"Hullo, Savinien," said Cobb. "You know you've been robbed, don't you? I just caught this fellow as he was bolting. See what you've lost, won't you?"
"Lost!" Savinien stared, a little stupidly, Cobb thought, and suddenly smiled. He was bulky to the point of grotesqueness, with a huge white torpid face and a hypochondriac stoop of the shoulders, and the hand that traveled over his waistcoat, from pocket to pocket, looked as if it had been shaped out of dough.
"Well!" said Cobb impatiently, stilling the thief's whimpering protests with a quick grip of the hand that held him.
"My watch," murmured Savinien, still smiling though he were pleased and relieved to be the victim of a theft. "But let him go."
"Let him go! Oh no," said Cobb. "I'll hand him over to the police and we'll get the watch out of him."
"The watch is nothing," said Savinien. "Let him go before there arrives an agent, or it will be too late."
He came a pace nearer as he spoke, and nodded at Cobb confidentially, as though there were reasons for his request which he could not explain before the on-lookers.
"But——" began Cobb.
"Let him go," urged Savinien. "It is necessary. Afterwards, I will explain to you." He put his shapeless soft hand on Cobb's arm which held the thief.
"Let him go."