The hoodlums had led the way to a cul-de-sac of buildings, and were cursing as they scattered here and there in the effort to find a way out. The form and voice of their leader, and his running stride stirred faintly the chords of memory. I tried vainly to recall where I had seen him before, and the elusive recollection multiplied my desire to capture him. In this resolve chance favored me. A stumble sent him to the ground, and before he could rise I was on top of him, and held a revolver against his head. "Damn you!" he cried, puffing hoarsely in the effort to regain his breath. "Take it quietly," I advised him, "or you’ll lose what little brains you have." "Damn you!" he repeated. "Let me up, or I’ll kill you." This time his tone and words stirred memory to definiteness. I had in my hands the fellow whose knife-thrust had been near ending my career, and whose gift of an overcoat had led me to Big Sam. and the train of events which followed upon my visit to the King of Chinatown. Here, then, was an agent of Bolton, and perhaps of Big Sam as well, leading one of the hoodlum gangs in its career of riot and arson. And I felt, as I gripped his throat, that I had within my hand the proof of Bolton’s criminal conspiracy. If this man could be got to talk, the jail would close on Peter Bolton in the hour of his triumph; and the furnace that roared and glowed below us would bring ruin to his plans as swiftly as it had consumed the property of his enemy. *CHAPTER XXX* *THE END OF THE FEUD* At last the night of alarms was over, and the forces of law and order held San Francisco firmly in their grasp. The police and the Vigilantes were fagged out but triumphant. And though the warehouses and lumber-yards in the amphitheater before the Mail docks were but a smoking mass of ashes and charcoal, the dangers of the conflagration were over. The exhausted firemen were withdrawn to fling themselves down to rest, and only a few hosemen were left to guard the smoldering ruins. The great conspiracy of the Council of Nine had come to nothing. Parks was the only leader out of jail, and, in the absence of its active heads, the revolution had deliquesced into a series of scattered and objectless riots. The Committee of Safety had proved strong enough to handle the emergency, and the militia companies, held all night in their armories without a call for their services, were dismissed with the dawn.