"How many would you say was in there with him?"
"Fifty, anyhow."
"Aw, now! There wouldn't be that many this time of morning."
"The hell there wouldn't!" the burly man snarled. "They've been drifting in since midnight."
"Is that so? A leak somewhere. Maybe you oughtn't to have let 'em in."
"Maybe I oughtn't!" The burly man was mad. "But I did what you told me. You said to let anybody go in or out that wants to, but when Whisper showed to—"
"To arrest him," the chief said.
"Well, yes," the burly man agreed, and looked savagely at me.
More men joined us and we held a talk-fest. Everybody was in bad humor except the chief. He seemed to enjoy it all. I didn't know why.
Whisper's joint was a three-story brick building in the middle of the block, between two two-story buildings. The ground floor of his joint was occupied by a cigar store that served as entrance and cover for the gambling establishment upstairs. Inside, if the burly man's information was to be depended on, Whisper had collected half a hundred friends, presumably loaded for a fight. Outside, Noonan's force was spread around the building, in the street in front, in the alley in back, and on adjoining roofs.
"Well, boys," the chief said amiably after the talk had gone around in circles for a while, "I don't reckon Whisper wants trouble any more than we do, or he'd have tried to shoot his way out before this, if he's got that many with him, though I don't mind saying I don't think he has—not that many."
The burly man said: "The hell he ain't!"
"So if he don't want trouble," Noonan went on, "maybe talking might do some good. You run over, Nick, and see if you can't argue him into being peaceable."
The burly man said: "The hell I will!"
"Phone him then," the chief suggested.
The burly Nick growled, "That's more like it," and went away. When he came back he looked completely satisfied with his message.
"He says," he reported, "'Go to hell!'"
"Get the rest of the boys down here," Noonan said cheerfully. We'll knock it over as soon as it gets light."
XII
The burly Nick and I went around with the chief while he placed his men. I didn't think much of them—a shabby, shifty-eyed lot with no enthusiasm for the job ahead of them.
The sky became a faded gray. The chief, Nick and I had stopped in a plumber's doorway diagonally across the street from our target. Whisper's joint was dark, blank, with the cigar store blinds down over window and door, all upper windows curtained.
"I hate to star this without giving Whisper a chance," Noonan said. "He's not a bad kid. But there's no use o' me trying to talk to him. He never did like me much."
He looked at me. I said nothing.
"You wouldn't want to make a stab at it?" he asked.
"I'll try it."
"That's fine of you! I'll appreciate that, if you will. You just see if you can't talk him into coming along peaceable. You know what to say—for his own good and all that—like it is."
"Yeah," I said, and started across the street toward the cigar store, taking pains to let my hands be seen swinging empty at my sides.
Day was still a little way off. The street was the color of smoke. My feet seemed to be making a lot of noise on the paving. I stopped in front of the door and knocked the glass with a knuckle, not heavily. The green blind
