Homer Bulson surveyed his victim with gloating eyes. "He never sold better knock-out drops to any crook he served," he muttered. "Now I shall see what he has got in his pockets."
Bending over his victim, he began to search Sam Pepper's pockets. Soon he came across a thick envelope filled with letters and papers. He glanced over several of the sheets.
"All here," he murmured. "This is a lucky strike. Now Sam Pepper can whistle for his money."
He placed the things he had taken in his own pocket and hurried to the street.
Nobody had noticed what was going on, and he breathed a long sigh of relief.
"He won't dare to give me away," he said to himself. "If he does he'll go to prison for stealing the boy in the first place. And he'll never be able to prove that I drugged him because nobody saw the act. Yes, I am safe."
It did not take Homer Bulson long to reach his bachelor apartments, and once in his rooms he locked the door carefully.
Then, turning up a gas lamp, he sat down near it, to look over the papers he had taken from the insensible Pepper.
"I'll destroy the letters," he said. He smiled as he read one. "So Uncle Mark offered five thousand for the return of little David, eh? Well, it's lucky for me that Sam Pepper, alias Pepperill Sampson, didn't take him up. I reckon Pepper was too cut up over his discharge, for it kept him from getting another fat job." He took up the will. "Just what I want. Now, if Uncle Mark makes another will, I can always crop up with this one, and make a little trouble for somebody."