Before getting into bed Philo Gubb examined the walls, the floor, and the ceiling of his room. They seemed safe and secure, but twice during the night he awoke with a cry, imagining himself sinking through the floor.
Three nights later, as Philo Gubb stood in the dark doorway of the Willcox Building waiting to pick up any suspicious character, Billy Getz slipped in beside him and drew him hastily to the back of the entry.
“Hush! Not a word!” he whispered. “Did you see a man in the window across the street? The third window on the top floor?”
“No,” whispered Philo Gubb. “Was—was there one?”
“With a rifle!” whispered Billy Getz. “Ready to pick you off. Come! It is suicide for you to try to go out the front way now. Follow me; I have news for you. Step quietly!”
He led the paper-hanger through the back corridor to the open air and up the outside back stairs to the third floor and into the building. He tapped lightly on a door and it was opened the merest crack.
“Friends,” whispered Billy Getz, and the door opened wide and admitted them.
The room was the club-room of the Kidders, where they gathered night after night to play cards and drink illicit whiskey. Green shades over which were hung heavy curtains protected the windows. A large, round table stood in the middle of the floor under the gas-lights; a couch was in one corner of the room; and these, with the chairs and a formless heap in a far corner, over which a couch-cover was thrown, constituted all the furniture, except for the iron cuspidors. Here the young fellows came for their sport, feeling safe from intrusion, for the possession of whiskey was against the law. There was a fine of five hundred dollars—one half to the informer—for the misdemeanor of having whiskey in one’s possession, but the Kidders had no fear. They knew each other.
For the moment the cards were put away and the couch-cover hid the four cases of Six Star that represented the club’s stock of liquor. The five young men already in the room were sitting around the table.