around to it yet.

By now, the boys were practically standing toe to toe, ripping
air-bluing epithets out at each other. Not a single hand was lifted.

Malone stared at them for a second, then turned to Dorothea. "We'll wait
till they calm down a little," he whispered. "Then you go out and talk
to them. Tell them we won't hurt them or lock them up or anything. All
we want to do is talk to them for a while."

"All right," she whispered back.

"They can vanish any time they want to," Malone said, "so there's no
reason for them not to listen to--"

He stopped suddenly, listening. Over the shouting, screaming and cursing
of the kids, he heard motion on the floor below.

Cops?

It couldn't be, he told himself. But when he took out his radiophone,
his hands were shaking a little.

Lynch's voice was already coming over it when Malone thumbed it on.

"... So hang on, Malone! I repeat: we heard the ruckus, and we're coming
in! We're on our way! Hang on, Malone!"

The voice stopped. There was a click.

Malone stared at the handset, fascinated and horrified. He swallowed.
"No, Lynch!" he whispered, afraid to talk any louder for fear the kids
would hear him. "No! Don't come up! Go away! Repeat: go away! Stay away!
Lynch--"

It was no use. The radiophone was dead.

Lynch, apparently thinking Malone's set had been smashed in the fight,
or else that Malone was unconscious, had shut his own receiver off.

There was absolutely nothing that Malone could do.

* * * * *

The kids were still yelling at the top of their voices, but the
thundering of heavy, flat feet galumphing up from the lower depths
couldn't be ignored for long. All the boys noticed it at about the same
time. They jerked their heads round to face the stairway. Malone and his
campatriots crouched lower behind the boxes.

Mike Fueyo was the first to speak. "Don't vanish yet!" he snapped.
"Let's see who it is."

The internal dissent among the Silent Spooks disappeared as if it had
never been, as they faced a common foe. Once again, they fell naturally
under Fueyo's leadership. "If it's cops," he said, "we'll give 'em the
Grasshopper Play we worked out. We'll show 'em."

"They can't fool with us," another boy said. "Sure. The Grasshopper
Play."

It was cops, all right. Lieutenant Lynch ran up the stairs waving his
billy in a heroic fashion, followed by a horde of blue-clad officers.

"Where's Malone?" Lynch shouted as