Doc Madison shook his head and smiled a little grimly.

"Forget it, Flopper!" he said crisply. "I've something better for you to
do. You fade away, disappear and lay low from this minute. I don't care
what you do when you're resurrected, but from now on the three of you
are dead and buried, and the police go into mourning for at least six
months."

"What you got for us, Doc?--something nice?"--Helena pushed Pale Face
Harry and the Flopper unceremoniously out of her line of vision as she
spoke.

"Yes--the drinks. Cleggy's bringing them," Madison laughed--and opened
the door, as the tinkle of glass and a shuffling footstep sounded
without.

A man, big, hulking, thick-set and slouching, with shifty, cunning
little black eyes and the face of a bruiser, his nose bent over and
almost flattened down on one cheek, entered the room, carrying four
glasses on a tin tray. He set down the tray, and, as he lifted the
glasses from it and placed them on the table, he leered around at the
little group.

"Gee!" he said, sucking in his breath. "De Doc, an' Helena, an' Pale
Face, an' de Flopper! Gee, dis looks like de real t'ing--dis looks like
biz."

"It does--fifty-cents' worth--ten for yourself," said Doc Madison
suavely, flipping the coin into the tray. "Now, clear out!"