empty-fingered

Updated: May 7, 2025

All that he could get out of me was an assurance that he might feel himself very lucky if he fingered the proffered third, and a threat that if he didn't accept it quickly he'd find himself empty-fingered altogether and probably minus a sound vertebral column into the bargain. And in the end he sobbed out an agreement to the terms, and then flopped down amongst the bushes, deadly sick.

Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne - The Recipe for Diamonds