A boy, he was hardly more than that, perhaps twenty-two, from a posture in which he was huddled across the table with head buried in out-flung arms, sprang with a startled cry to his feet.
"Good-morning," said Jimmie Dale again.

"Your name's Hagan, Bert Hagan--isn't it?
And you work for Isaac Brolsky in the secondhand shop over on West Broadway--don't you ?" The boy's lips quivered, and the gaunt, hollow, half-starved face, white, ashen-white now, was pitiful.
"I--I guess you got me," he faltered "I--I suppose you're a plain-clothes man, though I never knew dicks wore masks." "They don't generally," said Jimmie Dale coolly.

"It's a fad of mine--Bert Hagan." The lad, hanging to the table, turned his head away for a moment--and there was silence.
Presently Hagan spoke again.

"I'll go," he said numbly.

"I won't make any trouble.