“Can’t say. ’Im and me only sneaked it for a lark, only them niggers took it so serious. It don’t look vallyble, any’ow. Just a fat thing with a fat face and a couple of bits of green glass for heyes. ’Tain’t as if it was made of gold, as you could see at a glance. There wasn’t ’alf a outcry when we took it, though. After us, they was, for ever so long, and we ’ad to—to take to the jungle to give ’em the slip. And then, one night while I was asleep, my chum took the hidol out of my pocket and ’ooked off with it.”
“And you followed him?” asked Mr. Sinnett, with lively interest.
“Everywhere! Worst of it was, wherever I follered ’im, ’e’d ’ad about a year’s start. But at last I’ve found ’im, and—”
With a species of incredulous annoyance at his own garrulity, Mr. Clark stopped abruptly and rose from his chair.
“You been letting me say more than I ought to!” he remarked, severely.
“Oh, no!” returned Mr. Sinnett, smoothly. “Why, you have not even told me the name of—”
“No; and I ain’t going to, neither!” truculently interrupted Mr. Clark; and marched from the apartment.
“Queer!” murmured Mr. Sinnett. “Very queer!”
A little later in the evening that gentleman, directing his course homeward by accustomed paths, came to a length of quiet, ill-lit thoroughfare, and here he found himself beholding the unusual. For, in the very middle of the roadway, he could clearly discern two men, who grappled earnestly with each other, swaying this way and that in furious embrace, and yet preserving an eerie and almost complete silence.
For some moments, Mr. Sinnett viewed this phenomenon in amazement, and then he hurried forward. His advent appeared to alarm the antagonists, for, as soon as he drew near, they parted. One of them, presenting a stout figure tolerably familiar to Mr. Sinnett, ran clumsily away down the road; the other man, breathing exhaustedly, stood fumbling at his collar in a dazed way. Mr. Sinnett, peering at his features through the gloom, discovered him to be the man who kept the Magnolia Toilet Saloon, one Mr. Joseph Tridge, to wit.