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Updated: August 16, 2024
It seemed as though this simple tiding took the breath from Denver. "Ah!" he nodded at length. "You playing up a new line. No strong-arm stuff except when you got to use it. Going to try scratching, kid? Is that it, or some other kind of slick stuff?" "I mean what I say, Denver. I'm going straight." The yegg shook his head, bewildered. "Say," he burst out suddenly, "ain't you Black Jack's kid?"
" guess that's about how it is." I passed the word along the line. My companion tramps cursed the yegg and his ways.... "They're always raisin' hell ... an' we git the blame ... when all we want is not loot, but hand-outs and a cup o' coffee ... and a piece of change now and then." The yegg, the tiger among tramps the criminal tramp despises the ordinary bum and the "gaycat."
He again became silent and then, now that it was too late, he plainly showed, that although he was a despised yegg, there was one place in this wide world where there would be one true friend waiting in vain for his return, for he slowly added, "Joe, believe me, there is no friend like mother and no place like home."
The proprietor began to talk of less dangerous subjects. Craig succeeded in drawing out from him the yegg recipe for making "soup." "It's here in this cipher," said the man, drawing out a dirty piece of paper. "It's well known, and you can have this. Here's the key. It was written by 'Deafy' Smith, and the police pinched it."
He never carried it about; he never even spoke of it unless he was sure that the prospective customer was wealthy. His safe was in a corner of his workshop. An American yegg would have laughed at it, opened it as easily as a ripe peach; but in this district it was absolute security.
The laborer whom he saw in the early morning swinging his dinner pail while with light steps he marched to the daily task in mill and factory, and whom he watched in the evening's dusk after the factory sirens had blown the working man's curfew, hurrying home anxious to reach his humble fireside, and for whom heretofore he had only known feelings of deepest contempt, suddenly had become a man who benefitted preciously far more of his life than any yegg he could recall.
He duly canvassed every likely dive, every "melina," every gambling house and yegg hang out. He engaged in leisurely games of pool with stone-getters and gopher men. He visited bucket-shops and barrooms, and dingy little Ghetto cafés. He "buzzed" tipsters and floaters and mouthpieces. He fraternized with till tappers and single-drillers.
I wish I knew how we could track this Casper Blue to where the other yegg is hiding near the biplane, and watch them until we saw where they had the cache. After that we could just hang around, and when they started in a power-boat perhaps for Bloomsbury, with Todd Pemberton at the wheel, we could do something to make the biplane useless to them, and then toward evening put for home ourselves."
It would take half an hour, perhaps much more, before they could get out. And we can reach our craft in a few minutes, if pushed." "Yes, that's all so, Frank; but go on, and tell me the rest." "I was thinking that we ought to try and let our folks know how things are going with us, so that if we have to cut out after these yegg aviators they'll know where we've gone.
Although Pollard was the nominal leader, he was in secret awe of the yegg. For Denver was an "in-and-outer." Sometimes he joined them in the West; sometimes he "worked" an Eastern territory. He came and went as he pleased, and was more or less a law to himself. Moreover, he had certain qualities of silence and brooding that usually disturbed the leader.
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