at the very keyhole came through a soft, throaty whisper: “Who?” “Shorty Davis. Larry said you’d take me in. Quick, Slim, they’re after me!” A key grated, the knob turned. “Now!” hissed Lanagan, and with one mighty lurch we burst pell-mell into the room. I caught a flashing look at a slender, flannel-shirted figure with a week’s growth of beard as Slim whirled a foot ahead of us and with one leap cleared the room and swung with a murderous long-barrelled Colt in his hand. His leap was quicker than the spring of a cat. He shot from the hip, but Brady, posted to do just the trick he did, spoiled the shot. Slim’s bullet ripped a two-inch hole through the floor as he crumpled down in a heap. We stretched him upon the bed. He had got it in the lungs. Wilson started for the doctor. “Remember,” said Lanagan, “the chief’s orders. You are not to talk. If it gets out, tell all reporters it’s a detinue case. I’ll answer for the rest.” A few gnomelike, corpselike, yellow faces peered from doors, but a flash from Brady’s star sent them scurrying back. The shot was apparently not heard in the street, for no one came. Lanagan turned to Slim, who was choking. “You know what you were wanted for, Slim?” he asked in as cool a voice as a surgeon might ask for your pulse. “That Oakland job, I suppose,” he gasped. “Well, boys, you did me a good turn croaking me. I never wanted to go back to that hell hole again. I did what I came out to do, what I’ve waited twenty-five years to do, and I’m ready to take my judgment. He sent me up there twenty-five years ago, and he murdered my father as surely as there is a God, who will some day dope it all out right according to a different scheme than they do here.”