“We work that way for a few months, and then I get an idea for a new racket —and it’s a darb! Flogger —he’s an unimaginative sort of jobbie — can’t see it at first. But I keep jawing at him until he gives in and agrees to take a whirl at it.
“You never seen Flogger Rork, did you? I thought not. Well, he’s a good guy — what ‘Limey’ Pine used to call a ‘bene cove’— but he ain’t no flower to look at. I seen a cartoon of a burglar once in a newspaper during one of these crime waves, and that’s the only time I ever seen a face like
Flogger’s. A good guy — but we had to be careful how we moved around, because bulls had a habit of picking us up just on account of his face. Me — nobody hadn’t ever took me for a lamb, myself; though alongside of Flogger I look pretty sweet.
“These mugs of ours had been handicaps to us so far, but now under my new scheme we’re going to cash in on them.
“We was in the Middle West at the time. We blow into the next burg on our list, look the main drag over, and go to work. Our guns are ditched down under a pile of rocks near the jungle.
“We make a drug-store. There’s two nice little boys in it. I plant myself in front of one of them, with one hand in my coat pocket, and Flogger does the same with the other.
” ‘Come through,’ we tells ’em.
“Without a squawk, one of ’em pushes down the ‘No Sale’ key of the damper, scoops out every nickel that’s in it, and passes it over to Flogger.
” ‘Lay down behind the counter and don’t be too much in a hurry about getting up,’ we tell them next.
“They do as they’re told, and me and Flogger go on out and about our business.
“The next day we push over two more stores and move on to the next town. Every town we hit we give our new racket a couple of whirls, and it goes nice. Having an ace up our sleeves, we can take chances that otherwise would have been foolish —we can pull a couple or even three jobs
a day without waiting for the rumpus from the first one to die down.
“Pickings were pretty them days!
“Then, one afternoon in a fresh burg, we push over a garage, a pawnshop and a shoe store, and we get picked
up.
“The bulls that nabbed us was loaded for bear, but — outside of running until we saw it was no use — we went along with them as nice as you please. When they frisked us they found the money from that day’s jobs, but that was all. The rest was cached where we knew it would be when we wanted it. And our guns was still under that pile of stones three. States away. We didn’t have no use for them any more.
“The guys we had stuck up that afternoon came in to look us over, and they all identified us right away. As one of ’em said there was no forgettin’ our faces. But we sat tight and said nothing. We knew where we stood and we were satisfied.
“After a couple days they let us have a mouthpiece. We picked out a kid whose diploma hadn’t been with him long enough to collect any dust yet, but he looked like he wouldn’t throw us down; and he didn’t have to know much law for us. Then we laid around and took jail life
easy.
“A few days of that, and they yank us into court. We let things run along for a while without fightin’ back, until the right time came. Then our kid mouthpiece gets up and springs our little joker on them.
“His clients, he says, meaning me and Flogger, are per-
fectly willing to plead guilty to begging. But there is nothing to hold them for robbery on. They were in need of funds, and they went into three business establishments and asked for money. They had no weapons. The evidence doesn’t show that they made any threats. Whatever mo-1 tives may have prompted the persons in the stores to hand over the contents of the various cash registers to oblige them — the kid says — has no bearing on the matter. The evidence is plain. His clients asked for money and it was given to them. Begging, certainly — and so his clients are liable to sentences of 30 days or so in the county jail for vagrancy. But robbery — no!