Hunting—sporting of any kind—pooh! what could they be to such sport as this—so exciting, and dashed with a tinge of danger? And then the game was so profitable!
Mr Screwby licked his lips as, with head down and hands held in true pedestrian fashion, he pressed on.
Now was the time, he felt. He had closed to within a yard—a dash in and it would be done—the arm thrown round the victim’s neck, a sharp twist, a kick at his legs, and he would be down upon the pavement, which would effectually stun him. Then a little rapid manipulation, and all would be right.
“Now for it, then!” he resolutely exclaimed, and he raised his arm.
Is there, or is there not, some instinct of coming danger—some strange, ethereal, electric wire of sympathy, along which, as rapidly as thought, speeds the warning “Look out!” What do psychologists say? Some are for, some against the possibility of such influences: take, then, your own experience and judge. See how often, as if feeling the wind of the coming peril, people have been known to swerve aside, or halt, or hurry on, or stay away scores of times, and escape. Instances innumerable might be cited of where the preyer has been balked of his quarry, even as here, when, just as Screwby was in the act of making his spring, Harry turned and faced his enemy, and both stood for a brief minute without moving.
The next moment Screwby drew back to gather force, then, with fingers crooked like a beast’s talons, he leaped at Harry’s throat, but only to receive full upon that flat and ugly nose a tremendous blow sent right from a desperate man’s shoulder.
In itself the stroke seemed hard enough to have made the organ flat; but, joined to it, there was the force with which Screwby was making at his destined prey—the two forces added forming a total whose result was a dull, unpleasant-sounding thud—a heavy, drunken stagger—and then Mr John Screwby seemed to collapse, his legs doubling beneath him, his whole body assuming a wavy motion, and he was upon the pavement in a curious heap, emitting as he went down a groan that sounded as if the collapse were total.
“’Ullo! what’s up now?” greeted Harry’s ears, as he stood binding a handkerchief around his bleeding knuckles, and gazing at his fallen assailant.
Harry turned to find that a policeman had made his appearance.
“This man attacked me, and I struck him down,” replied Harry.