Monte spoke with a snarl.
“All right, you two!” he cried, “Here is where he was! Where is he now? Come across with your alibi!”
His two companions exchanged significant glances and the “Kid” took a slouching step closer to Monte.
“Look here, Chief,” said he, “it ain’t gonna be healthy for you to talk that way to me! I’m not spielin’ no alibi. What I’m givin’ you is straight goods, and you better get that twist out of your mush and act like a gentleman!”
He paused; and his two crumpled ears, which spoke of vicissitudes in the prize ring, grew red as a rooster’s comb. His glassy gray eyes glared unblinkingly at Monte.
The latter was not afraid of either of these men, or of both of them together. Monte had the unflinching courage of the perfect animal. But he had no notion of breaking up a gang which might prove useful to him.
“All right, boys,” he agreed, more pacifically, although his dark eyes continued to glow like coals. “If you can afford to take it easy, you got nothing on me! Tell me what happened.”
“That’s more like it,” the “Kid” growled. “Now you’re talking like a gentleman, Chief! Well, we follows the Count here, and thinks we has him holed up. We can’t bust down that door—this is an old Chink gambling hell, and everything is stacked against a fellow that wants to get in. But we comes down through the roof—”
Suddenly the “Kid” paused. From somewhere behind there had come a sound as of the opening of a door. The eyes of his two companions followed his and together they stood, rigid and alert.
Slowly the back wall of the room opened out toward them. Unconsciously, the crooks shrank closer together. Their faces were drawn, their figures rigid.