The man took long, slow steps, like someone from the country. Evidently he had expected the fog to turn to rain for he wore a heavy rain coat that flapped loosely about him.
Then, of a sudden, Jimmie noticed someone else. It was the snake-like man. “I’m going to meet him again,” he thought with a start. “How did he get here?”
There could be only one answer to this question. The snake-man had crossed the street, had doubled on his tracks, gone racing through the fog in the opposite direction for a block or two, then had recrossed the street and was now walking back the way he had come.
“But why?” Jimmie all but said these words out loud.
The answer was not long in coming.
As the sneaking little man came opposite the large one who lumbered on before Jimmie his hand flashed out and snatched something from the pocket of the big man’s coat.
Jimmie’s lips were parted for a sharp warning when something quite unusual happened. The little man spun half around, arose in the air like an airplane taking off, then shot away into the fog to land solidly on the pavement a full fifteen feet from his starting point.
A gruff voice said, “There! That will teach you to keep your hands out of other people’s pockets!” At that the big man bent over to pick up the bill-fold that had been snatched from his pocket and which, with the blow, had been knocked from the small man’s hand.
Jimmie took it all in like a flash. The little fellow had tried to snatch a purse. The big man had caught him at it and knocked him into the middle of the street.
“Boy, mister! That was great!” the words slipped unbidden from Jimmie’s lips.