'!
You can keep your plunks. I don't want 'em. I know you fellers--I
got onto your curves when I was on my uppers. When you can't get your
flippers on the right man you slip 'em on the first galoot you catch,
and I want to tell you right here that you can't mix Mr. O'Day in this
business, for he don't know nothin' about it, nor anything else that's
crooked. I'll get this man Stanton for you if the boss will let me out
for an hour. Shall I ask him?"

Pickert examined his finger-nails for a brief moment--one seemed in need
of immediate repairs--his mind all the while in deep thought. The tramp
might help or he might not. He evidently knew him, and it was possible
that he also knew Stanton, the name borne by the woman charged with the
theft; or the whole yarn might be a ruse to give the real thief a tip,
and thus block everything. Lipton's place he frequented, and the Bowdoin
House he could find.

"No, you stay here," he broke out. "I'll get him."

He walked back to the office, the tramp following. "I say, Mr. Kling!"
he called impudently.

Otto lifted his head. He had locked up the mantilla and had the key in
his pocket. For him the incident was closed.

"Vell?" replied Otto dryly.

"Does this man work over at Cleary's express?"

"He does. Vy?"

"Oh, nothing. I may want him later. And, say!"

"Vell," again replied Otto.

"Git wise and surprise that little girl of yours with something
else--she'll never wear that mantilla. So long," and he strode out of
the store.

Chapter XXIII

The short winter's day had run its course and a soft, aimless snow was
falling--each flake a lazy feather, careless of its fate. The store
windows were ablaze, and many of the houses on both sides of "The
Avenue" were alive with newly kindled gas-jets, the street-lamps
shedding their light over a broad highway blocked with slipping teams,
their carts crammed to the utmost with holiday freight.

A spirit of good-fellowship and unrestrained joyousness was everywhere.
When a team was stalled, two or three men put their shoulders to the
wheels; when a horse slipped and fell, a dozen others helped him to his
feet. Snowballs, thrown in good humor and received with a laugh, filled
the air. New York was getting ready to celebrate the night before New
Year's, the maddest night of all the year in old Manhattan, when groups
of merrymakers, carrying tin horns and jingling cow-bells, crowd the
sidewalks, singing and shouting, formin