for years, and though himself a respectable businessman his
name had been attached to the pack of hoodlums who held
forth at his back door as the easiest means of locating and
identifying its motley members.

The police and citizenry of this great territory were the
natural enemies and prey of Kelly's gang, but as the kings
of old protected the deer of their great forests from poachers,
so Kelly's gang felt it incumbent upon them to safeguard
the lives and property which they considered theirs by divine
right. It is doubtful that they thought of the matter in just
this way, but the effect was the same.

And so it was that as Billy Byrne wended homeward alone
in the wee hours of the morning after emptying the cash
drawer of old Schneider's saloon and locking the weeping
Schneider in his own ice box, he was deeply grieved and
angered to see three rank outsiders from Twelfth Street beating
Patrolman Stanley Lasky with his own baton, the while
they simultaneously strove to kick in his ribs with their
heavy boots.

Now Lasky was no friend of Billy Byrne; but the officer
had been born and raised in the district and was attached
to the Twenty-eighth Precinct Station on Lake Street near
Ashland Avenue, and so was part and parcel of the natural
possession of the gang. Billy felt that it was entirely ethical
to beat up a cop, provided you confined your efforts to
those of your own district; but for a bunch of yaps from
south of Twelfth Street to attempt to pull off any such