"Ready?"
"Ain't youse goin' to put on your gum-shoes, boss?"
Jimmy frowned reflectively, as if there was something in what this novice suggested. He went into the bedroom, and returned wearing a pair of thin patent-leather shoes.
Spike coughed tentatively.
"Won't youse need your gun?" he hazarded.
Jimmy gave a short laugh.
"I work with brains, not guns," he said. "Let us be going."
There was a taxi-cab near by, as there always is in New York. Jimmy pushed Spike in, and they drove off. To Jimmy, New York stopped somewhere about Seventy-Second Street. Anything beyond that was getting on for the Middle West, and seemed admirably suited as a field for the cracksman. He had a vague idea of up-town as a remote, desolate district, badly lighted—if lighted at all—and sparsely dotted with sleepy policemen.
The luxury of riding in a taxi-cab kept Spike dumb for several miles. Having arrived at what seemed a sufficiently remote part of America, Jimmy paid the driver, who took the money with that magnificently aloof air which characterizes the taxi-chauffeur. A lesser man might have displayed some curiosity about the ill-matched pair. The chauffeur, having lighted a cigarette, drove off without any dis-
