I glanced at my companion. I liked him,
trusted him. There was a happy light in his frank
blue eyes. He was a good heavy-weight boxer too.
The very man, I felt, for a bold enterprise of this
sort. He talked the whole way. He was describing
how we might increase the fortune we should draw out
of our successful venture in a year's time, when we passed
Tim Sullivan, standing at the door of his, a rival, saloon,
and exchanged a nod with him. The Irishman had a
shadow on his face. "He's heard about it," whispered
Kay, with a chuckle. "He'll look glummer still
when he sees all his customers coming across the way
to us!"
Turning down a narrow side street, the Hub blocked the way, a three-story building with a little tower, clean windows, and two big swinging doors. It ran through to a back street where there was another entrance.
"Here it is," said Kay, in the eager, happy voice of a man who has just inherited a family mansion and come to inspect it. "This is the Hub where we shall make our fortune."
It seemed to me I had entered an entirely new world. Everything was spotless. The rows of bottles and glasses, the cash-register and brass taps glittered in the sunlight that fell through coloured windows. The perfume of stale liquor was not as disagreeable as it sounds. In one sense the whole place looked as harmless as the aisle of some deserted church. I stood just inside those swing-doors, which had closed behind me, with a strange feeling of gazing at some den of vice reconstructed in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's. Empty and innocent as the bar might appear, however, there was a thrill of adventure, even of danger, about it that reached my mind, with a definite shock of dread.
"Nice, airy premises, with plenty of room," Kay's cheery voice came to me from a distance. "This is the principal bar. Twenty men could line up easily. It'll want four bar-tenders.... There's another bar at
the end. There'll be a few fights there before we've
