"I got 'em out quick
as lightning. I covered 'em like a blanket."
"All right, Jim; it doesn't matter. That fellow's got other things to
think of than that."
He was wrong, however. The Romany was waiting outside in the darkness not
far away--watching and waiting.
CHAPTER X
FOR LUCK
Felix Marchand was in the highest spirits. His clean-shaven face was
wrinkled with smiles and sneers. His black hair was flung in waves of
triumph over his heavily-lined forehead; one hand was on his hip with
brave satisfaction, the other with lighted cigarette was tossed upwards
in exultation.
"I've got him. I've got him--like that!" he said transferring the
cigarette to his mouth, and clenching his right hand as though it could
not be loosed by an earthquake. "For sure, it's a thing finished as the
solder of a pannikin--like that."
He caught up a tin quart-pot from the bar-counter and showed the soldered
bottom of it.
He was alone in the bar of Barbazon's Hotel except for one person--the
youngest of the officials who had been retired from the offices of the
railways when Ingolby had merged them. This was a man who had got his
position originally by nepotism, and represented the worst elements of a
national life where the spoils system is rooted in the popular mind.
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