But I remembered, as I saw the three men staring at me, that I still had a rôle to sustain. I knew it would be unwise to let those sweet worthies know just how the land lay. I enjoyed an advantage much too exceptional and much too valuable to be lightly surrendered. So to all outward signs and appearances I let the drug do its work. I carefully acted out my pretended lapse into somnolent indifference. I lost the power to coordinate; my speech grew inarticulate; my shoulders drooped forward across the table edge. I wilted down like a cut dock-weed, until my face lay flat against the beer-stained wood. "He's off," murmured the man called Chuck. He rose to his feet as he spoke. "Then we got to beat it," declared the youth named Tony, already on his feet. I could hear him take a deep breath as he stood there. "And the next long nose who gives me heart disease like this is goin' to get five inches o' cold steel!" He knelt before me as he spoke, pulled back my feet, and ran a knife edge along the shoe laces. Then he promptly pulled the shoes from my feet. These shoes, apparently, he kept in his hand. "That'll help anchor 'im, I guess," I heard him remark. "Let's get on the job," suggested the big man, obviously impatient at the delay. "If there's nothin' but five inches o' plank between us and that gold, let's get busy!" I sat there, with my head on that table top so redolent of the soured beverages of other days, and listened to them as they moved across the room. I listened as they passed out and swung the door shut behind them. I waited there for another minute or two, without moving, knowing only too well what a second discovery would entail. My head was still bent over that unclean table top when I heard the broken-latched door once more pushed slowly open, and steps slowly cross the floor to where I sat. Some one, I knew, was staring down at me. I felt four distended finger-tips push inquisitively at my head, rolling it a little to one side. Then the figure bending above me shifted its position. A hand felt cautiously about my body. It strayed lower, until it reached my watch pocket. I could see nothing of my enemy's face, and nothing of his figure. All I got a glimpse of was a patch of extremely soiled linen. But that glimpse was sufficient. It was my friend, the wall-eyed waiter, resolutely deciding to make hay while the sun shone. And that decided me. With one movement I rose from the chair and wheeled about so as to face him. That quick body-twist spun his own figure half-way around. My fist caught him on the foreward side of the relaxed jawbone. He struck the worn leather couch as he fell, and then rolled completely over, as inert as a sack of bran. I looked down at him for a moment or two as he lay face upward on the floor. Then I dropped on one knee beside him, unlaced his well-worn and square-toed shoes, and calmly but quietly adjusted them to my own feet.