“I am giving this story to Ransom and Dickson to handle to-day.” I could see that he had it all figured out in his cold-blooded way; that nothing else was to be expected of me than to be scooped, and that any remarks would be superfluous. But it ground me. “What I want you to do,” he continued nastily, “is to find Lanagan. Possibly you can succeed in that at least. I wouldn’t be sorry at that if some more of you fellows drank the brand of liquor Lanagan drinks once in a while. I might get a story out of the bunch of you occasionally. Instead, the _Times_ and the _Herald_ give it to us on the features of this story three days running--_three days_. It’s the worst beating I’ve had in a year. You find Lanagan and tell him I want him to jump into the story independent of Ransom and Dickson. I would like to get the tail feathers out of this thing, anyhow.” Ransom and Dickson had no relish for the story, three days old. “Might as well try to galvanise a corpse,” grumbled Ransom. I turned over to them what matters I had that might bear watching, and was about to leave the office when the ’phone rang for me. Very fortunately, it was Lanagan; and I couldn’t forbear a sort of gulp, because I felt instinctively that he had wakened up somewhere out of his ten days’ lapse, with the knowledge that I was handling the Monteagle story and was getting badly beaten on it. I was right in that, too. “Thought I would catch you before you left,” he said. His voice was throaty, and I judged that he had been seeing some hard days and nights. “Suppose that pickled jellyfish of a Sampson has been lacing you? You should be laced. Met Brady a few minutes ago and he said you were handling--or mishandling--the story. You ought to get a month’s lay-off for letting that crowd of two-by-four dubs, on the _Times_ at least, get the best of you. Come on down. I want to talk things over.” He was at Billy Connors’ “Buckets of Blood,” that famed barroom rendezvous by the Hall of Justice, where the thieves’ clans were wont to forgather. There was nothing of particular coincidence in his ringing me up just when he did; it was shortly after 1 o’clock, the hour when the local staff reported on, and he would be sure of finding me in. He sat at the rear alcove table with “King” Monahan. “You know my friend the King, of course?” was his greeting. Monahan, one-time designated King of the Pick-pockets, after serving two terms, had retired from the active practice of that profession to establish himself, it was generally believed, not only as a “fence,” handling exclusively the precious stones, but also as a sort of local organiser, to whom any outside gang must report on or before beginning operations in San Francisco. There is system in crime these days as in all things else. “Kind of stuck it in and broke it off, didn’t they?” he continued. “I’ve stood one panning from Sampson; I don’t want another from you,” I retorted savagely.