Josh Heckett, bleeding and half-mad with rage, ran down the stairs after Gertie. As he did so the dog followed him, and, rushing past him, bounded out of sight.
The old man’s first impulse was to follow the fugitives.
But he remembered his treasures lay unguarded upstairs.
‘Curse her!’ he growled, ‘Let her go. She’d ha’ robbed me; that’s what she’d ha’ done. And arter all these years as I’ve been a good friend to her, too! She wasn’t on that lay alone, though. Some of my pals has got scent of my cupboard and put her up to this. It’s lucky I spotted the game in time.’
Heckett convinced himself that he had fallen on some scheme to rob him, and he determined to nip it in the bud. All that night he lay with a loaded pistol under his head, and the next morning he made arrangements to sell his business, and to move his ‘traps’ to fresh diggings.
‘The gal can go out to starve and earn her own livin’; and a good job,’ he said to himself; ‘she was getting in the way as it was.’
But having made his arrangements, and his anger against Gertie having cooled down a little, he began to wonder where she could have gone to.
Then, with the cunning of his class, he concluded that she would go to the person who had instigated her to examine his hidden treasure.
‘I’ll find her somehow,’ he said; ‘and then I shall see who’s playing double with Josh Heckett. Whoever it is ‘ll pay for it pretty handsome before I’ve done with’em.’