"For changing your minds," said Donnegan, and left them.
And afterward the Pedlar murmured with an oddly twisted face: "Cat-eye, Joe. He can see in the dark! But I told you he was worth savin'."
"Speakin' in general," said Joe, "which you ain't hardly ever wrong when you get stirred up about a thing."
"He's something new," the Pedlar said wisely.
"Ay, he's rare."
"But talkin' aside, suppose he was to meet up with Lord Nick?"
The smile of Joe Rix was marvelously evil.
"You got a great mind for great things," he declared. "You ought to of been in politics."
In the meantime the doctor had been found. The wound had been cleansed. It was a cruel one, for the bullet had torn its way through flesh and sinew, and for many a week the fighting arm of Jack Landis would be useless. It had, moreover, carried a quantity of cloth into the wound, and it was almost impossible to cleanse the hole satisfactorily. As for the bullet itself, it had whipped cleanly through, at that short distance making nothing of its target.
A door was knocked off its hinges. But before the wounded man was placed upon it, Lebrun appeared at the door into Milligan's. He was never a very cheery fellow in appearance, and now he looked like a demoniac. He went straight to Joe Rix and the skeleton form of the Pedlar. He raised one finger as he looked at them.