"

"What's Mars?"

"A planet up in space, loaded with gold and diamonds."

"Any bims there?"

"I beg your pardon, sir. What are bims?"

"Get a load of this dope. He never heard of bims. Babes, broads,
frails, pigeons, ribs--catch on?"

"Oh, I assume you mean girls. There must be, otherwise what are the
diamonds for?"

The outward trip took a week, but it was spent pleasantly. During that
time, the Miami delegation cleaned out Chicago, New York and
Pittsburgh in a klabiash game.

The hop back, for various reasons, took a little longer. One reason
may have been the condition of the crew. On the return the boys from
Brooklyn were primed to the ears with _zorkle_.

_Zorkle_ is a Martian medicinal distillation, made from the milk of
the _schznoogle_--a six-legged cow, seldom milked because few Martians
can run fast enough to catch one. _Zorkle_ is strong enough to rip
steel plates out of battleships, but to stomachs accustomed to the
stuff sold in Flatbush, it acted like a gentle stimulant.

Upon their safe landing in Nevada, the Columbuses of this first flight
to Mars put in long-distance calls to all the other important hoods in
the country.

The Crime Cartel met in Cleveland--in the third floor front of a
tenement on Mayfield Road. The purpose of the meeting was to "cut up"
Mars.

Considerable dissension arose over the bookmaking facilities, when it
was learned that the radioactive surface of the planet made it
unnecessary to send scratches and results by wire. On the contrary,
the steel-shod hooves of the animals set up a current which carried
into every pool room, without a pay-off to the wire service.

The final division found the apportionment as follows:

_New York mob_: Real estate and investments (if any)

_Chicago mob_: Bookmaking and liquor (if any)

_Brooklyn mob_: Protection and assassinations

_Jersey mob_: Numbers (if any) and craps (if any)

_Los Angeles mob_: Girls (if any)

_Galveston and New Orleans mobs_: Dope (if any)

_Cleveland mob_: Casinos (if any)

_Detroit mob_: Summer resorts (if any)

The Detroit boys, incidentally, burned up when they learned the
Martian year is twice as long as ours, consequently it takes two years
for one summer to roll around.

After the summary demise of three Grand Councilors whose deaths were
recorded by the press as occurring from "natural causes," the other
major and minor mobs were declared in as pa