All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 39: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A THIEVES’ COMEDY. of the few—the very few—pickpock- ets—or dips, as they call themselves— in the business who has been clever enough to avoid working for Uncle Sam. I advised him to be at Fiity- Fourth Street and Tenth Avenue to meet you, and can’t understand why he didn’t. I presume you came by trolley?” “ No—I took a taxi—’ I began, and he scowled, so I stopped to see if he intended to put the scowl into words. “ But I got out at Tenth Ave- nue and Fifty-Fourth Street and walked down here.” The scowl vanished. “There was a chap—very suspi- cious, I thought—hugging the car-barn wall at the corner, and when I started down here he followedime, but stopped half-way down the street to scrap with a drunken fellow who seemed anxious about ‘ Nessie.’ ” The Gregarach -— I must remember that name, because, to be quite frank, I think it was a salve to Campbell's vanity—nodded his head slowly sev- eral times, and his eyebrows, heavy and of a dark-red hue, rose and fell. ““Yes—I suppose that was Beans’s father. Tilial duty comes before all else, or it should, and doubtless in pre- venting that blatherskite of a father of his from getting too far from home, he was doing me a service. “When Borrowman senior is sober he is a plasterer perpetually unem- ployed. When he is drunk he talks incessantly, and often dangerously, of matters that are of no concern of his, but which might be interesting to what writers are pleased to call ‘the limbs of the law.’ ““ By the way, I believe that reliable information against the Gregarach 1s worth a bonny penny in Mulberry Street, and will probably be worth more when we have disposed of the Rollins matter. “Tf you should meet a detective named Parks, a central office man he is, you could possibly make five thou- sand by telling him where he could 749 find me in the daytime. I met him in the City Hall yesterday as I came out of the surrogate’s office, and he touched his hat to me very respectfully. Funny, isn’t it?” I laughed in spite of myself, and felt myself slipping into his net with- out a struggle, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do. His contempt for Parks and what Parks represented was supreme. One could not help admiring him, and there was no hint of treachery in his face. “You have taken a lot for granted with me,” I declared. “‘ That card you gave me—a newspaper report I read— and—this—why, man, I know enough to—” ; “Believe what I am going to tell you,” he interrupted calmly, removing his hat and harkening to the muffled sounds that came from the barroom and the street. “T take nothing for granted in any man,” he continued. ‘‘ From Batch upward. But when a man needs me and I need him, there is a bond of faith already established. “T have introduced you to Rollins, made you suffer his company, given you a glimpse of his daughter as he affects her and as she really is, and shown you a way of redeeming what your fathers have lost. Whether you take advantage of the chance is your own affair. But now I am going to tell you a story, and I found it neces- sary to bring you here, because I want you to know the place thoroughly.” I gaped. “What the dickens does it matter whether—” “Seems strange, doesn’t it?” He studied my face curiously. “ But no more strange than the fact that if you died Rollins would become the—Earl of Didderington.” : What?” I almost screamed it and jumped half out of my chair to lean across the table and stare into his quiet eyes. He nodded. “Wait. This is Beans,” comlicloooks.com