The other noted his emotion and slowly winked one eye. "Until I've looked over it," he repeated cunningly. "You never know. What if there's a five-pound note sewn up in the lining?"
"A five-pound note?" gasped Billy weakly.
"I'm going to have a look," said the rustic, taking off the jacket and fumbling it between his fingers. "Why," he yelled, suddenly, "what's this here?"
Billy's heart sank into his boots as the red-faced country youth, with a grin of the most horrible triumph, rubbed between his fingers the slight lump under the coat-cloth that indicated where the Black Star had been so carefully hidden.
"There's something here, right enough," he said, cheerfully, "and we'll have it out in a jiffey. When I've seen what it is, then you can buy the coat—perhaps."
And he began to open a very efficient-looking clasp-knife. But at that, all Billy had gone through to recover the coat came up in his mind, and a wave of fury swept over him that he should be thus baulked at the last moment.
Uttering an inarticulate cry, he dashed forward, snatched the jacket out of the other's hands, and took to his heels, with Egbert merely a pace or two in his rear. The yokel stood dumbfounded for an instant, and then roared out at the top pitch of his voice, "Stop thief! Stop thief!"
The quiet, respectable little town of Rimvale witnessed the most astounding of chases along its sleepy main street. First came Billy and Patch, running their hardest for the garage and the big cycle, and after them tore the outraged country lad, yelling in a voice that would have roused the envy of any Indian chief of the prairies.
The country boy continued to yell, "Thi—eeves!" lustily as he rushed after the two boys.
The solitary policeman that the town boasted, aroused by the uproar, left the veranda of the country hotel, and stepped into the glare of the noonday sun.