Jimmie Dale rolled the trousers of Larry the Bat into a compact little bundle, and stuffed them under the flooring.

The gas jet seemed to blink again in a sort of confidential approval, as though the secret lay inviolate between itself and Jimmie Dale.

Through the closed window, shade tightly drawn, came, low and muffled, the sound of distant life from the Bowery, a few blocks away.

The gas jet, suffering from air somewhere within the pipes, hissed angrily, the yellow flame died to a little blue, forked spurt--and Jimmie Dale was on his feet, his face suddenly hard and white as marble.
SOME ONE WAS KNOCKING AT THE DOOR! For the fraction of a second Jimmie Dale stood motionless.

Found as Jimmie Dale in the den of Larry the Bat, and the consequences required no effort of the imagination to picture them; police or denizen of the underworld who was knocking there, it was all the same, the method of death would be a little different, that was all--one legalised, the other not.