It was not until then that he noticed the stranger beside him, looking at him pointedly. This stranger was corpulent, and friendly enough of face, but for the blocked squareness of the flaccid jaw and the indefinite pale green glint of the deep-set, predatory eyes that shifted from side to side under the fringe of grayish eyebrow, as though the great neck were too vast a thing to be lightly troubled. He was floridly dressed, the younger man noticed, with a heavy, chased-gold band on one fat finger, and a claw-mounted diamond in the stud on his shirt-front. There was, too, something beefily animal-like in the confident, massive neck that refused readily to move, and in the square upthrust of the great shoulder. The discharged prisoner returned the other’s half-quizzical gaze of inspection. He did so with a look that was unmistakably belligerent. For, although they stood side by side, they were of two worlds, and the prisoner was no longer a prisoner. The stranger, unabashed, merely smiled, and leaned amiably against the stool-lined counter. “What’ll you have, Durkin?” he asked, easily. The other man still glared at him, in silence. Thereupon the stranger with the diamond stud thrust his hands deep down in his pockets, and rocking on his heels, laughed confidently. “Climb down, my boy, climb down!” Durkin buttoned up his coat: the gesture was as significant as the slamming of a door. “Oh, smoke up, and have something with me!” “Who _are_ you, anyway?” demanded Durkin, wheeling on him, jealous of his momentary isolation. “Me?—Oh, I was just keepin’ an eye on you, over yonder!” The stout man jerked a thumb vaguely toward Jefferson Market, then turned to the attendant. “Slip us a nip o’ that London Dry o’ yours, Terry, with a plate o’ hot beans and sandwiches. Yes, I was kind o’ lookin’ on, over there. You’re up against it, aren’t you?” “What do you mean by that?” asked the other, hungrily watching a leg of boiled ham, from which the attendant was shaving dolefully thin slices. “Here, brace up on a swig o’ Terry’s watered bootleg; then we can talk easier. Hold on, though—it won’t cost us any more to get comfortable, I guess!” He ordered the luncheon over to a little round table in a corner of the room. Durkin could already feel the illicit London Dry singing through his veins; he was asking himself, wolfishly, if he could not snatch that proffered meal before taking to flight. “Now, this isn’t monkey-work with me, it’s business,” announced the newcomer. “Indeed?” said Durkin, hesitating, and then taking up a fork. “Now, first thing, I want to tell you something. That song and dance you threw up to the Old Boy over on the bench, about your bein’ an electric inventor in hard luck, caught my eye, first thing. Look here,—straight off the bat, d’ you want to get a cinch on a good job?” “I do!” declared Durkin, through a mouthful of beans. “But doing what?” “Same old thing!” answered the other, offhandedly.