to deliver really snappy, really witty retorts.

"Is that so, Jew?" He stared at Ginsburg and a derisive grin opened a
gap in his broad dark face. "Oh, be chee! We ain't strangers--you and
me ain't! We've met before--when we was kids. Down in Henry Street, it
was. I put me mark on you oncet, and if I ever feel like it I'll do it
again sometime."

Like a match under shavings the words kindled half-forgotten memories in
the young detective's brain and now--for his part--recognition came
flashing back out of the past.

"I thought so," he said, choosing to ignore the gangster and addressing
Casane. "I thought from the first Gorman wasn't his right name. I've
forgotten what his right name is, but it's nothing that sounds like
Gorman. He's a wop. I went to the same school with him over on the East
Side a good many years ago."

"Don't forget to tell him how the wop licked the Jew," broke in the
prisoner. "Remember how the scrap started?"

He spat again and this time he did not miss. Ginsburg put up his gloved
hand and wiped clean a face that with passion had turned a mottle of
red-and-white blotches. His voice shook from the strain of his effort to
control himself.

"I'll get you for that," he said quietly. "And I'll get you good. The
day'll come when I'll walk you in broad daylight up to the big chief,
and I'll have the goods on you too."

"Forget it," jeered the ruffian triumphantly. Before the eyes of his
satellites he had--by his standards--acquitted himself right
creditably. "You got nothin' on me now, Jew, and you never will have.
Well, come on, you bulls, let's be goin' along. I wouldn't want the
neither one of you for steady company. One of you is too polite and the
other'n too meek for my tastes."

* * * * *

The man who was called Stretchy Gorman spoke a prophetic word when he
said the police had nothing on him. Since they had nothing on him, he
was let go after forty-eight hours of detention; but that is not saying
they did not intend, if they could--and in such cases they usually
can--to get something on him.

No man in the department had better reason to crave that consummation
than Hyman Ginsburg had. With him the hope of achieving revenge became
practically an obsession. It rode in his thoughts. Any hour, in a
campaign to harry the gangster to desperation by means of methods that
are common enough inside the department, he might have invoked competent
and willing assi