"Hey! What's the trouble?" he asked, in the voice of one bent on smoothing troubled waters.
"Sto-oo-op thi-eef!" came the stentorian shout of that amazing vocalist, the robbed boy. "Stop them two thieves!"
Billy Faraday took a swift survey of the situation. It would not do, he decided, to run into the arms of the policeman, who did not look formidable, but who might cause a deal of bother.
"This way!" he yelled, breaking off at right angles, and darting down a narrow laneway, between two paling fences. But Billy had made, for once, an error of judgment. The fences abutted on a brick wall of some height, and the lane was, consequently, a blind alley.
"We're diddled—dished," gasped Egbert Patch.
"Not a bit," said Billy, pausing for six precious seconds, while, with his knife, he ripped the Star from its place of concealment, and slipped it into the pocket of his waistcoat. "Not a bit," he repeated, throwing the coat towards the pursuers, who were already at the mouth of the alley. "Come on!"
With an agile spring he vaulted over the paling fence and landed in the garden beyond. Patch followed, and the cries of the pursuers changed abruptly from triumph to chagrin. Billy found himself confronting an enormous man in a blue shirt, who seemed annoyed that the boy had landed full in the centre of a bed of prize cauliflowers.
"'Ere!" this worthy bellowed. "Oo are you?"
"The King of Sweden!" answered Patch grandly. "My card!" He made a move as if to hand the astonished fellow something, and before that person could realize what was happening, he had received a hard dig in what boxers call the "mark." He gasped, and sat down with the giant collapse of a pricked balloon.
Laughing, the two fugitives fled on, for the red-faced youth was leading the pursuit over the fence, and it was risky to linger. Over two more fences they hurried, and then found themselves confronted with an impasse.