"Boss," cried the darky, "Ise gone!"
He was, too. His splay feet in their broken shoes fairly spurned the sidewalk as he darted northward, boring his way through the lanes of pedestrians, knocking people aside out of their stride and followed as he went by a wake of curses and grunts and curious glances. On a street where nearly everyone trots but few gallop, the sight of a running man catches the popular interest instantly, the common theory being that the runner has done something wrong and is trying to get away, else he would not run.
The instant the negro turned his back on him, Trencher slid inside the recessed entrance of the clothing store and flattened himself against its door. If chance had timed the occurrence just right he would win the reprieve that he required for what he meant next to undertake. And sure enough, as it turned out, chance had so timed it.
For just as he pressed his bulk into the recess the man hunt manifested itself. Bursting headlong out of the front of Wallinger's Hotel came a policeman—doubtlessly the one already seen by Trencher—and just behind the policeman a roughly dressed bearded man, and with these two, at their heels, a jostling impetuous swarm of other men, to be joined instantly by yet more men, who had run round the corner of the hotel from Thirty-ninth Street, instead of passing through its lobby. For the veriest fraction of time they all slowed down, casting about them with their eyes for a trail to follow.
Trencher, looking slantwise to the south, could see them plainly. The foremost members of the hesitating and uncertain group were not sixty feet from him. He forgot to breathe.
Then, all together, half a dozen pointing arms were flung out to the north.
"There he goes, officer, runnin'! See 'im yonder? See 'im?"
With a forward surge and a great clatter of feet the hunt was renewed. Past Trencher's refuge, with never a look this way or that, the policeman, the bearded man, all the rest of them, went pelting along the sidewalk, giving tongue like beagles. He could have put forth his hand and touched some of them as they sped by him. Numbers of foot travellers joined in the tail of the chase. Those who did not join it faced about to watch. Knowing that for a bit he would practically be free of the danger of close scrutiny, Trencher stepped out upon the sidewalk and looking north caught a glimpse of a bent fleeing figure scuttling up Broadway a block and a half beyond.
By this trick he had broken the trail and sent the pack off on a wrong scent. So far so good. He figured the outlook after this fashion: Set upon earning the double fee promised him the deluded darky, as he could tell, was still going at top speed, unconscious of any pursuit. If he continued to maintain his gait, if none tripped him, the probabilities were he would be round the corner in Forty-fifth Street, trying to find a mythical boarding house and a mythical hall boy named Fred, before the foremost of the runners behind overtook and seized him. Then would follow shouts, yells, a babble of accusations, denials of all wrongful intent by the frightened captive and explanations by him to the policeman of his reason for running so hard.