"Yes; and come to think of it, the back door was wide open when I first came in for the water."
"Then they went out that way."
There was a pause.
"Did you know them?" asked the old man, curiously.
"I knew one of them in a way. The other introduced himself to me while I was on my way over here."
And Robert related how he had fallen in with Jim Huskin, and how the sharper had gotten him to enter the tenement hallway.
"You're lucky to escape with your life," said Lemuel Branley. "You don't know how bad some of the criminals in Chicago are."
"I must try to get on their track. I can't afford to lose my money, nor the watch, either." And Robert's face grew serious. The watch was the one his father had given him, and without the money how was he to purchase the map Dick Marden was so anxious to possess?
"You'll have to hustle to find them rogues, to my way of thinking," said Lemuel Branley. "Like as not they'll quit Chicago just as soon as possible."
Robert stood up. He felt strangely weak and far from able to pursue anybody.