"Hello, Helena!" he greeted, nodding toward the couch. "I shook the rubber-neck bunch at Ike's, Flopper. That was a peach of a haul, eh, old pal--the boobs came to it as though they couldn't get enough." A sudden and reminiscent scowl clouded the Flopper's face. He stepped to the table, reached his hand into his shirt, and flung down a single one-dollar bill and a few coins. "Dere's de haul, Harry--help yerself"--his invitation was a snarl. Pale Face Harry had followed to the table. He looked first at the money, then at the Flopper--and a tinge of red dyed his cheek. He coughed before he spoke. "Y'ain't going to stall on _me_, Flopper, are you?" he demanded, in an ominous monotone. "Stall!"--the word came away in a roar too genuine to leave any doubt of the Flopper's sincerity, or the turbulent state of the Flopper's soul. "Stall nothin'! De driver held me up fer some of it, an' de cop pinched de rest." "And you the king of Floppers!" breathed Pale Face Harry sadly. "D'ye hear that, Helena? Come over here and listen. Go ahead, Flopper, tell us about it." Helena rose from the couch and came over to the table. "Poor Flopper!" said she sweetly. "Shut up!" snapped the Flopper savagely. "Go on," prompted Pale Face Harry. "Go on, Flopper--tell us about it." "I told you, ain't I?" growled the Flopper. "De driver called a divvy wid de cop comin', an I had ter shell--an' wot he left de cop pinched. Dat's all"--the Flopper's mouth was working again with the rage that burned within him. Pale Face Harry, with pointed forefinger, gingerly and facetiously laid the coins out in a row on the table. "And you the king of Floppers!" he murmured softly. "It's a wonder you didn't let the Salvation Army get the rest away from you on the way along!" Helena laughed--but the Flopper didn't. He stepped close to Pale Face Harry, and shoved his face within an inch of the other's. "You close yer jaw," he snarled, "or I'll make yer map look like wot's goin' ter happen ter dat cross-eyed snitch of a guy dat did me--him an' de harness bull, when I--" The Flopper stopped abruptly, and edged away from Pale Face Harry. "Hullo, Doc," he said meekly. "I didn't hear youse comin' in." A man, fair-haired, broad-shouldered, immaculate in well-tailored tweeds, reliant in poise, leaned nonchalantly against the door--inside the room. He was young, not more than twenty-eight, with clean-shaven, pleasant, open face--a handsome face, marred only to the close observer by the wrinkles beginning to pucker around his eyes, and a slight, scarcely discernible puffiness in his skin--"Doc" Madison, gentleman crook and high-class, polished con-man, who had lifted his profession to an art, was still too young to be indelibly stamped with the hall-marks of dissipation. His gray eyes travelled from one to another, lingered an instant on Helena, and came back to the Flopper. "What's the trouble?" he demanded quietly. It was Pale Face Harry who answered him.