2             ALIAS RED RYAN
ward the sound, and as he went other noises came
to his ear, so he began shrilling on his whistle for
reinforcements, and loosening the buttons of his great-
coat over his own holster.
  He had to run east to Broadway, up Broadway and
around the next corner to his left, and by that time
the first alarming sound had been augmented into
a chorus of shouting pedestrians and an outcry of
confused excitement.
  From farther down Broadway came the roar of a
motorcycle cop making for the same objective and
along the street were running other figures, yet Pa-
trolman Mahaffey was the first uniformed man to
reach the spot, and that was a tribute to his fleetness
of foot as well as his eagerness of spirit.
  He saw a car flirt round the corner into Sixth
Avenue before he reached the door about which
civilian-clad men were beginning to cluster, and he
knew that that car, which he was quick to associate
with the crack of guns, had made its escape.
  Then, panting, he reached the door of a building
whose number and business sign in gilt letters he
instinctively noted and registered without pausing.
To the half -frightened and morbidly curious men who
clung there like flies about a sticky saucer, he gave
the force of his elbow, and the curt command:
"Gang-way there! Let me through!"
  They let him through, for his face was red and his
chin thrust out and his hand gestured with a ready