"Heads or tails?" The ex-captain of territorial's voice was bored. "I shan't ask you again."
The light was poor. The man's features, save that they were dirty and unshaven, were almost indistinguishable; but the eyes roved everywhere in hunted fear, and he lumped the fingers of one hand together and plucked with them in an unhinged way at his lips.
"I—no!" gurgled the man. "My Gawd!" His words were thick. His fingers, plucking, clogged his lips. "I carn't—I—" The mechanism of the revolver intruded itself—as unemotional as its owner—an unemotional click. The man screamed out. "No, no—wait, guv'nor! Wait!" he screamed. "'Eads! Gawd! 'Eads!"
Captain Francis Newcombe examined the coin; the sense of touch, as he rubbed his fingers over it, helping out the bad light.
"Right, you are!" he said indifferently. "Heads it is! You're in luck!" He tossed the coin on the pavement. "I'd keep that, if I were you." His voice was still level, still bored. "You haven't got anything, of course, to do any sniping with, for anything as valuable as that would never remain in the possession of your kind for more than five minutes before you would have pawned it." He glanced at the prostrate form of the thug's companion, who was now beginning to show signs of returning consciousness. "I fancy you'll find his jaw's broken. Better give him a leg up," he said, and, turning on his heel, walked on down the street.
Captain Francis Newcombe did not look back. He traversed the murky block, turned a corner, turned still another, and presently made his way through an entrance, long since doorless, into the hallway of a tenement house. It was little better than a pit of blackness here, but his movements were without hesitation, as one long and intimately familiar with his surroundings. He mounted a rickety flight of stairs, and, without ceremony, opened the door of a room on the first landing, entered, and closed the door behind him. The room had no light in it.
"Who's there?" demanded a weak, querulous, female voice.
The visitor made no immediate reply. The place reeked with the odour of salt fish; the air was stale, and an offence that assaulted the nostrils. Captain Francis Newcombe crossed to the window, wrenched at it, and flung it viciously open.
A protracted fit of coughing came from a corner behind him.
"Didn't I tell you never to send for me?" he snapped out in abrupt menace.