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Still they went straight toward him. Before they spoke a word–almost before they were well inside the street door–he must have recognised them as Headquarters men. Being what he was, he instantly would have appraised them for what they were had the meeting taken place in the dead vast and middle of Sahara’s sandy wastes. Even the seasoned urbanite who is law-abiding and who has no cause to fear the thief-taker can pick out a detective halfway up the block.

Besides, in the same instant that they descended from the street level, the barkeeper with his tongue had made a small clucking sound, thrice repeated, and with all four fingers of his right hand had gripped the left lapel of his unbuttoned waistcoat. Thereat there had been a general raising of heads all over the place. Since the days of Jonathan Wild and even before that–since the days when the Romany Rye came out of the East into England–the signal of the collar has been the sign of the collar, which means the cop.

The man they sought eyed them contemptuously from under the down-tilted visor of his cap as they approached him. His arms were folded upon the table top and for the moment he kept them so.

“Evening,” said Casane civilly, pausing alongside him. “Call yourself Gorman, don’t you?”

“I’ve been known to answer to that name,” he answered back in the curious flat tone that is affected by some of his sort and is natural with the rest of them. “Wot of it?”

“There’s somebody wants to have a talk with you up at the front office–that’s all,” said Casane.

“It’s a pinch, then, huh?” The gangster put his open hands against the edge of the table as though for a rearward spring.

“I’m tellin’ you all we know ourselves?” countered Casane. His voice was conciliatory–soothing almost. But Ginsburg had edged round past Casane, ready at the next warning move to take the gang leader on the flank with a quick forward rush, and inside their overcoats, the shapes of both the officers had tensed.

“Call it a pinch if you want to,” went on Casane. “I’d call it more of an invitation just to take a little walk with us two and then have a chat with somebody else. Unless you or some of your friends here feel like startin’ something there’ll be no rough stuff–that’s orders. We’re askin’ you to go along–first. How about it?”

“Oh, I’ll go–I’ll go! There’s nobody got anything on me. And nobody’s goin’ to get anything on me neither.”

He stood up and with a quick movement jerked back the skirts of his coat, holding them aloft so that his hip pockets and his waistband, showed.

“Take notice!” he cried, invoking as witnesses all present. “Take notice that I’m carryin’ no gat! So don’t you bulls try framin’ me under the Sullivan Law for havin’ a gat on me. There’s half a dozen here knows I ain’t heeled and kin swear to it–case of a frame-up. Now go ahead and frisk me!”

“That’ll be all right–we could easy take your word for it,” said Casane, still maintaining his placating pose. Nevertheless he signed to Ginsburg and the latter moved a step nearer their man and his practiced fingers ran swiftly over the unresisting form, feeling beneath the arms, down the flanks, about the belt line and even at the back of the neck for a suspicious hard bulge inside the garments, finally giving the side coat pockets a perfunctory slap.

“Unless you make it necessary, we won’t be callin’ for the wagon,” Casane stated. “Just the three of us’ll take a little stroll, like I’m telling you–just stroll out and take the air up to Headquarters.”

He slipped into position on one side of the gangster, Ginsburg on the other. Over his shoulder the man thus placed between them looked round to where his two underlings still sat at the table, both silent as the rest of the company were, but both plainly prepared for any contingencies; both ready to follow their chief’s lead in whatsoever course, peaceable or violent, he might next elect to follow.