I came away feeling that I had made two friends well worth making. They were real men.
When I parted from my friend he took out of his pocket-book a card. "For my friends," he said, as he handed it to me. When I got to the light I read:
"Wm. Langton, Private Detective."
It was not until long afterward that I knew that the man he was following when he sprang on the car and I saved him was myself, and that I owed the attention to my kinsman and to Mr. Leigh, to whom Peck had given a rather sad account of me. My kinsman had asked him to ascertain how I lived.
I called on my new friend, Langton, earlier than he had expected. In my distress about Dix I consulted him the very next day and he undertook to get him back. I told him I had not a cent to pay him with at present, but some day I should have it and then——
"You'll never owe me a cent as long as you live," he said. "Besides, I'd like to find that dog. I remember him. He's a good one. You say you used the back stairway at times, opening on the alley near Mick Raffity's?"
"Yes."
He looked away out of the window with a placid expression.
"I wouldn't go down that way too often at night," he said presently.
"Why?"