“Not going?” he cried. “My dear Cole, I can’t apologize sufficiently for my abrupt desertion of you, much less for the cause. It was my man, just come in from the show, and gone up the back way. I accused him of listening to our conversation. Of course he denies it; but it really doesn’t matter, as I’m sorry to say he’s much too ‘fresh’ (as they call it down here) to remember anything to-morrow morning. I let him have it, I can tell you. Varlet! Caitiff! But if you bolt off on the head of it, I shall go back and sack him into the bargain!”
the thief had gone as he had come ere my toes halted aching amid the debris.
A useless little balcony - stone slab and iron railing - jutted out from my window. I thought I saw a hand on the railing, another on the slab, then both together on the lower level for one instant before they disappeared.