“Well, you can call it what you like,” went on Noddy, looking at his stained hands, “but I’m not as low as that yet. I want this deal to go through as much as any of you fellows, but I’ll not step over a certain line, and the sooner you know it the better.”
“You don’t mean to say you’ll peach on us?” asked Randall.
“Not unless I have to,” answered Noddy, calmly. “It depends on how far you go.”
“Noddy’s right,” remarked Randall, with a wink at the other two. “I’m opposed to hurting the child. We’ll only use him for scaring Larry and his mother into doing what we want. After all, we’re giving the young cub and the widow a fair price for this land. We’re taking a lot of risks, and it’s only fair we should be paid for ’em. It isn’t as if we were trying to get the land for nothing.”
“Oh, I’m with you in anything reasonable,” spoke the blue-handed man. “Only, don’t hurt the little kid. That’s my last word. I used to have a little boy once—before I went to the bad,” and he turned his head away.
For a long time the gang sat up and discussed their programme. Their talk revealed that they had laid a well-planned plot to get possession of Jimmy, in order to have a hold over Larry. They had watched and schemed to kidnap him, but Larry’s watchfulness had foiled them a number of times. At last, as has been seen, the opportunity came most unexpectedly.
Peter, who had been appointed to shadow Larry at different times, watched him set out for the circus. The former copy boy, whom association with bad men had made sharp-witted, had seen his chance in the Garden, and taken advantage of it.
Jimmy had been brought to one of the worst dens in New York’s Chinatown. It was hired by a gang of white men who were worse than the lowest Celestial criminals. The room, the door of which had a rising sun painted on it, was the headquarters of a notorious band of men.
The existence of the gang was known to the police, but so cunning were the members, and so elusive were they, that few, and only the least important, had ever been arrested.
It was into the power of this gang and to their headquarters that Jimmy had been brought, a fate which his worst enemy, provided he had one, would never have wished him.