"No names—here!" whispered the colonel in the big ear of the man who had saved him from death.
The slim little man gave a wiggle like an eel, and would have darted away through the crowd, but there was a vice-like grip on his shoulder that he knew but too well.
"Spotty, my name's Brentnall for the present," said the colonel, with a grim smile. "And you'd better come with me. How about it?"
Spotty Morgan hesitated a moment, nodded silently, and then, arm in arm with the man whom he had pulled from the path of the big truck, went down the street, the mist and rain swallowing them up.
CHAPTER V
AMY'S APPEAL
Tinkling glasses formed a friendly rampart between Colonel Ashley and
Spotty Morgan. Spotty looked narrowly and shrewdly at the detective.
"I didn't expect to see you here," remarked the gunman, speaking out of the side of his mouth, with scarcely a motion of his lips—a habit acquired through long practice in preventing prison keepers from finding out that he was disobeying the rules regarding silence. "Not for a minute did I expect to run across you here, Colonel As—"
"Not that name, Spotty, if you please," and the fisherman-detective smiled in easy fashion. "You know my little habits in that regard. I'm known here as Brentnall, and, if it's all the same to you, just use that. As for you, if Spotty—"
"Oh, that suits me as well as any other. I can change whenever I like." Spotty raised a glass to his lips, and, with a murmured "here's how," let the contents slide down his always-parched throat.