“Say, I don't want to leave th' push settin' here, to go chasin' off wit' a bull. Fix it so I can come uptown sometime.” “Very well,” returned my friend, relenting; “I don't want to put you in Dutch with your fleet.” There was a whispered brief word or two, and an arrangement for a meet was made; after which Ike the Blood lapsed into the uneasy circle he had quitted. As we left the grogshop, we could hear him loudly calling for beer. Possibly the Central Office nearness of my friend had rendered him thirsty. Or it may have been that the beer was meant to wet down and allay whatever of sprouting suspicion had been engendered in the trustless breasts of his followers. It was a week later. The day, dark and showery, was--to be exact--the eighth of August. Faithful to that whispered Henry Street arrangement, Ike the Blood sat awaiting the coming of my friend and myself in the Bal Tabarin. He had spoken of the stuss house of Phil Casey and Paper Box Johnny, in Twenty-ninth Street, but my friend entered a protest. There was his Central Office character to be remembered. A natural embarrassment must ensue were he brought face to face with stuss in a state of activity. Stuss was a crime, by surest word of law, and he had taken an oath of office. He did not care to pinch either Paper Box or Casey, and therefore preferred not to be drawn into a situation where the only alternative would be to either pull their joint or lay the bedplates of complaint against himself. “It's no good time to be up on charges,” remonstrated my friend, “for the commish that's over us now would sooner grab a copper than a crook.” Thus instructed, and feeling the delicacy of my friend's position, Ike the Blood had shifted suggestion to the Bal Tabarin. The latter house of entertainment, in Twenty-eighth Street, was innocent of stuss and indeed cards in any form. Kept by Sam Paul, it possessed a deserved popularity with Ike and the more select of his acquaintances. Ike the Blood appeared to better advantage in the Bal Tabarin than on that other, Henry Street, grogshop occasion. Those suspicious ones, of lowering eye and doubtful brow, had been left behind, and their absence contributed to his relief, and therefore to his looks. Not that he had been sitting in the midst of loneliness at the Bal Tabarin; Whitey Dutch and Slimmy were with him, and who should have been better company than they? Also, their presence was of itself an honor, since they were of his own high caste, and many layers above a mere gang peasantry. They would take part in the conversation, too, and, if to talk and touch glasses with a Central Office bull were an offense, it would leave them as deep in the police mud as was he in the police mire.