The Holbrook news., 1914-10-31
OLD SLEUTH'S STORY
By c. L. CULLEN.

street ofhce of the Tombs, where he
 was to pick up a pair of sentenced
 men. bracelet them together. and con
 voy them up the river'-which is to
 say, the Sing Sing prison.
 I fell into step with him, and after a while he told me casually what his job for that day was to be.
 "Old-time lags, the pair that I'm pointing to stir (prison) today" he re- marked. But I'm glad of that. It's the hrst-timers, and the way they take it to heart when I'm packing them up the road. and the way their women folks at the station shrivel up when the gate closes on their man, that gets me around the neck-band.
 The two gumshoe stick-up men that I'm chaperoning to the pen today
 will be chattering all the way up on the train, figuring on what cell-tier they'll catch, what kind of a lob the turnkey of their tier will be, whether they'll make the laundry or the stone yard. how many of the old guns that were there the last time they came here and did a bit will still be there. and all the like of that
 For those two old-timers the going up thing Is like being on the way to take the Keeley cure. They know the inside game, and play it with signals.
 I'm always glad when>it's that way. As I say, 1t catches me hard around the fichu sometimes when I'm escort ing the new ones, and especially the youngish ones that've got women folks that still believe in 'em and care for 'em. up to the double-warble plant"
 T had always understood" put in. that even the new ones, most of them, put on at least show of game ness when they were starting of to do their first trick"
 "Oh, they're game enough" the old headquarters man replied. That is. they don't show anybody what's going on inside of 'em. None of them ever handed me any of that blub-blub stun.
 But when there's little woman in on the blow-off, then it's me to keep my lamps glued to the station clock so that I won't be able to see the breakaway from the clinch of the girl and her boy.
 I've been a bull for 30 years, square enough. and know the smell of prisons as well as I know the whiff of ham, and.
 I've brought up and seen go their ways a whole housefuI of young ones. which is why maybe always try to con the chief into sick-listing me when I'm wised up to it that I'm slated to convoy one of the first-timers; one with girl wearing his ring and moni- ker. up the river.
 But the chief always hands me the boot when try to pull that on him, and I've never yet been able to bull a chief into Hopping me oil one of those hard jobs.
 T steered one to stir last year about this time, that put the tacks so deep into my tonsils that 1 came near hay ing to get 'em pulled out by lock smith.
 And the finish of that steer-up was a little game of gulpiness that made me cancel the eats, and just sit around the house for three days, and smoke myself close to the pension list.
 He was a clean-faced, decent-look- ing young fellow; bookkeeper or col lector, or something like that; and. from playing the ponies, think 1t was. he'd nicked his firm for a few bum hundreds.
 His firm got after him like a traffic cop getting hunk with a chauffeur that he's laying for; and the boy, who'd never made a dip-in before in his life, and probably never would have again if the firm had given him a run for his taw marble, was soaked a five speaker for his first frisk of a little bundle of pungerino bones.
 He took the wallop steady enough, though when he caught the eye of the girl sitting alongside his counsel, I'm not saying that he didn't swallow a little cotton for himself.
 'The girl just rested her arms on the table, and put her head in them, and you could see her shoulders shake, though she didn't make any sounds worth mentioning.
 "She was a pretty little slip of a | thing, and she and her man had only | done the stand-up before the parson | and settled into one of those install | quarter-meter flats about a | year before.
 You could see that he was all the l world and the milky way to her, and, | says to myself, when saw her shouI- ders heaving that way when the boy was led of, Me for an acute case of housemaid's knee or lumbago if they | try to spin me to the job of steering that one over the road
 For I knew that the girl would be at the station, and I'm getting too | groggy around the Adams apple to dish myself out any more dents of that kind than I have to.
 Did I get by with that little spiel to myself? Never a chancel was doing most of the conveying of the Iags to stir at that time. and when .4o k@