other fellow against the police. But this time
I'm all for the coppers. I hope they land Larry--he's got it coming to
him. Remember that he's a stool and a squealer."

And swiftly Barney switched the subject. "Let's be moving along,
Jimmie."

He drew Maggie out into the hall, to make more certain that Miss
Grierson would not overhear. "Well, Maggie," he exulted, "haven't I made
good so far in my bargain to put you over?"

"Yes."

"Of course we're going slow at first. That's how you've got to
handle big deals--careful. But you'll sure be a knock-out when that
she-undertaker in there gets you rigged out in classy clothes. Then
the curtain will go up on the real show--and it's going to be a big
show--and you'll be the hit of the piece!"

With that incitement to Maggie's imagination Barney left her; and Old
Jimmie followed, furtively giving Maggie a brief, uncertain look.

CHAPTER XIV

A block away from the hotel Barney parted from Old Jimmie. For a space
Barney thought of his partner. Barney had quick eyes which were quite
capable of taking in two things at once; and while he had seen the
excited glow his final speech had brought back into Maggie's face, he
had also caught that swift look of uncertainty in the lean, cunning face
of Old Jimmie: a look of one who is eager to go on, yet sees himself
frustrated by his own eagerness. To Barney it was a puzzling, suspicious
look.

As Barney made his way toward a harbor of refreshment he wondered about
Old Jimmie--not in the manner Larry had wondered about a father bringing
his daughter up into crooked ways--but he wondered what kind of a man
beneath his shrewd, yielding, placating manner Old Jimmie really was,
how far he was to be trusted, whether he was in this game on the level
or whether he was playing some very secret hand of his own. Though he
had known and worked with Old Jimmie for years, Barney had never been
admitted to the inner chambers of the older man's character. He sensed
that there were hidden rooms and twisting passages; and of this much he
was certain, that Old Jimmie was sly and saturnine.

Well, he would be on guard that Old Jimmie didn't put anything over on
your obliging servant, Barney Palmer!

This was the era of legal prohibition, but thus far Barney had not been
severely discommoded by the action of the representatives of America's
free institutions in Washington, for Barney knew his New York. In an
ex-saloon on Sixth Avenue, which