“Do we win! Can a duck swim? We’ve got seven lucky spots! Twenty-four hundred dollars, if we don’t have to divide with some son of a she-monkey!” and Coffin, grabbing his hat in his right hand, pranced about the room and began on the Harvard yell.
The Chinamen, shocked at the noise, and in imminent fear of attracting attention to the illegal enterprise, had grabbed him and stifled his fifth “Rah!” when, suddenly, with a hoarse yelp, the watchman at the look-out burst into the room, giving the alarm for a raid of the police, and threw two massive oaken bars across the iron door. In an instant the tickets, pellets, and books were swept into a sack, and the men scattered in all directions, sweeping down tables and over chairs to escape arrest.
“Run for your life, or we’ll get pulled!” Coffin called out to the Klondyker, who still held the ticket in his hand, and he made a break for one of the blue doors. It was slammed in his face by a retreating scout. “Over here!” the Klondyker cried, setting his foot to another door and forcing it open. By this time the outer barrier at the entrance from the restaurant had been forced, and the police began with crowbars and sledge-hammers at the inner door. Coffin ran for the exit, but stumbled and fell across a chair, striking his diaphragm with a shock that knocked the wind from his lungs. For fully a minute he lay there writhing, without the power to move, gasping vainly for breath. The blows on the door were redoubled in energy, and of a sudden the wooden bars split and gave way, the lock shot off into the room, the hinges broke through the woodwork jambs, and the door toppled and fell. It was now too late for the Freshman to escape; a dozen men jumped into the room and seized him with the few Chinamen left. To his dazed surprise the attacking party was the very same group of men he had taken for Eastern tourists as he entered, now evidently plain-clothes detectives who had been cunningly disguised to escape suspicion.
These, after their prisoners had been handcuffed, ran here and there, dragging more refugees by their queues in bunches from adjoining rooms and halls, but most had made good their escape through the many secret exits, hurrying, at the first warning, to the roof, to underground passages in the cellar, through the party walls to other buildings.
When the last man had been secured, the crestfallen captives were taken downstairs, loaded into two patrol-wagons, and driven to the California Street Station. The Klondyker was not among their number.
As the Freshman was searched and his hundred dollars taken and sealed in an envelope with his name, the booking-sergeant told him that if he wished to deposit cash bail with the bond-clerk at the City Hall he would be released. He might send the money by a messenger, who would return with his certificate of bail.
“How much will it be?” Coffin asked.
“One hundred, probably.”
“Then I can’t pay a messenger, for that’s exactly all I have with me.”
“Oh, well,” said the sergeant, looking at him indulgently, “there’s an officer going up to the Hall on an errand, and coming back pretty soon. I’ll get him to take up your money, if you want.”