It was quiet enough now. There were no signs of a disturbance. Micky was chagrined. He had hoped to arrive before the trouble, whatever it had been, was over; if not in the thick of it, at least before the participants had dispersed. He could then follow some of the interested parties and secure the details, for he knew his game too well to have meditated seriously the idea of making any pointed inquiries in the dive itself. That would mean an instant awakening on the part of the questioned to the fact that a newspaper man was present. If he persisted, there might ensue rough treatment and a swift and painful exodus. However, he found it as quiet as the grave. It was apt to be so at Goldberg's after a rumpus. Micky shrewdly guessed that the end of the trouble had been the signal for a general discretionary scattering. There were present only the bartender and two men who stood against the bar, their backs to him. Micky noticed with relief that Goldberg was not present. It was as well, for Micky and he had met. Micky walked slowly to the end of the big low-ceilinged room and seated himself at a small beer-splashed table. He chafed inwardly. What had happened? Had the police arrived and gone, if indeed they knew anything about it? Or, worse luck, had some man from a rival paper anticipated him? These disturbing reflections came simultaneously with O'Byrn's seating himself. As he did so, a step sounded behind him and a form sank into a chair at his left, facing his own table. Micky's heart bounded. Luck was with him after all. "How 're ye, Slade?" he sang out, with cordiality tempered with a sly wink. "I just got in from the Speedway track. Just enough left to save hitting the ties home." Micky's horsy clothes bore out the bluff. Nick Slade was no fool. He caught the situation at a glance. Micky had rendered him a service only a week before, the little Irishman's blarney rescuing him from a prospective entanglement with the talons of a policeman. Slade was a shred of a fellow, with a lean dark face and black eyes that were as impersonal as a Chinaman's, as they gazed into Micky's warning blue ones. "To the bad, eh?" he rejoined, with a dry grin in the direction of the men at the other end of the room, whom he was facing while Micky's back was toward them. "If you'd cut out layin' your own coin, and stick to business in tippin' off the guys who can afford to lose it, you'd be better off. I told you not to go up against that bum line of selling-platers." "Well, I've got enough left to have a drink on it anyway," replied Micky, with reckless prodigality, rapping on the table for the bartender. "Lap up with me. Say what." "Spivins water," answered Slade, his synonym for whisky. Micky ordered ale, for ordinarily he avoided the little red devil. When he did not, the little red devil played ducks and drakes with him and his prospects.