APTER XXIII.

THE BEAST GLOATS.

"Fer Gawd's sake, let's have a light here, somebody!" panted the
dishevelled policeman. Outside, the ringing of a gong became audible.
Then came a clattering of hoofs, as the police-patrol, nicely-timed by
the conspirators, and summoned by a confederate, drew up at the box on
the corner.

Somebody struck another match, and a raw gas-light flared. From the
hallway, two or three others crowded into the wrecked room. Disjointed
exclamations, oaths and curses intermingled with harsh laughter.

The woman--Lillian Rafter, probably the finest actress and stool-pigeon
in the whole detective world of graft and crookedness--lighted a
cigarette at the gas-burner, and laughed with triumph.

"Some make-up, eh kid?" she demanded of the taller detective, who was
now nursing a bad "shiner," as a black eye is known in the under-world,
and whose face was battered to a bleeding pulp. "Believe me, as a job,
this is some job! From start to finish, a pippin. He was bound to fall
for it though. No help for him. Even if he hadn't butted into the
'plant' we fixed for him in the alley, there, I could have braced him in
the street with my tale of woe. He was just bound to be 'it,' this time.
We had him going, all ways for Sunday!"

Scornfully the woman Gabriel had befriended in her seeming misery, spat
at him as he lay there stunned and scarcely breathing on the dirty
floor.

"And just pipe this, will you, too?" she exulted, holding up the
five-dollar bill he had given her. "And this?" She exhibited his name
and address, written on a card. "In his own writing, boys. As evidence
to hold him on a white slave charge, is this some evidence or isn't it?"

"Oh, we'll hold him, all right!" growled the other detective, whose
right arm dangled limp, where the chair had struck him. "The ---- ----
of a ----! He'll go up for a finif, a five-spot, or I'm a liar! And once
we get him behind bars, good-night!"

He deliberately drew back his heavy boot and kicked Gabriel full in the
face.

"You ---- ----!" he cursed. "Try to bean _me_, will you? Damn you!
You've made _your_ last soap-box spiel!"

"Come on, now, boys, out with him, an' no more rag-chewin'!" the
policeman exclaimed. "Git him in the wagon, an' away, before a gang
piles in here! You, Caffery, take his feet. I'll manage his head. Jesus,
but he's some big guy, though, the ---- ---- of a ----!"

Together, the battered policeman and the detective who stil