“This carrion,” Ricker was saying, prodding the prostrate officer with the toe of a hobnailed boot, “is too much of a blunderhead to kill outright, and it would be a shame to deprive the rats of such a splendid spread of live meat. But, after all, seeing that the game is up here as far as I am concerned, I will let the palace of justice keep their numbskull. There’s a lout that will let them know in twenty-four hours after we are gone.”
The man on the floor spluttered in his gag and strained at his bonds.
“Heigho, Casper,” yawned Ricker, rising and stretching himself, “it’s soon farewell to Warsaw for us; we were good citizens, eh, Casper? We leave our mark, too—and we will also leave that crazy Hamar if he does not show his ugly face within the next ten minutes.”
Ricker consulted a heavy gold watch, which he produced from the folds of his woollen shirt. Two gunny-sacks, bulging at both ends and roped in the middle, might have furnished evidence that the silversmith was taking most of his stock with him.
The boys, taking turn about at the look-in point, concluded to sheer off for the time being, when Ricker bestowed a parting kick upon the trussed policeman, shouldered the gunny-sacks and started for the door of the counting house.
“I suppose Hamar will know where to find us?” questioned the man called Casper.
“Blast him for a crank, there is no telling anything about him,” fumed Ricker; “he had the hour pounded into his addled brain, and it is nobody’s fault but his own if he misses fire.”
Billy and Henri were prepared for the sport of hide and seek, until they could learn the direction that Ricker and his companion proposed to take.
Each took a corner of the counting house at the rear, and each on the alert to work the disappearing act.