ums."

"But, Mr. Van Pelt, all the pictures are over where the fight's going
on!"

"Pictures, shmictures! Come on!" I got out in front of the candy store,
and the only thing he could do was follow me.

Whatever they were doing, they were making the devil's own racket about
it. Now that I looked a little more closely I could see that they must
have come this way; the candy store's windows were broken; every other
street light was smashed; and what had at first looked like a flight of
steps in front of a tenement across the street wasn't anything of the
kind--it was a pile of bricks and stone from the false-front cornice on
the roof! How in the world they had managed to knock that down I had no
idea; but it sort of convinced me that, after all, Harrison had been
right about this being a _big_ fight. Over where the noise was coming
from there were queer flashing lights in the clouds overhead--reflecting
exploding flares, I thought.

* * * * *

No, I didn't want to go over where the pictures were. I like living. If
it had been a normal Harlem rumble with broken bottles and knives, or
maybe even home-made zip guns--I might have taken a chance on it, but
this was for real.

"Come on," I yelled to Sol, and we pushed the door open to the candy
store.

At first there didn't seem to be anyone in, but after we called a couple
times a kid of about sixteen, coffee-colored and scared-looking, stuck
his head up above the counter.

"You. What's going on here?" I demanded. He looked at me as if I was
some kind of a two-headed monster. "Come on, kid. Tell us what
happened."

"Excuse me, Mr. Van Pelt." Sol cut in ahead of me and began talking to
the kid in Spanish. It got a rise out of him; at least Sol got an
answer. My Spanish is only a little bit better than my Swahili, so I
missed what was going on, except for an occasional word. But Sol was
getting it all. He reported: "He knows Walt; that's what's bothering
him. He says Walt and some of the Leopards are in a basement down the
street, and there's something wrong with them. I can't exactly figure
out what, but--"

"The hell with them. What about _that_?"

"You mean the fight? Oh, it's a big one all right, Mr. Van Pelt. It's a
gang called the Boomer Dukes. They've got hold of some real guns
somewhere--I can't exactly understand what kind of guns he means, but it
sounds like something serious. He says they shot that parapet down
across the