
Cars of the train, as it rumbled and hissed to a stop in the station, were full of bright light and had only a few
passengers.
The thick-bodied man and his companions were separated the length of the two-block long platform, and they
got on the train without excitement, two at one end, three at the other, after which they walked through the
train, looking carefully into each coach before they entered it.
Thus it was that they converged at the ends of one certain car which held their quarry.
The leader said to the two with him, "Lingh wants the Ranee alive. Remember that."
"Wonder why?" countered one of the pair.
"Don't know," said the man. "Doubt if Lingh knows. Think his orders come from some one else."
"Let's go," the other grunted.
They walked down the aisle, hands in bulging coat pockets.
Ranged side by side on the cane-bottomed seat running lengthwise of the subway coach, the veiled woman
and her gaudy, dark riflemen escort were very quiet, watchful. They seemed a little confused, too, by the roar
and shudder of the underground train.
They stood up suddenly before the thick man and his companions were near. The uniformed escort held the
rifles across their chests, soldier fashion, alert.
"Easy does it," snapped the thick man.
He put a hand on the veiled woman's arm. That started it. Her escort clapped rifle stocks to shoulders.
The thick man yelled, "All but the Ranee, guys!"
Pockets split open to let out flame and noise. The thick man's aides were using sawed-off, hammerless
revolvers which would not jam in cloth, and they shot as rapidly as fingers could work triggers, calmly,
confidently.
It was plain they expected to blast down the uniformed opposition with the first volley. That did not happen.
The tall, cocoanut-headed guards staggered, but did not fall.
"Watch it!" screamed the thick man. "They're wearing some kind of an armor!"
After that, there was screaming and noise and death in the moaning subway. Two of the tall men with the
gaudy uniforms and the heads remindful of cocoanuts crumpled where they sat. The two others got in front of
the veiled woman, shielding her, firing, screeching in their strange, foreign tongue.
Five men, altogether, were on the floor, badly wounded, when some one who knew a bit about the mechanics
of the car managed to yank an emergency lever and the train ground to a stop, half inside of a lighted station.
The two uniformed men with the veiled woman got out on the platform and ran. The thick man tried to follow,
with his single companion who had survived, but was shot at and, frightened, ducked back.
The wounded and dying screamed and groveled on the car floor, and that seemed to remind the thick man of
something, for he turned deliberately, saw that one of the uniformed foreigners alone had a chance of living,
and shot the man in the head. Then he ran, with his companion, out of the subway.
The veiled woman and her two escorts had vanished.
THE episode of the subway was newspaper headlines before the night was over, and it was a very mystifying
matter to the police, who admitted they failed to make heads or tails of it, beyond the fact that they had
identified three of the dead as local police characters known for their viciousness.