gh it was at the sign of the Stuffed Owl, down in a basement
bat cave of a place and in the dusk of the evening, that they found
their man. To Ginsburg's curious eyes he revealed himself as a short,
swart person with enormously broad shoulders and with a chimpanzee's arm
reach. Look at those arms of his and one knew why he was called
Stretchy. How he had acquired his last name of Gorman was only to be
guessed at. It was fair to assume, though, he had got it by processes of
self-adoption--no unusual thing in a city where overnight a Finkelstein
turns into a Fogarty and he who at the going down of the sun was Antonio
Baccigaluppi has at the upcoming of the same become Joseph Brown. One
thing, though, was sure as rain: This particular Gorman had never been
a Gorman born.

Not the blackest of the "Black Irish," not the most brunette of brunette
Welshmen ever had a skin of that peculiar brownish pallor, like clear
water in a cypress swamp, or eyes like the slitted pair looking out
obliquely from this man's head.

Taking their cue of action from their superior's words, Casane and
Ginsburg, having come down the short flight of steps leading from the
sidewalk, went directly across the barroom to where their man sat at a
small table with two others, presumably both of his following, for his
companions.

The manner of the intruders was casual enough; casual and yet marked by
a businesslike air. They knew that at this moment they were not
especially attractive risks for an accident insurance company. The very
sawdust on the floor stank of villainy; the brass bar rail might have
been a rigid length of poison snake; the spittoons were small sinks of
corruption. Moreover, they had been commissioned to take a monarch off
his throne before the eyes of his courtiers, and history records that
this ever was a proceeding fraught with peril.

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, thric