“Keep still, you blackguard!”
Jimmy kept still. The bull-terrier, with the same abstracted air, was beginning a casual inspection of his right trouser-leg.
Relations between Spike and the bulldog, meanwhile, had become more strained. The sudden flinging up of the former’s arms had had the worst effect on the animal’s nerves. Spike, the croucher on all-fours, he might have tolerated; but Spike, the semaphore, inspired him with thoughts of battle. He was growling in a moody, reflective manner. His eye was full of purpose.
It was probably this that caused Spike to look at the householder. Till then he had been too busy to gaze elsewhere, but now the bulldog’s eye had become so unpleasant that he cast a pathetic glance up at the man by the door.
“Gee!” he cried, as he did so. “It’s de boss! Say, boss, call off de dawg. It’s sure goin’ to nip de old head of me.”
The other lowered his revolver in surprise.
“So it’s you, is it, you limb of Satan?” he remarked. “I thought I had seen that damned red head of yours before. What are you doing in my house?”
Spike uttered a moan of self-pity.
“Boss,” he cried, “I’ve had a raw deal. Dere’s bin coarse work goin’ on. Listen! It’s dis way. Honest, I didn’t know dis was where you lived. A fat Swede—Ole Larsen his monaker is—tells me dis house belongs to a widder-loidy what lives here all alone, and has all kinds of silver and all dat, and she’s down Sout’ visiting, so dat de house is empty. Gee, I’m onto his curves now. I’m wise. Listen, boss. Him and me starts a scrappin’ last week over somet’in, and I t’inks he’s got it in bad for me, because I puts it all over him. But t’ree days ago up he comes and says, ‘Let’s be fren’s,’ and puts me wise on dis joint. I’ll soak it to dat Swede! Dis was what he was woikin’ for. He knows you lives here, and he t’inks to put me in bad wit youse. It’s a raw deal, boss!”
The big man listened to this sad tale of Grecian gifts in silence. Not so the bulldog, which growled ominously from start to finish. Spike glanced nervously in its direction.