On it came. From the position of the ray Jimmy could see that the burglar was approaching on his side of the table. Though, until that day, he had not been in the room for two months, its geography was clearly stamped on his mind’s eye. He knew almost to a foot where his visitor was standing. Consequently when, rising swiftly from the chair he made a football dive into the darkness, it was no speculative dive. It had a conscious aim, and it was not restrained by any uncertainty as to whether the road to the burglar’s knees was clear or not.
His shoulder bumped into a human leg. His arms closed instantaneously on it and pulled. There was a yelp of dismay and a crash. The lantern bounced away across the room and wrecked itself on the roof of the steam-heater. Its owner collapsed in a heap on top of Jimmy.
Jimmy, underneath at the fall, speedily put himself uppermost with a twist of his body. He had every advantage. The burglar was a small man, and had been taken very much by surprise, and any fight there might have been in him in normal circumstances had been shaken out of him by the fall. He lay still, not attempting to struggle.
Jimmy half rose and, pulling his prisoner by inches to the door, felt up the wall till he found the electric-light button.
The yellow glow which flooded the room disclosed a short, stocky youth of obviously Bowery extraction. A shock of vivid red hair was the first thing about him that caught the eye. A poet would have described it as Titian. Its proprietor’s friends and acquaintances probably called it “carrots”. Looking up at Jimmy from under this wealth of crimson was a not unpleasing face. It was not handsome certainly, but there were suggestions of a latent good-humour. The nose had been broken at one period of its career, and one of the ears was undeniably of the cauliflower type; but these are little accidents which may happen to any high-spirited young gentleman. In costume the visitor had evidently been guided rather by individual taste than by the dictates of fashion. His coat was of rusty-black, his trousers of grey, picked out with stains of various colours. Beneath the coat was a faded red-and-white sweater. A hat of soft felt lay on the floor by the table.
The cut of the coat was poor, and the sit of it spoiled by a bulge in one of the pockets. Diagnosing this bulge correctly, Jimmy inserted his hand and drew out a dingy revolver.
“Well?” he said, rising.
Like most people, he had often wondered what he should do if he were to meet a burglar; and he had always come to the conclusion that curiosity would be his chief emotion. His anticipations had proved perfectly correct. Now that he had abstracted his visitor’s gun he had no wish to do anything but engage him in conversation. A burglar’s life was something so entirely outside his experience. He wanted to learn the burglar’s point of view. Incidentally, he reflected with amusement, as he recalled his wager, he might pick up a few useful hints.
The man on the floor sat up and rubbed the back of his head ruefully.
“Gee!” he muttered. “I t’ought some guy had t’rown de building at me.”