Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 25, No. 2, August 13, 1927

Big Scar avoided the ferryman’s house and detoured, with Spot at his heels, through underbrush and reeds until he stood on a spit of land jutting out in the Susquehanna. His signal to the yeggs on Bedbug Island was a fire, made from damp wood, that spiraled smoke up into the leaden air.

A rowboat appeared, propelled by a pair of brawny arms. Canada Red, a yegg with a flaming beard, climbed from the grounded boat. “Hello, bo!” he greeted. “Toledo Ed is on th’ island waitin’ for you. Did you bring th’ can opener?”

For answer Big Scar tapped his chest. “I got one inside m’ coat that’ll take th’ day door from a First National keister. Come on, let’s go to th’ island. An’ y’u do th’ rowin’.”

Canada Red’s lips curled slightly. He appraised Big Scar’s vagrant appearance. “Oh, all right, pal,” he gulped. “How about that mutt? Ain’t goin’ ta take him, are you?”

“Where I go he goes!” declared Big Scar. “I’ve been ridin’ in private cars, I have. An’ I got a right to a full-blooded pet, I have. An’ y’ur goin’ to row us to th’ island — ’cause if I’m goin’ on th’ job you got planned I give orders. Ain’t I a graduate safe opener, an’ y’u never could open anythin’ harder than a cracker box, y’u couldn’t.”

“All right,” snarled Canada Red. “Me an’ Toledo Ed thought you’d kinda run things — but we didn’t know who else to invite.”

“Invite, is good,” chuckled Big Scar.

Toledo Ed greeted the two yeggs when they reached Bedbug Island. He led the way to a hobo shack where were bunks, a table and a stove made from sheet tin. Sometimes in the summer a hobo convention met on the island. The near-by police seldom bothered any one sojourning there. They were glad enough to have the predatory gentry at a distance.

“Getting down to cases,” explained Toledo Ed, thrusting a thin face across the table toward Big Scar, who had sprawled on a soap box chair like a ragged Falstaff. “Cuttin’ details,” resumed Toledo Ed, “me an’ Canada Red spotted a swell touch at Duffel City, six miles th’ other side of Finchburg. Over there.” The yegg pointed eastward, toward the shore.

“I know th’ town,” grunted Big Scar.

“There’s a miser lives at th’ south end of th’ main stem, in a big house,” went on Ed. “He’s been pinchin’ pennies an’ shavin’ notes since th’ time of strong boxes that opened with keys. He’s got one in his house — crammed with kale. There’s six or seven grand in it. Me an’ Canada were goin’ to turn th’ trick alone — but them old boxes ain’t so easy. Our idea was to sap th’ old miser on th’ bean an’ burn his feet with matches if he didn’t open the keister. He’s got th’ key hid. But—”

“We,” broke in Canada Red, “might get a tough bird who wouldn’t come across. An’ we mightn’t find th’ key. An’ maybe we couldn’t spring th’ box. So, that’s why we want you along, Scar.”

“I’m good at burnin’ feet!” Big Scar said with disgust. “I’ve burned me own feet on many a mile of railroad — but this is th’ first occasion I’ve been invited—”

“We ain’t goin’ to do that!” injected Toledo Ed hastily. “We’ll let you rip th’ keister wide open with th’ can opener, while Canada an’ I sit on th’ miser. How about it, bo?”

“Th’ kale goes three ways?” questioned Big Scar. “ ’Cause if it don’t — if it don’t — I’ll go over there an’ turn th’ job alone. Me comin’ all this way in a private car an’ gettin’ th’ small end—”

Toledo Ed glanced at Canada Red. “Oh, all right!” he agreed. “It goes three ways. We want to all hang together on this job.”

Big Scar had opened scores of safes in his life. He had a saying that the harder the door the easier it fell. He graduated from Chicago and the time of the Drainage Canal, when yeggs first learned to use nitro or soup.

“We’ll hang,” he grunted. “Y’u two would hang anybody. I gotta run this job — from beginnin’ to end. I ain’t looked it over. I’m goin’ to. I’ll go ahead an’ be a gay-cat — a tin can vag — with me dog an’ can. I’ll mooch around th’ touch an’ see if it’s what y’u say it is. Then, when I gives th’ office, y’u two can come on an’ we’ll tie up Mr. Miser.”

A dollar watch was drawn from Toledo Ed’s pocket. “It’s goin’ on seven now,” he objected. “It’s nine miles to Duffel City, not countin’ th’ river row. We’ll all go together.”

Big Scar overturned the soap box. He struck the table with a hairy fist.

“Me an’ Spot,” he declared, “go first, in that small boat t’other side of th’ island. Y’u two follow in about an hour. Them’s orders. D’y’u want th’ hick bulls to see a mob?”

“Maybe he’s right,” consented the two yeggs finally.

Spot crept into the shack.

“He’s better than a look out,” Big Scar explained. “He’ll growl every time he sees a copper — an’ a blue uniform makes him wild. I taught him that. I trained him to stay outside a job, an’ nobody’s pinched me since I’ve had him.”

“Don’t these hoosiers around here know that mutt?” asked Toledo Ed.

“Maybe they do. Wot of it?”

III