ently as a shadow, and a second later Jurgis heard
a thud and a stifled cry. He was only a couple of feet behind, and he
leaped to stop the man's mouth, while Duane held him fast by the arms,
as they had agreed. But the man was limp and showed a tendency to fall,
and so Jurgis had only to hold him by the collar, while the other,
with swift fingers, went through his pockets--ripping open, first his
overcoat, and then his coat, and then his vest, searching inside and
outside, and transferring the contents into his own pockets. At last,
after feeling of the man's fingers and in his necktie, Duane whispered,
"That's all!" and they dragged him to the area and dropped him in. Then
Jurgis went one way and his friend the other, walking briskly.

The latter arrived first, and Jurgis found him examining the "swag."
There was a gold watch, for one thing, with a chain and locket; there
was a silver pencil, and a matchbox, and a handful of small change,
and finally a card-case. This last Duane opened feverishly--there were
letters and checks, and two theater-tickets, and at last, in the back
part, a wad of bills. He counted them--there was a twenty, five tens,
four fives, and three ones. Duane drew a long breath. "That lets us
out!" he said.

After further examination, they burned the card-case and its contents,
all but the bills, and likewise the picture of a little girl in the
locket. Then Duane took the watch and trinkets downstairs, and came back
with sixteen dollars. "The old scoundrel said the case was filled," he
said. "It's a lie, but he knows I want the money."

They divided up the spoils, and Jurgis got as his share fifty-five
dollars and some change. He protested that it was too much, but the
other had agreed to divide even. That was a good haul, he said, better
than average.

When they got up in the morning, Jurgis was sent out to buy a paper;
one of the pleasures of committing a crime was the reading about
it afterward. "I had a pal that always did it," Duane remarked,
laughing--"until one day he read that he had left three thousand dollars
in a lower inside pocket of his party's vest!"

There was a half-column account of the robbery--it was evident that a
gang was operating in the neighborhood, said the paper, for it was
the third within a week, and the police were apparently powerless. The
victim was an insurance agent, and he had lost a hundred and ten dollars
that did not belong to him. He had chanced to have h