“I had him.”
“And let him slip through your fingers, eh?”
“That’s just the size of it,” replied Hare, with a laugh.
Burt looked disgusted.
“You seem to regard Blair’s escape in a humorous light,” he said.
“There can be no harm in a man laughing at himself.”
“How did it happen?”
The first part of the young detective’s narrative is already known to the reader. Frank, of course, did not find the Eye of Jobu in the water-pitcher.
When Bull went crashing through the window, which was on the third floor, Hare ran down-stairs and into the street. He expected to find his man dead, or at least badly wounded. He did not find him at all.
Blair had lighted on a canvas awning, and, by a sudden wrench, snapped the chain connecting the handcuffs. Then he slipped down one of the poles that supported the awning to the street. Beyond a severe shaking up the desperado was unhurt.