“Look here, ’op it, guv’nor.” Peter spoke with dangerous calmness. “I don’t want no blinking scenes ’ere. The police ain’t too friendly as it is, and this is my best pitch.”
“But why didn’t you let your pals know you were back, old man?” said Jimmy feebly. “Your governor, and all of us?”
“See ’ere, mister,” the girl stepped forward, “ ’e ain’t got no pals—only me. Ain’t that so, Billy?” she turned to the man, who nodded.
“I looks after him, I do, d’yer see?” went on the girl. “And I don’t want no one coming butting their ugly heads in. It worries ’im, it does.”
“But do you mean to say——” began Jimmy dazedly, and then he broke off. At last he understood, something if not all. In some miraculous way Peter had not been killed; Peter was there in front of him—but a new Peter; a Peter whose memory of the past had completely gone, whose mind was as blank as a clean-washed slate.
“How long have you been doing this?” he asked quietly.
“Never you mind,” said the girl sharply. “He ain’t nothing to you. I looks after ’im, I do.”
Not for a second did Jimmy hesitate, though deep down inside him there came a voice that whispered—“Don’t be a fool! Pretend it’s a mistake. Clear off! Molly will never know.” And if for a moment his hands clenched with the strength of the sudden hideous temptation, his voice was calm and quiet as he spoke.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” He looked at her gently. “He is something to me—my greatest friend, whom I thought was dead.”
And now Peter was staring at him fixedly, forgetting even to turn the handle of the machine.