dye. It is one thing to hand over to the police their natural prey, a
thief taken red-handed, but quite another, and a much more harrowing
one, to have him slip through your fingers, precipitate himself into
mid-air, and drop four stories to the pavement, scattering his brains
far and wide. There was not a vestige of hope for the poor wretch.

Unnerved, I groped to the window and peered downward for his remains.
My first glance proved my regrets to be superfluous. Beneath my window,
which, owing to the crowded condition of the hotel, opened on a side
street, a fire-escape descended jaggedly; and upon it, just out of arm's
reach, my recent guest clung and wobbled, struggling with an attack of
natural vertigo before proceeding toward the earth.

By this time my rage was such that I would have followed that little
thief almost anywhere. It was not the dizziness of the yawning void that
stayed me. I should have climbed the Matterhorn with all cheerfulness to
catch him at the top. But sundry visions of the figure I would cut, the
crowd that might gather, and the probable ragging in the morning papers,
were too much for me, and I sorrowfully admitted that the game was not
worth the price.

The little man's nerves, meanwhile, seemed to be steadying. Feeling
each step, he began cautiously to work his way down. To my wrath he
even looked up at me and indulged in a grimace--but his triumph was
ill-timed, for at that very instant I beheld, strolling along the street
below, humming and swinging his night-stick, as leisurely, complacent,
and stalwart a representative of the law as one could wish to see.

"Hi, there! Officer!" I shouted lustily. My hail, if not my words,
reached him; he glanced up, saw the figure on the ladder, and was seized