"The faster the better. You can make your get-away with the coin as soon as those reports are in my hands."
"All right," he agreed, nervously, then added to me, "and if you fellows see any one try to follow us—you stop 'em. See?"
I nodded for both myself and Brooks.
"Come on," indicated the former crook detective to Kennedy. "Quick!"
Kennedy rose and followed the fellow to a door to a hallway that looked as if it led up-stairs.
No sooner had the two risen than our strangers at the other table were alert. I swung around in my chair suddenly toward them, and as I did so my hand went to my hip pocket, as though in search of a gun. For just an instant they paused in their attention to Kennedy.
Out of the tail of my eye I caught sight of Kennedy and the operative at the hall door. Framed in the doorway now stood our burly waiter, snarling some remark.
"What do youse want?" growled the waiter.
Before there was a change for a reply a shot rang out from the other side of the room and the place was instantly in Cimmerian darkness as the bullet smashed the one light in the room.
There was a rush and a scuffle. I flung one fellow off, only to be tackled in the blackness by some one else. Swiftly thoughts crowded through my mind as the place was in an uproar.