the streets of Chicago." This explanation
pleased Boston Frank, who now asked Slippery to introduce him to the
lad, which the former did, using his new nickname, "Dakota Joe."
Listening to their further conversation, to his horror Joe became for
the first time aware that Slippery was not a man looking for an honest
job, but a criminal whose dislike for the police, which he had so openly
manifested, was the natural result of the life he had been leading. Joe
decided to keep this unpleasant discovery to himself, as he was a
penniless lad in the center of an immense city.

When they parted company with Boston Frank, Slippery and Joe found the
house that he had described to be the "gang's" hangout, and after they
had climbed five flights up a narrow stairway, Slippery rang the door
bell of a flat. A shutter in the panel of the door that fitted so
perfectly into an opening that Joe did not observe its presence before,
was withdrawn and from behind a heavy wire screen a pair of glistening,
suspicious eyes searched their faces, and then a voice demanded what
they desired. Instead of an answer Slippery gave some differently
sounding knocks upon the panel above the screened opening and whispered,
"It's I, Slippery, the yegg."

Joe could distinctly hear the same person who had carefully replaced the
shutter over the once more invisible spy-opening unbolt, then unlock and
finally slowly open the door, and after she, a middle-aged woman, had
again most suspiciously scanned the features of her visitors, she
permitted Slippery and Joe to slip within the slightly opened door, that
she promptly shut, and then bolted and carefully locked, as if the flat,
instead of a home for human beings was a safe-deposit vault of an
immensely rich bank.

"Hello, Marie," Slippery addressed the woman after she had tried the
door knob to assure herself that the steel sheeted door was as correctly
closed as before she opened it, "how are you and the rest of the gang?"
And while they shook hands Joe looked about in the semi-darkness of the
hallway trying to see some members of the gang Slippery had spoken about
when he inquired of Boston Frank as to their whereabouts, and about
whom he had just repeated the question, which to Joe seemed odd because
there was not a sound to be heard in the flat, that, as it was supposed
to be the home of a "gang", should have at least shown these signs of
human habitation.

After the woman and Slippery had exchanged ot