"Hark at him!" he said. "Before we're through I'll teach him manners too."
And he patted his knife.
V
THE VICTIM
Cobb was crossing the boulevard, and was actually evading a taxi-cab at the moment when he sighted the little comedy which he made haste to interrupt. Upon the further pavement, Savinien, whom he once believed in as a poet, had stopped in the shelter of a shop door, an unlighted cigarette between his lips, and was prospecting his vast person with gentle little slaps for a match. The current of the pavement rippled by him; the great expanse of his back was half turned to it, so that he and his search were in a kind of privacy, and the situation was favorable to the two inconspicuous men who approached him from either side. The one, with an air of hurry, ran against him at the instant, when he was exploring his upper waistcoat pocket, staggered and caught at him with mumbled apologies; the other, with the sure and suave movement of an expert, slid an arm between the two bodies, withdrew it, and was making off.
"Hi!" shouted Cobb, as the taxi shaved past him, and came across with a rush. People stopped to see what he was shouting at, and a group of them, momentarily blocking the pavement, made it easy for the lanky Cobb to bowl the fleeing pickpocket against the wall and lay secure hands on him.
"You come along with me," said Cobb, who always forgot his French when he was excited.
The thief, helpless under the grip on the nape of his neck, whined and stammered. He was a rat of a man, white-faced, pale-eyed, with a sagging, uncertain mouth.
"M'sieur!" he whimpered. "But I have got nothing! It is a mistake.
The other man——"
Cobb thrust him at the end of a long arm to where Savinien stood, the cigarette still unlighted. The other man, of course, was gone.