His foot kicked against a portable fire extinguisher. He retrieved it and found the button controlling the spray. Before he could use it on the fire, he saw a man lying face down on the sidewalk. The back of his jacket was burning.

With a quick burst from the extinguisher, Shayne put out the flames. The man was a Negro, not big but solidly built. Shayne stooped to pull him farther from the burning car. His white cap fell off as Shayne lifted him. The back of his head was bleeding. Under his arm, the detective felt the strap of a gun harness.

He didn’t like this at all. Two cars meant a minimum of two people. Here was one of them. Where was the other? He didn’t recognize the Negro or either car, but Harry’s house was only a couple of minutes away and he knew there had to be some connection with the phone call from Harry twenty minutes earlier.

He was still bent over the unconscious Negro when he heard a grating noise behind him. He whirled. A big man with a grotesquely twisted nose dropped on him from the top of the wall. Shayne tried to twist out of the way but he tripped on the Negro and was carried to the sidewalk with the big man on top of him. He rolled, bringing one elbow up in his assailant’s face. The man grunted and slammed a fist the size of a small ham against the side of Shayne’s head.

Shayne’s reaction was instinctive. He rolled with the punch and lashed out with his foot at the big man’s middle. As his foot went home, air rushed out of the big man’s lungs, and Shayne knew he could take him.

Then a second man jumped off the wall, a suitcase in one hand and a gun in the other, and Shayne was clipped behind the ear with something much harder than a fist. The Cadillac’s headlights blurred and overlapped.