l
vociferating orders.

"Hark at him!" he said. "Before we're through I'll teach him manners
too."

And he patted his knife.

V

THE VICTIM

Cobb was crossing the boulevard, and was actually evading a taxi-cab
at the moment when he sighted the little comedy which he made haste
to interrupt. Upon the further pavement, Savinien, whom he once
believed in as a poet, had stopped in the shelter of a shop door, an
unlighted cigarette between his lips, and was prospecting his vast
person with gentle little slaps for a match. The current of the
pavement rippled by him; the great expanse of his back was half
turned to it, so that he and his search were in a kind of privacy,
and the situation was favorable to the two inconspicuous men who
approached him from either side. The one, with an air of hurry, ran
against him at the instant, when he was exploring his upper waistcoat
pocket, staggered and caught at him with mumbled apologies; the
other, with the sure and suave movement of an expert, slid an arm
between the two bodies, withdrew it, and was making off.

"Hi!" shouted Cobb, as the taxi shaved past him, and came across with
a rush. People stopped to see what he was shouting at, and a group of
them, momentarily blocking the pavement, made it easy for the lanky
Cobb to bowl the fleeing pickpocket against the wall and lay secure
hands on him.

"You come along with me," said Cobb, who always forgot his French
when he was excited.

The thief, helpless under the grip on the nape of his neck, whined
and stammered. He was a rat of a man, white-faced, pale-eyed, with a
sagging, uncertain mouth.

"M'sieur!" he whimpered. "But I have got nothing! It is a mistake.
The other man----"

Cobb thrust him at the end of a long arm to where Savinien stood, the
cigarette still unlighted. The other man, of course, was gone.

"Hullo, Savinien," said Cobb. "You know you've been robbed, don't
you? I just caught this fellow as he was bolting. See what you've
lost, won't you?"

"Lost!" Savinien stared, a little stupidly, Cobb thought, and
suddenly smiled. He was bulky to the point of grotesqueness, with a
huge white torpid face and a hypochondriac stoop of the shoulders,
and the hand that traveled over his waistcoat, from pocket to pocket,
looked as if it had been shaped out of dough.

"Well!" said Cobb impatiently, stilling the thief's whimpering
protests with a quick grip of the hand that held him.

"My watch," murmured Savini