The Bureau of Inside Information and his companion looked up as Billy
Garrison stood over them, hands in pockets. Both men had been drinking.
Drake and half the café's occupants had drifted out.

"Which of you gentlemen just now gave his opinion of Billy Garrison?"
asked the jockey quietly.

"I did, neighbor. Been roped in, too?" Inside Information splayed out
his legs, and, with a very blasé air, put his thumbs in the armholes
of his execrable vest. He owned a rangy frame and a loose mouth. He
was showing the sights of Gotham to a friend, and was proud of his
knowledge. But he secretly feared New York because he did not know it.

"Oh, it was you?" snapped Garrison venomously. "Well, I don't know your
name, but mine's Billy Garrison, and you're a liar!" He struck Inside
Information a whack across the face that sent him a tumbled heap on the
floor.

There is no one so dangerous as a coward. There is nothing so dangerous
as ignorance. The New Englander had heard much of Gotham's undercurrent
and the brawls so prevalent there. He had heard and feared. He had
looked for them, fascination in his fear, but till the present had never
experienced one. He had heard that sporting men carried guns and were
quick to use them; that when the lie was passed it meant the hospital or
the morgue. He was thoroughly ignorant of the ways of a great city, of
the world; incapable of meeting a crisis; of apportioning it at its true
value. And so now he overdid it.

As Garrison, a contemptuous smile on his face, turned away, and started
to draw a handkerchief from his hip pocket, the New Englander, thinking