“You must explain.”
“Just as if you didn’t know anything, you little gutter rat! To be plain, the man you were talking to to-night told you to dog my steps. I know that much.”
“Then that keeps me from explainin’,” smiled Billy, whereat the man’s face grew dark.
“No insolence! Little chicks get their necks wrung same as old ones.”
Billy leaped from the chair and sprang forward, but he was arrested by the hand of the fellow and held fast.
“Tell me the truth. He sent you after me?”
For once in his life at least Mulberry Billy was terrified.
“Yes,” he said.
“Nick Carter they call him, don’t they?”
“Yes.”