"My opinion is that it may get as lively as one of your own broncos," I explained.
"I'll certainly hope for the worst," he commented.
I turned Jimmie over to my friends and spent the afternoon with a college classmate who was doing newspaper work on the Herald. In looking up a third man who also had belonged to our fraternity, time slipped away faster than we had noticed. It was getting along toward sunset when I separated from my friends to take the interurban for San Pedro at the big electric station. Before my car reached the port, dusk was falling.
Whistling as I went, I walked briskly down the hill toward the wharf. As I passed an alley my name was called. I stopped in my stride and turned. Then a jagged bolt of fire seared my brain. My knees sagged. I groped in the darkness, staggering as I moved. About that time I must have lost consciousness.
When I came to myself I was lying in the alley and a man was going through my clothes. A second man directed him from behind a revolver leveled at my head. Both of them were masked.
"I tell you it ain't on him," the first man was saying.
"We want to make dead sure of that, mate," the other answered.
"If he's got it the damned thing is sewed beneath his skin," retorted the first speaker.
"He's coming to. We'll take his papers and his pocketbook and set sail," the leader decided.
I could hear their retreating footsteps echo down the alley and was quite sensible of the situation without being able to rise, or even cry out. For five minutes perhaps I lay there before I was sufficiently master of myself to get up. This I did very uncertainly, a little at a time, for my head was still spinning like a top. Putting my hand to the back of it I was surprised to discover that my palm was red with blood.