No ringside rules here. One of the men was fat. Like a battering-ram, Johnny aimed his head square at that one's stomach. The man went over with a groan. But not Johnny. Regaining his balance in a flash, he swung his good right arm to bring his heavy package squarely down upon a second man's head. The package flew from his hand. In a fair fight with one man, or even two, Johnny needed only two well-formed fists. As the third man sprang at him, he squared away to give him an uppercut under the chin that closed his jaws with the snap of a steel trap and put him out for a count of twice ten. But at that instant something crashed down upon Johnny's skull. The fourth member of the gang, he who had hovered in the shadows, had gone into action. Ten minutes later when a detective threw the beam of his flashlight down that alley it fell upon a lone figure huddled against the wall. He was about to pass on, thinking it was some poor wanderer fast asleep, when something about the person's clothes caused him to look again. Two long strides and he was beside the prostrate form. "Johnny Thompson, as I live!" he muttered after bending over for a look. "And somebody's got him! I wonder if it's for keeps?" CHAPTER IV BACK IN THE OLD SHACK Johnny was not out for good. But his return to consciousness was gradual. He began to hear things dimly as in a dream. There was a certain melody and harmony about the sounds, like a pipe organ played softly at night. This was shot through at times by a loud pop-pop-crack. Had memory returned, the boy might have thought they were fighting it out over his prostrate form, those men and the police. Memory did not return. A drowsy feeling of painless well-being swallowed him up. He did not struggle against it, did not so much as wish to struggle. For all that, his eyes began seeing things--one more step on the way to full consciousness. Like someone seen dimly in the clouds, as they do it in the movies, a vaguely familiar face appeared above him. A narrow, rather dark, tense face it was, with large eyes that seemed to burn with a strange fire. "Joy--Joyce Mills," his lips whispered. "Yes, Johnny. We're glad you're back." "Back?" He pondered that last word. "Back to what?" He began to feel things--a third step in his return to the realm of reality. The cold fog was gone, he knew that. The darkness too was gone. A subdued light was all about him. "Back," he thought once more, "back to what?" Then, as if reading this thought, the girl said, "You are back in the shack on Grand Avenue. Don't you remember?" At that all his memories came flooding in. The shack, Drew Lane and Tom Howe, keen young detectives, his staunch friends; Newton Mills, the one-time derelict and veteran detective, and Joyce Mills, his vivacious, ambitious daughter who at times had proven herself the keenest detective of them all.