He was at Benton's side when Murphy, Smith and Brennan, in rapid succession came quickly up into the alley from the basement stair. Sharply Brennan ordered John to follow Murphy and Smith into the automobile while he remained with Benton, who stood poised with his finger on the trigger of the flash gun. As soon as John, with Murphy and Smith, was in the automobile, he looked back. The door opened and Cummings and Gibson stepped out. Benton's flashlight gun boomed and a brilliant white light blazed, turning night into day for a fraction of a second. The mayor raced the motor as Benton and Brennan dashed toward the automobile and sprang to the running board. John saw Gibson and Cummings, recovering from their surprise, rush after them. Cummings was tugging at something in his right hip pocket. With a roar from its exhaust, the automobile lunged forward. He heard the mayor curse as he shifted the gears fiercely, each move of his hand giving the car accelerated speed. "Duck your heads," Brennan yelled. An automatic pistol cracked out its sharp reports and a bullet tore through the top of the car and shattered the windshield glass to splinters as the automobile lurched out of the alley. * * * * * Murphy sat tilted back in a chair, his feet braced against the sill of the only window of his room. Cigarette butts were heaped in a tarnished brass souvenir ash tray on a table at his side. The Sunday newspapers, from which he had extracted the sporting sections to peruse every line, were scattered on the floor around his chair. His scraggy hair tousled on his head, a growth of black, wiry beard covering his face, coatless and collarless, he was a picture of coarse self-indulgence. Returning to his room at three o'clock in the morning after separating from the mayor, Brennan, John and Smith following their escape from "Gink" Cummings' pistol shots, he had slept until noon. He went to the cheap dairy lunch near his rooming house for a heavy breakfast of ham and eggs, purchased the Sunday papers and came back to smoke and read. The room with its disordered bed, drab walls dotted with sporting prints, dusty, rickety furnishings, threadbare carpet and grimy lace curtains, was a dreary, prison-like place. But to Murphy it was the place of his content, as much of a home as he had ever had. He had slept in alleys and deserted shacks and basements. So to him the room brought no discomfort and was as luxurious in his unimaginative mind as a suite at the Ambassador or the Alexandria. No invitation to the restful mountains or the sparkling ocean, its beaches lined with gay Sunday crowds, floated to him on the breeze that drifted in through the open window. He was enjoying a roustabout's day of rest.