“Only a glimpse.”
“Well, he’s got me—just as I expected. But he didn’t get the documents.”
“What documents?”
“Mother Flintstone’s. They’re here.”
The wounded speaker laid one hand on his left breast. He tried to rise, but sank again to the stones, and Billy could only look on, white-faced and breathless.
“You want a doctor and the perlice,” he said at last.
“Neither one,” growled the man through set teeth. “I don’t want them, I say. I’m not dead yet, though they gave me a close call to-night. Help me up. There, you see I can stand all right. I feel better already. I’m worth ten dead men, and in an hour I’ll be worth fifty. Come, let us get out of this.”
Billy was not loath to go, and they glided from the scene and struck the street in a few seconds.
“Great Cæsar!” cried the boy, falling back from the man the moment he got a glimpse of him in the lamplight. “Be you the devil or Tom Walker——”
The man stopped the boy by throwing his hand to his face.