just declared a draw.
The opening for a couple of bare fisted investigators wasn't what you
might call promisin'. Not having their grips and passwords, we didn't
feel as though we could make good in their lodge.

"I could round up a gang and then we could rush 'em," says I.

"That wouldn't do," says the Boss. "Strategy is what we need here."

"I'm just out of that," says I.

"Perhaps there's a back door," says the Boss.

So we moseys around the block, huntin' for a family entrance. But that
ain't the way they build down in Mulberry Bend. They chucks their old
rookeries slam up against one another, to keep 'em from fallin' over, I
guess. Generally though, there's some sort of garlic flue through the
middle of the block, but you need a balloon to find it.

"Hist!" says I. "Hold me head while I thinks a thunk. Didn't I come down
here once to watch a try-out? Sure! And it was pulled off in the
palatial parlors of Appetite Joe Cardenzo's Chowder Association, the
same being a back room two flights up. Now if we could dig up Appetite
Joe--"

We did. He was around the corner playing 'scope for brandied plums, but
he let go the cards long enough to listen to my fairy tale about wantin'
a joint where I could give my friend a private lesson.

"Sure!" said Joe, passing out the key, "but you breaka da chair I charga
feefty cent."

There were two back windows and the view wasn't one you'd want to put in
a frame. Down below was a court filled with coal boxes and old barrels,
and perfumed like the lee side of Barren Island. But catty-corners
across was the back of that spaghetti mill. We could tell it by the
two-decker bill board on the roof. In the upper windows we could see
Dago women and kids, but the windows on the second floor were black.

"Iron shutters," says the Boss. "And that's where she is if anywhere."

"Got a scalin' ladder and a jimmy in your pocket?" says I. "Then I'll
have to run around to a three ball exchange and see if I can't dig up an
outfit."

A patent fire escape and a short handled pick-axe was the best I could
do. We made the board jumper fast inside and down I went. Then there was
acrobatics; swingin' across to that three inch window ledge, balancin'
with one foot on nothing, and single hand work with the pick-axe. Lucky
that shutter-bar was half rusted away. She came open with a bang when
she did come, and it near sent me down into the barrels. Me eyelashes
held though, and there I was, up agai