In those few seconds it seemed to me I lived a year. I had no time to
think--no time to realize that if I failed nothing could save my
appearance at Bow Street on the following morning as a common pickpocket.
I gripped the pocketbook from his hand and, without changing a muscle,
dropped it into the yawning overcoat pocket of the bucolic gentleman.
The moment was over and passed. Mr. Parker, with a movement forward, had
covered my proceedings. I had been face to face with death years before,
but I had never felt quite the same thrill.
"This way, gentlemen, if you please," Mr. Cullen directed softly.
"You will not object to my accompanying you?" I asked.
"Certainly not," Mr. Cullen replied; "I, in fact, am not sure that it
would not be my duty to ask you to come."
"One moment!" I begged.
Mr. Cullen paused.
"The gentleman who made this charge," I went on, "seems to me to be in a
very uncertain condition. Might I suggest that, before you commit yourself
to taking these people to the police station, you just make sure he really
has been robbed of his pocketbook?"
"Had it here," the old gentleman declared; "right in this pocket! Look for
yourself--gone!"
"The old gentleman scarcely seems to me," I remarked, "to be in a fit
condition to know which pocket it was in.
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