Greg made the best time he could, for he was wildly eager to get back to the Stickney Arms, but he had to humor the old flivver now. She was like a broken-winded horse. Stuyvesant Square, as everybody knows, is one of the last haunts of old-fashioned respectability away down town. It was a good four mile drive, and Greg chafed bitterly at the time he was losing. A broad and well-lighted street with a trolley line bisects the Square, but around the sides it is dim, respectable and lonely. Greg privately determined that nothing should induce him to leave his cab. Greg looked in vain for Number 92. Having made a complete circuit of the Square he was satisfied there was no such number. He stopped and notified his fares. "Do you know the house you want to go to?" he asked them. Abanez replied: "Yes, it's on the east side. Drive slowly up that side and I'll point it out to you." Near the top of this side of the Square he called Greg's attention to a tall narrow house with a brownstone front, and Greg drew up before it. No lights showed in any of the windows; to Greg it looked like an unoccupied house. His fares did not immediately get out, and Greg looked around to see what they were waiting for. The window behind him was still open. "Wait a minute," said Abanez, "we have not quite finished our talk." At the moment the significance of this maneuver did not occur to Greg. Afterwards he remembered that a man was passing on the sidewalk. They waited until he turned the corner. Without warning two hands from behind closed around Greg's throat, cutting off the slightest outcry. As his mouth, gasping for breath, instinctively opened, two other hands forced a cotton gag between his teeth and knotted it behind his head. Greg, struggling desperately but in vain, was dragged bodily back through the window to the floor of the cab. There pinning his body in an excruciating attitude between the two doors, both knelt on him, effectually stilling his struggles. Their flying light fingers patted him all over and slipped in and out of his pockets, less like human fingers than evil little animals sniffing for prey. Greg's money they did not disturb; they were after a bigger prize. Besides what little money he carried, there was nothing upon him but his license cards. They desisted. Abanez spoke to the other man who, careless of what part of Greg's anatomy his feet rested on, stood up and leaning through the front window thoroughly searched around and under the front seat. Unrewarded here, he dropped back on Greg. The two men then held a short colloquy in Spanish, but there was one English word terribly significant: "black-jack."