“Ah!” he said, and straightened up. “After all it is not so bad as I feared. They got nothing.”
He made a manful effort to walk, but tottered reeled. Nikky caught him.
“Careful!” he said. “The colossus was doubtless the one who got us boxy, and we are likely to feel his weight for some time. Where do you live?”
Peter Niburg was not for saying. He would have preferred to pursue his solitary if uncertain way. But Nikky was no half Samaritan. Toward Peter Niburg’s lodging, then, they made a slow progress.
“These recent gentlemen,” said Nikky, as they rent along, “they are, perhaps, personal enemies?”
“I do not know. I saw nothing.”
“One was very large, a giant of a man. Do you now such a man?”
Peter Niburg reflected. He thought not. “But I know why they came,” he said unguardedly. “Some early morning, my friend, you will hear of man lying dead in the street, That man will be I.”
“The thought has a moral,” observed Nikky. “Do not trust yourself out-of-doors at night.”
But he saw that Peter Niburg kept his hand over breast-pocket.