Free The Mystery Megapack by Marcia Talley Page A

something like that? Going to have a sick spell? Old age, maybe.”
    “Thay!” cried Tham. “My thtomach ith all right, and I am not goin’ to have a thick thpell! And where do you get that old age thtuff, you ath? Bethide you, Craddock, I am ath a thucklin’ babe.”
    “How is the wallet business?” Craddock asked.
    “Thay, now—”
    “Playing some deep, dark game, aren’t you, Thamb? Trying to make me think that you have reformed, to throw me off the track? Something is brewing, Tham. I’ve had my eye on you carefully the last three days, and you haven’t even known it, or cared. And you haven’t gone into the subway more than half a dozen times, and when you did you always acted as if there was something preying on your mind. Is your conscience bothering you, Tham?”
    “It ith not, but there ith thomething preyin’ on my mind, all right. I have been tryin’ to figure out,” Tham told him, “how it cometh that you thtill draw pay for bein’ a fly cop. And it ith thome puthle!”
    “Indeed?”
    “Quite tho,” Tham said. “I thaw in the paper the other day where thome ham actor thaid that crookth had neither courage nor cunnin’, cleverneth nor thagacithy. That thimp ought to thtudy offitherth, the tho-called detectiveth in particular. When it cometh down to cleverneth and thagacithy, Craddock, a mule hath nothin’ on you.”
    “Ah well, Tham, old boy, we must each of us have our little, merry jest,” Craddock said.
    “It ith no merry jetht,” Thubway Tham declared. “It ith the truth, only it ith not thurprithin’ that you don’t recognithe the truth when you thee it.”
    “All jokes aside, Tham, have you been feeling well lately? I’d hate to have you grow ill and be taken off before I get the chance to run you in and see you put away for a twenty-stretch in stir. That would be what they call the irony of fate, Tham, old-timer.”
    “Yeth? It ith probable that I thall die of old age before that,” Tham remarked. “It ith impothible for a man to hold on forever jutht to pleathe a fly cop.”
    “You’ll not be much older when it happens, Tham.”
    “No?”
    “No! You’ll make that little slip one of these days, and then it’ll be up the river for you.”
    “If I did make that little thlip, you wouldn’t be able to thee it,” Tham complained. “You couldn’t thee anything right under your long nothe.”
    Tham whirled around and deliberately left Craddock, going toward Union Square. Thubway Tham was in a rare bad humor. He had failed so far to locate Booth Mansfield Merton, and Craddock’s pestering ways annoyed him exceedingly.
    And then he saw the actor!
    Booth Mansfield Merton was walking languidly along the street, his nose in the air and a far-away look in his eyes. He swung his stick as if to clear a path through the rabble. He was smoking a cigarette, in a holder.
    “The ath!” Tham said.
    And then he began to shadow and study Booth Mansfield Merton. Tham had a scheme in mind. He wanted to get Merton’s wallet when it was well filled. He wanted Merton to know that there was one crook who had cleverness and sagacity enough to “lift a leather” even from such a wise individual as Booth Mansfield Merton.
    Merton evidently was taking the air. Now and then he paused to look into a show window before a shop, but for the greater part he looked at the men and women who passed as if studying them. Tham trailed him faithfully.
    “Firtht, I mutht be thure that he hath a roll,” Tham told himself. “And then I mutht find out where he liveth and when he goeth uptown to the theater. And then I jutht want to catch the thimp in the thubway onthe. That ith all—jutht onthe!”
    For Tham did not think of robbing Booth Mansfield Merton any place except in the subway. Tham rarely worked in the open street; he had made the subway his specialty for years. And so he trailed Merton down one street and up another, to a restaurant where Merton ate cakes and drank coffee, to a cigar store