“Cut that!” said Bill sharply, “We ain’t hearin’ any soft soap. We come here to get fair play an’ justice. He’s a sharper he is! He’s a slick robber! He promised us a big deal when we went into this here dangerous business, an’ he’s went back on his word. He let us take all the risks, an’ he hung round in the bushes. An’ then here he comes along after he gets the business goin’ fine to suit him an’ pays us a couppla hundreds apiece an’ says he’s _done_. That he’s decided to _leave off_. Now--Tyke, you there, you just might ez well understand what I’m sayin’, we ain’t takin’ no soldier boy blarney about this guy at all. He’s turned _yaller_, an’ took _all the dough_! Bought us off with a trifle, an’ skipped the country! Left us here to face the music while he skips out with a dame an’ spends his thousands. No, sir, I ain’t no fool. Drink o’ water ain’t in it. Get him a knockout. That’s what he needs, an’ we’re here to do it, d’ya hear, Tyke?” “Oh, shure, I’m with ya boys, I was only tellin’ ya, he ain’t no bloomin’ coward, an’ don’t ya reckon on that. He’ll take his medicine with a smile if we ever catch him to feed it to him, an’ don’t you ferget it.” “Well, I’m a goin’ to knock that there bloomin’ smile off his pretty face,” declared Bill. “Get me?” “Here too!” declared Tyke lustily. “But we gotta find the skirt.” “We gotta make one more try fer the boodle,” declared Bill, “an’ that we’re goin’ to do t’night. I been figgerin’ we ain’t looked carefully down at that first place we went, out near the point ya know. There’s a spot down behind some hazels--” he lowered his voice and looked around the room at the hazy groups around the tables and finished his sentence in a whisper. A door opened across the room, a face shone with a white pallor through the blue haze of smoke, and a low, sibilant voice uttered a single sentence: “Cop’s comin’.” A soft shuffle of feet on the sawdust floor, and the gray figures in the room melted like mist from a breath, as if the rushing in of the outside air had blown them all into rings of smoke and carried them away. Mysterious doors opened and closed as if they had not been, and the room was quiet and deserted, the proprietor and his assistant reading the sporting pages with their feet on a table when the cop swung along and looked in: “Business pretty poor t’night, Jake,” he said with a significant look around. “Yas, Cap’n, pretty poor. Beats all how a man’s goin’ to live ef this here prohibition keeps up. Have a glass o’ sody, Cap’n? Sorry I ain’t got nothin’ better to offer ya.” Out in the night gray figures melted into black shadows, and a low voice murmured: “Behind the hazel--” * * * * * And out at sea a revenue cutter paced the coast, and a little black boat with a silent crew and no lights, dropped down after a long wait behind the horizon and stole away, hovered back to watch, and stole away again just before the dawning. CHAPTER XIII