Old Jimmie did not like meeting the police any oftener than a meeting was forced upon him, and so he slipped away and allowed Barney Palmer to undertake alone the business of settling Larry.

Barney found Gavegan exactly where he had counted: lingering over his late dinner in the cafe of a famous Broadway restaurant--a favorite with some of the detectives and higher officials of the Police Department--in which cafe, in happier days now deeply mourned, Gavegan had had all the exhilaration he wanted to drink at the standing invitation of the proprietor, and where even yet on occasion a bit of the old exhilaration was brought to Gavegan's table in a cup or served him in a room above to which he had had whispered instructions to retire.

The proprietor had in the old days liked to stand well with the police; and though his bar was now devoted to legal drinks--or at least obliging Federal officers reported it to be--he still liked to stand well with the police.
Gavegan was at a table with a minor producer of musical shows, to whom Barney had been of occasional service in securing the predominant essential of such music--namely, shapely young women.

Barney nodded to Gavegan, chatted for a few minutes with his musical-comedy friend, during which he gave Gavegan a signal, then crossed to the once-crowded bar, now sunk to isolation and the lowly estate of soft drinks, and ordered a ginger ale.

Not until then did he notice Barlow, chief of the Detective Bureau, at a corner table.