I had now reached the second block on the south side of the street, that which contained the vacant lots and the overshadowing trees, beneath which the bootblack's stand was placed by day; and here again I paused and listened, in the hope that in the quiet about me I might hear and recognise Lossing's slow, even step. But no step was heard, and I moved on.
'It is early yet,' I assured myself; 'so early that thugs and night-birds are hardly likely to be abroad.'
I was now opposite the bootblack's stand on the skeleton uprights which supported his rainy-day awning, and the platform upon which his patrons sat enthroned in state—and here memory fails me.
I had turned my gaze upon the gibbet-like uprights, and simultaneously, as it now seems to me, a voice shouted my name; but the sound and something else came together—something bringing with it a sting and the sounds of a rampant engine. I saw a myriad of flashing lights, heard a tremendous crash, and—that was all.
I came to myself a little later, outstretched upon a wire cot, and with a cretonne cushion beneath what felt like a very large and much-battered prize pumpkin, but what was in reality my head. There was a glow of electric light all about and above me, and bottles of all sizes and colours on every side.
Slowly it dawned upon my dazed senses that I was in the corner drug-store where I had more than once called, on my return from Washington Avenue, to buy a cigar.
I stirred slightly, and then the faces of Dave Brainerd, Lossing, the druggist, and a big policeman came suddenly into view surrounding my cot.
'Hello, old man, glad to see you back,' was Dave's characteristic greeting, and the druggist, who proved to be a physician as well, promptly placed a finger on my pulse.
'Better,' he said laconically, and turning, took from the desk at his back a glass which he held before me. 'Can you lift your head and drink this?' he asked.
I made a feeble effort, and with Dave's assistance got my head high enough to swallow the medicine.