Big sandy-haired Coffee was one of them, but it took a lot of arguing to convince him that I was the Continental operative who had talked to him a little while before.
“Man! Man!” he said, when I finally convinced him. “Them lads sure—God! have worked you over! You got a face on you like a wet geranium!”
I didn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny.
I looked out of the one eye, which was working just now, at the five men lined up across the office—Soules, the three inky printers, and the man with the blurred “s,” who had started the slaughter by tapping me on the back of the head.
He was a rather tall man of thirty or so, with a round ruddy face that wore a few bruises now. He had been, apparently, rather well-dressed in expensive black clothing, but he was torn and ragged now. I knew who he was wi
