Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/76

56 spiration froze upon his face; yet even with the policeman’s tall hat poked inside the omnibus, his twitching fingers continued their spasmodic, hopeless search.

“The flash young spark!” whispered the cad. “Just you frighten ’im, Sir Robert.”

“Now then, come along!” said the officer.

“Good God!” cried Tom.

“You’ll get all the more for swearing; now, out you come afore you’re made.”

“Not just yet,” returned the culprit, and handed the conductor one of two halfcrowns found that very moment in a scrap of crumpled paper. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find it before. Kindly give me change.”

“Where to?” growled the cad, as the constable stepped down.

Tom did not hear.

“Can’t you answer? Where to?”

“Oh, as far as you go!”

Tom’s eyes were on the crumpled scrap, and filled to overflowing by half-a-dozen ill-written words.

CHAPTER 8

HUE AND CRY

“Wishin good luk, yours respeckfull, J. Butterfield.”

Those were the words that made full the warm heart and speaking eyes of Thomas Erichsen. He pictured the furtive waggoner slipping the halfcrowns into the waistcoat pocket where he had found them, while he himself lay serenely prone, with the long arm of the law already