Argosy, Vol. 117, No. 3 — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

~ him before now—uh? THE ured creaking of his rocking-chair kept pace with his calm meditations. That afternoon, in his curio shop, Ming Yuen had much to say to “ Bagg the Chink,” a young man who wasn’t a Chink at all, but who lived his shady life in China- town—and had thereby come by the pic- turesque sobriquet. A drooping cigarette hung drowsily from Bagg’s pale lips. His hands twitched ner- vously. He frequently jerked off his hate only to replace it again. Perspiration bead- ed his brow and came back again as soon as he brushed it off. He listened, nervous- ly, to Ming Yuen’s croaking arguments. ‘“T don’t want to do this thing,” Bagg remonstrated. ‘‘ Heavy Windover never done nothin’ to me.” As an afterthought: ‘Heavy Windover’s a bad man to monkey with.” In a moment: ‘“ Did you say a thousand dollars?” “One thousand dolla’.” “ But s’posin’ he pegged me? S’posin’ I didn’t get him right—and he sprung to what I was doin’? Why, Heavy Windover wouldn’t wait a second! He’d bump me right there!”’ “Tt is ver’ easy,’ countered the wily Ming Yuen. ‘“ You be at windows with Long time maybe you wait—but bimebly you get him. One thousand dolla’. How much Mr. Wind- over play you?” “A hundred dollars a job,” asserted Bagg the Chink with a trace of bitterness. ‘He never ties fifty-fifty with a window- man. He weeds him a hundred dollars a job—and pays him a hundred dollars if the drag is a million dollars or a dime. No- body knows what /e yanks out!” “One thousand dolla’,” repeated Ming Yuen. ‘Ten jobs in one—uhe” “T’ll do it,” announced Bagg the Chink in sudden decision. “Slip me the details and ten dollars right now.” He got both. Bagg the Chink was an expert window- man, the underpaid crook who plays second fiddle to the burglar. He knew nothing about ransacking a house. He lacked the element of dogged courage which it re- quires to go from room to room of a dark- ened interior—never certain whether sud- SLAP. 345 den death is not lurking in the next room. He knew nothing about opening silver- chests. He knew nothing of the various devices which a burglar resorts to to avoid waking householders, or, if they do awake, to make them drop back to sleep again. Bagg the Chink was not a burglar. But he was an expert window-man, and worked with burglars. He had worked with Heavy Windover. Heavy had paid him one hundred dollars a job—and Bagg, like his kind, always nursed the sore spots which are known to men who think they are not getting a fair deal. He had no affection for Heavy— and no more dislike than he had for any burglar. Heavy Windover, feeling puffed up as an employer of labor, had grown domineering and exacting. He seldom condescended to associate with ‘window-men and_ those crooks whom he regarded as beneath the social scale of a burglar. He drove his window-men to quick work. He was some- times referred to as Simon Legree. One disgruntled “ pane-tapper ” started the ru- mor that Heavy Windover was thinking of carrying a time-clock with him to éach “job” and compelling the window-man toe punch in and out. But Heavy Windover had his weak- nesses. Most crooks have--in one way or another; or in many ways. Heavy’s most pronounced weakness lay in the most com- mon vice—whisky. It was very hard to get—whisky; but not impossible. It was easier for Heavy to get it than it was for those who moved in higher walks of life. Heavy’s life was in the underworld—and the underworld naturally made a greater effort to supply its dry throats. There was .big profit in it now, too. Heavy declared a man couldn’t get “‘ soused”’ any moré on the proceeds of one “ job”; it took a sack- ful of silver plate to’ buy a quart of “hooch.” And that was a good name for it. In his cups or his bottles, from which- ever he drank, the austerity of Heavy Windover toward the lesser fry of crooks usually unbent. At times he had no ob- jection to drinking with a window-man. On this particular night he met Bagg the Chink. He didn’t know that Bagg had Gomichdooks (C@