Bell had a vague idea that the same rage twisting his face into the expression that cowed them might also be keeping him from thinking straight. He didn’t care.

“Where is he?” he shouted.

“At one of his new joints.”

“Where?”

Far beneath the surface of Isaac Bell’s conscience, a voice cautioned that he would get himself killed like this. But Bell’s fighting voice, always nearest the surface, retorted that no one in the dimly lit barroom could kill him. In a flash, he assessed the contradiction: the fighter saw something the worrier did not. This was too easy. Twelve Gophers, and only two had pulled weapons. By rights, the rest of the gang should still be slinging lead at him. Instead, they were gaping openmouthed and wide-eyed.

“Where?”

“Don’t know, mister.”

“One of the new joints.”

Fear and confusion in the gangsters’ tones made Bell look more closely. Now he noticed that the weapons they had dropped were brass knuckles, saps, and knives. No guns. Then it dawned on him. These were mostly old men, missing teeth, hunched, scarred—the weary down-and-out slum dwellers of Hell’s Kitchen where forty was old, fifty ancient.

New joints. That was it. Commodore Tommy Thompson had moved up and left them behind. These sorry devils had been abandoned by their boss and scared out of their wits by an enraged detective blasting open the door and gunning down the only two with the go left in them to fight.

Bell felt a cool calm settle over his mind, and with it an electric clarity.

Change was sweeping the Hell’s Kitchen Gophers, and he had a strong hunch what was causing it. The old men saw the softening in his face. One piped, “Could we put our hands down, mister?”

The tall detective was still too angry to smile, but he came close. “No,” he said. “Leave them where I can see them.”

A taxi horn blared in the street.

Bell shot a glance out the door. The taxi was sliding to a halt. Five grim-faced Van Dorn veterans and an up-and-coming young fellow spilled out bearing firearms. They were trailed at a distance by a squad of New York cops on foot. Harry Warren, the gang specialist, was leading the Van Dorns. He had a sawed-off pressed against his leg and a revolver tucked in his waistband. Passing the youngster a wad of cash, he gestured for him to deal with the cops, and assessed the front of Commodore Tommy’s with an eye to storming it.

Bell stepped out of the saloon. “Evening, boys.”

“Isaac! You O.K.?”

“Tip-top. What are you doing here?”

“Your Yale Club doorman telephoned the Knickerbocker. Sounded real worried, said that you needed a hand.”

“Old Matthew’s like a mother hen.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Just out for a stroll.”