"What's doing?" asked a voice. "Nothing now," said the disgusted voice of the Kid from the shadows. "They've beaten it." The circle of lamplight became as if by mutual consent a general rendezvous. Three gray-clad policemen, tough, clean-shaven men with keen eyes and square jaws, stood there, revolvers in one hand, night sticks in the other. Smith, hatless and muddy, joined them. John and the Kid, the latter bleeding freely from his left ear, the lobe of which had been chipped by a bullet, were the last to arrive. "What's been the rough-house?" inquired one of the policemen, mildly interested. "Do you know a sport of the name of Repetto?" enquired Smith. "Jack Repetto? Sure." "He belongs to the Three Points," said another intelligent officer, as one naming some fashionable club. "When next you see him," said Smith, "I should be obliged if you would use your authority to make him buy me a new hat. I could do with another pair of trousers, too, but I will not press the trousers. A new hat is, however, essential. Mine has a six-inch hole in it." "Shot at you, did they?" said one of the policemen, as who should say, "Tut, tut!" "Shot at us!" burst out the ruffled Kid. "What do you think's been happening? Think an aeroplane ran into my ear and took half of it off? Think the noise was somebody opening bottles of pop? Think those guys that sneaked off down the road was just training for a Marathon?" "Comrade Brady," said Smith, "touches the spot. He--" "Say, are you Kid Brady?" enquired one of the officers. For the first time the constabulary had begun to display real animation. "Reckoned I'd seen you somewhere!" said another. "You licked Cyclone Dick all right, Kid, I hear." "And who but a bone-head thought he wouldn't?" demanded the third warmly. "He could whip a dozen Cyclone Dicks in the same evening with his eyes shut." "He's the next champeen," admitted the first speaker. "If he juts it over Jimmy Garvin," argued the second. "Jimmy Garvin!" cried the third. "He can whip twenty Jimmy Garvins with his feet tied. I tell you--" "I am loath," observed Smith, "to interrupt this very impressive brain barbecue, but, trivial as it may seem to you, to me there is a certain interest in this other little matter of my ruined hat. I know that it may strike you as hypersensitive of us to protest against being riddled with bullets, but--" "Well, what's been doin'?" inquired the Force. It was a nuisance, this perpetual harping on trifles when the deep question of the light-weight championship of the world was under discussion, but the sooner it was attended to, the sooner it would be over. John undertook to explain. "The Three Points laid for us," he said. "This man, Jack Repetto, was bossing the crowd. The Kid put one over on to Jack Repetto's chin, and we were asking him a few questions when the rest came back, and started shooting. Then we got to cover quick, and you came up and they beat it."