the money from the agent. Now, promise me you won’t go and tell my brother!”
He held him hard in the tension of desperation, and Kitchin promised. Then he went swiftly away, and they were left alone in their cells again. Robert, utterly cast down from his high exaltation, now cursed bitterly and morosely against the police and the injustice of his luck and destiny.
Meanwhile, Blake, whose final and chief resource, it had now become pitifully evident, was nothing in himself but just the accident of birth that had made him nephew to a powerful and wealthy man, kept declaring in a loud voice of arrogant bravado that “any Blake agent in the United States will cash my personal cheque for fifty thousand dollars any time I ask for it! Yes, sir, any of them—I don’t give a damn where it is! He’s on his way here now! You’ll see! We’ll be out of here in five minutes now!”—a boastful assurance that was hardly out of his mouth before they heard steps approaching rapidly along the corridor and, even as Blake cried out triumphantly, “What did I tell you?” and as Eugene leaped up and ran to the door of his cell, clutching the bars with both hands, and peering out with bloodshot eyes like a caged gorilla, Kitchin entered the cell-room, followed by a policeman, and—Eugene’s brother!
Luke looked at him for a moment with a troubled expression and said: “Why, how did you get in here? What’s happened to you?” he said, suddenly noticing his battered face. “Are you hurt, Eugene?”
The boy made no reply but looked at him with sullen desperation and jerked his head towards the cells where his two companions were imprisoned—a gesture that pleaded savagely for silence. And Luke, instantly reading the meaning of that gesture, turned and called out cheerfully:
“Now you boys just hold on a minute and I’ll have you out of here.”
Then he came up close to the barred door of the cell where his younger brother stood and, his face stern with care, he said in a low voice: “What happened? Who hit you? Did any of these bastards hit you? I want to know.”
A policeman was standing behind him looking at them with narrowed eyes, and the boy said desperately:
“Get us out of here. I’ll tell you later.”
Then Luke went away with the policeman to pay their fines. When he had gone, Eugene turned bitterly on Kitchin, who had remained with the boys, accusing him of breaking his word by going to Luke. Kitchin’s dark evasive eyes shifted nervously in his head as he answered:
