Page:Edgar Wallace--The book of all-power.djvu/169

 Lodge. When do you go to the chair—he's due to-day," he jerked his thumb at the crooning priest. "I can't say I'm sorry. So far as I am concerned he's been dead ever since they put him here."

Malcolm recognized the little man in a flash. It was his acquaintance of London.

"You don't remember me," smiled Malcolm, "but what is your particular crime?"

The little man's face creased with laughter.

"Shootin' up Tcherekin," he said tersely, and Malinkoff's eyebrows rose.

"You're—Beem—is that how you pronounce it?"

"Bim," said the other, "B—I—M. Christian name Cherry—Cherry Bim; see the idea? Named after the angels. Say, when I was a kid—I've got a photograph way home in Brooklyn to prove it—I had golden hair in long ringlets!"

Malinkoff chuckled softly.

"This is the American who held up Tcherekin and nearly got away with ten million roubles," he said.

Cherry Bim had taken down his Derby and had adjusted it at the angle demanded by the circumstances.

"That's right—but I didn't know they was roubles. I should excite my mentality over waste paper! No, we got word that it was French money."