The Greatest Thrillers of Fergus Hume. Fergus Hume

      "What d' I care? Who'll git it?"

      "I will!" replied Vark, coolly, rising.

      "You?" Bill recoiled for a moment, and sprang forward. "Cuss you! Y'd sell me, y' shark! Gimme my knife!"

      "Not such a fool, Mr. Smith!"

      Vark threw the knife into a distant corner of the room, and leveled a revolver at the bullet head of the advancing burglar. Bill fell back for the moment--fell into the arms of two policemen.

      He gave a roar like a wild beast.

      "Trapped, by---!" he yelled, and struggled to get free.

      The next moment Hagar and Bolker were in the room, and Bill glared at one and the other.

      "Y' trapped me, d--n y'!" said he; "wait till I git out!"

      "You'll kill me, I suppose?" said Hagar, scornfully.

      "No; shawn't kill you, nor yet that little d--l with th' 'unch. There's on'y one cove as I'd swing for--that beastly thief of a lawyer!"

      Vark recoiled before the glare in the man's eyes; and as Bill, foaming and cursing, was hurried out of the room, he looked at Hagar with a nervous smile.

      "That's bluff," he said, feebly.

      "I don't think so," replied Hagar, quietly.

      "Good-by, Mr. Vark. I'm afraid you won't live more than seven years; there will be a funeral about the time of Larkey Bill's release."

      When she went out, Bolker grinned at the lawyer and, with frightful pantomime, he drew a stroke across his neck. Vark looked at the clasp knife in the corner and shivered. The mandarin on the table rolled and smiled always.

      Chapter IX.

       The Eighth Customer and the Pair of Boots

       Table of Contents

      He was a very little lad, reaching scarcely to the top of the counter; but he had a sharp, keen face, intelligent beyond his years with the precocity taught by poverty. Hagar, looking at his shock of red hair, and the shrewd blue eyes which peered up at her face, guessed that he was Irish; and when he spoke, his brogue proved her guess to be a correct one. She stared at the ragged, bare-footed urchin with some amusement, for this was the smallest customer she had yet had. But Micky--so he gave his name--was quite as sharp as customers of more mature years--in fact, sharper. He bargained astutely with Hagar, and evidently had made up his small mind not to leave the shop until he obtained his own price for the article he was pawning. This was a pair of strong laborer's boots, hob-nailed and stout in the soles. The red-haired boy heaved them on to the counter with a mighty clatter, and demanded seven shillings thereon.

      "I'll give you five," said Hagar, after examination.

      "Ah, now, would ye?" piped the brat, with shrill impudence. "Is it taking the bread out av me mouth ye w'uld be afther? Sure, me mother sid sivin bob, an' 'tis sivin I want."

      "Where is your mother, boy? Why did she not come herself?"

      "Mother's comforting herself wid the drink round the carner; an' sure I'm aqual to gittin' th' dirthy money meself! Sivin bob, alannah, ant may the hivins be yer bed!"

      "Where did you get these boots?" said Hagar, asking another question, and ignoring the persuasive tone of the lad. "I see there are letters marked in nails on the two soles."

      "Ah! there moight be," assented Micky, complacently; "there's a 'G' on one foot, an' a 'K' on the other; but me fawther's name is Patrick Dooley, an' he's in Amerikey, worse luck. Mother got thim boots foive days gone in the counthry. They wos a prisint, me darlin'; an' as they wos too big fur me an' me mother, we pop them, dear, fur sivin bob."

      "Take six," said Hagar, persuasively; "they aren't worth more."

      "Howly saints! listen to the lies av her!" shrieked Micky. "Six, is it? An' how can I go to me mother wid a shillin' wrong? Sure, it's breakin' me hid she'd be afther, wid a quart pot! An' what's money to the loikes av you, me dear?"

      "Here--here! take the seven shillings!" said Hagar, anxious to rid herself of this shrieking imp. "I'll make out the ticket in the name of Mrs. Dooley."

      "Mrs. Bridget Dooley, av Park Lane," said Micky, grandly. "Sure that will do as well as any other place. It's on the tramp we are--bad luck to it! If 'twasn't for thim boots we got in Marlow, it's without a copper we'd be."

      "Here! take the ticket and money. I daresay you stole the boots."

      "Is it takin' away me characther y'd be afther? Stalin'? Wasn't thim boots a prisint to me, for pure charity an' love av the saints? Ah, well, I'm goin'--I'm goin'! Sivin bob; it's little enough onyhow; but phwat's the use of lookin' for justice to Oireland in the counthry av the Saxon toyrant?" and Micky went out, singing "The Wearing of the Green" in a very shrill and unpleasant voice.

      Hagar put the boots away, never expecting that a story could be attached to so ordinary a pawned article. But two days afterwards she was reading an account of a murder, and, to her surprise, the very boots, now reposing on a high shelf in her shop, were mentioned as a link in the chain of evidence likely to hang the assassin. Coincidences occur in real life oftener than the world cares to admit; and this was a case in point. A pair of boots with initials on the soles had been pawned in her shop; and now--scarcely forty-eight hours afterwards---she was reading about them in a newspaper. It was strange--almost incredible; but, to quote a trite and well-worn saying, "Truth is stranger than fiction." Briefly, the history of the crime was as follows:

      Sir Leslie Crane, of Welby Park, Marlow, had been shot by his gamekeeper, George Kerris. It seemed that the man was engaged to marry a farmer's daughter, Laura Brenton by name; and Sir Leslie had been paying the girl more attention than was consistent with their respective positions. Kerris had remonstrated with the baronet, who had forthwith discharged him. A week later, Crane, having gone out after dinner for a stroll in the park, had been found dead by a pond known as the Queen's Pool, which was some little distance from the gates. Footmarks had been discovered in the soft mud near the water, which showed that the assassin had worn boots marked on the soles with the letters "G" and "K." These had been traced, through a Marlow bootmaker, to George Kerris The man had been arrested, but neither denied his guilt nor affirmed his innocence. Still, as the report said, there could be no doubt that he had killed Sir Leslie in a fit of jealous rage, and also because he had been discharged. The boots could not be found, so undoubtedly the man had got rid of them after wearing them on the night of the murder. The report in the paper concluded by stating that the dead baronet was succeeded by his cousin, now Sir Lewis Crane.

      "Strange that the boots should have been pawned in London," thought Hagar, when she finished reading this article, "and stranger still that they should have been pawned by that Irish lad! On the day he came here, he said the boots had been given to him five days previously. It is two days since then, so that in all makes seven days. H'm! To-day is the twenty-first of August, so I suppose Kerris must have given the boots to Micky on the fourteenth. Let me see the date of the crime."

      On examination she found that the murder had been committed on the night of the twelfth of August, and that Kerris had been arrested on the thirteenth. Here Hagar came to a full stop and reflected. If Kerris had been in jail on the fourteenth--as from the report in the paper he undoubtedly was--he could not have given the boots to Micky on that day. Yet the Irish lad had confessed to receiving the boots at Marlow, and had given a time which, as reckoned out by Hagar, corresponded with the fourteenth of the month. But on that day the man who owned the boots was under lock and key.

      "There's something wrong here," said Hagar to herself, on making this discovery. "Perhaps Kerris is innocent in spite of the evidence of the boots. What am I to do?"

      It was difficult to say. Certainly the accused man did not assert his innocence--a fact which was rather astonishing on the face of it. No one would let themselves be hanged for a murder which they did not commit. Yet, if Kerris were guilty, he must have had an