Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/379

Rh boon companion, proud of his boy and tenderly affectionate. And Mickey, in his excited imagination, was the robber captain, leading his blind wife by the hand, his pockets full of the miser's gold, narrowly watching the policeman at a street corner, and ready, on the instant of interference, to throw himself on that minion of the law and throttle him to death. Happily, the streets were dark; the villain did not leap out from any doorway to intercept him with a file of gendarmes; and Mickey saw with relief, the light at the door of his underground retreat shiningly awaiting him—and saw no spy watching to betray his hiding-place to the chief of police.

He stopped. "Go on ahead dhere," he ordered. "I 'll folly in a jiffy." He added: "Don't tell 'm 't yuh seen me."

Mr. Flynn nodded with a ponderous sagacity, patted Mickey on the shoulder, and went on alone. As soon as he had disappeared, unchallenged, in the door of the delicatessen shop, Mickey turned back, crouching in the shadows, and proceeded to throw all the sleuths off his trail by doubling around the block. His elaborate precautions carried him, untracked, as far as the front of Schurz's butcher shop. But there the whole sidewalk lay in a blaze of light; and Mickey hid behind the wooden Indian of a tobacconist's shop, next door, planning a detour. It was indeed a dangerous pass. When he heard Schurz's door-latch click as a customer came out, he was quick to see that he might be discovered in a suspicious posture of guilt; and he