The crooks were taken by surprise. Callahan's diplomacy failing, they had planned to rush Speedy off the car by sheer force of superior numbers, kidnap him, hold him for a few days until Carter could buy in the forfeited franchise and then release him. Now they had a battle on their hands! Not that they regretted it particularly. Their lives consisted of fighting. They went to it with a will.
Staving his three particular enemies off with his swinging bat, Speedy had a chance to look around and size up the pandemonium crashing around him.
"Atta boy, Adam!" he yelled as he saw Schultz, grotesquely arrayed in a football suit, head guard and all, belonging to his oldest boy, bring the flat side of a butcher's cleaver down on the head of an ambitious Callahanite and fell him to the ground.
"Look out, Jacques!" he screamed a warning as a fat crook leaped at the back of Le Duc, the jeweler. The Frenchman, heeding, ducked quickly and the high jumper sprawled on his face on the hard asphalt of De Lacey Street.
But now the business at hand was becoming hotter. Thugs by the score were crowding up onto the car platform. Speedy was beset on all sides. In a minute he would be completely hemmed in by this tightening circle of fists, clubs and blackjacks. He no longer had room in which to swing his bat. Deeming discretion the better part of valor, he suddenly turned and, catching the overhanging roof of the car with one hand, swung himself out and upward. Still clutching the bat, he secured a grip on the roof with the other hand also and fairly
