cession. There
was no answer. He knocked again in precisely the same manner, and then
a footstep sounded from within, and the door was flung open. "Fools!"
growled Shluker in greeting, as they stepped inside and the door was
closed again. "A pair of brainless fools!"

There were two men there. They paid Shluker scant attention. They both
grinned at Rhoda Gray through the murky light supplied by a wheezy and
wholly inadequate gas-jet.

"Hello, Nan!" gibed the smaller of the two. "Who let you out?"

"Aw, forget it!" croaked Rhoda Gray.

Shluker took up the cudgels.

"You close your face, Pinkie!" he snapped. "Get down to cases! Do you
think I got nothing else to do but chase you two around like a couple
of puppy dogs that haven't got sense enough to take care of themselves?
Wasn't what I told you over the phone enough without me havin' to come
here?"

"Nix on that stuff!" returned the one designated as Pinkie
imperturbably. "Say, you'll be glad you come when we lets you in on
a little piece of easy money. We ain't askin' your advice; all we're
askin' you to do is frame up the alibi, same as usual, for me an' the
Pug here in case we wants it."

Shluker shook his fist.

"Frame nothing!" he spluttered angrily. "Ain't I tellin' you that the
orders are not to make a move, that everything is off for a few days?
That's the word I got a little while ago, and the Seven-Three-Nine is
goin' out now. Nan'll tell you the same thing."

"Sure!" corroborated Rhoda Gray, picking up the obvious cue. "Dat's de
straight goods."

The two men were lounging beside a table that stood at the extreme end
of the room, and now for a moment they whispered together. And, as they
whispered, Rhoda Gray found her first opportunity to take critical stock
both of her surroundings and of the two men themselves. Pinkie, a short,
slight little man, she dismissed with hardly a glance; he was the common
type, with low, vicious cunning stamped all over his face--an ordinary
rat of the underworld. But her glance rested longer on his companion.
The Pug was indeed entitled to his moniker! His face made her think of
one. It seemed to be all screwed up out of shape. Perhaps the eye-patch
over the right eye helped a little to put the finishing touch of
repulsiveness upon a countenance already most unpleasant. The celluloid
eye-patch, once flesh-colored, was now so dirty and smeared that its
original color was discernible only in spots, and the once white