"They can't fool with us," another boy said. "Sure. The grasshopper play."
It was cops, all right. Lieutenant Lynch ran up the stairs waving his billy in a heroic fashion, followed by a horde of blue-clad officers.
"Where's Malone?" Lynch shouted as he came through the doorway.
"Where's your what?" Mike yelled back, and the fight was on.
Later, Malone thought that he should have been surprised, but he wasn't. There wasn't any time to be surprised. The kids didn't disappear.
They spread out over the floor of the room easily and lightly, and the cops charged them in a great blundering mass.
Naturally, the kids winked out one by one—and re-formed in the center of the cops' muddle. Malone saw one cop raise his billy and swing it at Mike. Mike watched it come down and vanished at the last instant. The cop's billy descended on the head of another cop, standing just behind where Mike had been.
The second cop, blinded by the blow on his head, swung back and hit the first cop. Meanwhile, Mike was somewhere else.
Malone stayed crouched behind the boxes. Dorothea stood up and shouted, "Mike! Mike! We just want to talk to you!"
Unfortunately, the police were making such a racket that this could not be heard more than a foot or so from the speaker. Lynch himself charged into the mass, swinging his billy and his free fist, and laying others out one after the other. Pretty soon the floor was littered with cops. Lynch was doing yeoman duty, but it was hard to tell what side he was on.