I thought I was moving silently down between two strings of box cars, but I had gone less than twenty feet when a light flashed in my face and a sharp voice ordered:
“Stand still, you.”
I stood still. Men came from between cars. One of them spoke my name, adding: “What are you doing here? Lost?” It was Harry Pebble, a police detective.
I stopped holding my breath and said:
“Hello, Harry. Looking for Babe?”
“Yes. We’ve been going over the rattlers.”
“He’s here. I just tailed him in from the street.”
Pebble swore and snapped the light off.
“Watch, Harry,” I advised. “Don’t play with him. He’s packing plenty of gun and he’s cut down one boy tonight.”
“I’ll play with him,” Pebble promised, and told one of the men with him to go over and warn those on the other side of the yard that McCloor was in, and then to ring for reinforcements.
“We’ll just sit on the edge and hold him in till they come,” he said.
That seemed a sensible way to play it. We spread out and waited. Once Pebble and I turned back a lanky bum who tried to slip into the yard between us, and one of the men below us picked up a shivering kid who