After eating their breakfast in a restaurant, they sauntered through the streets to see the sights. While they walked aimlessly about the city, Slippery acted at times so strangely that he called the attention of Joe to him, who did not suspect the reason of his singular demeanor, nor that he was walking with a man who in police circles had earned a well merited reputation of being one of the most desperate criminals in the land. Whenever Slippery would spot a policeman ahead of him he would turn into an alley or by-way to avoid passing the guardian of the law. At other times, just after they had passed some well dressed and often really benign looking citizen, Slippery would roughly nudge him and whisper, "that was one of those 'fly mugs'—a detective", and then it would be some moments before he reverted to his former cheerfulness, proving to Joe how much he feared or despised those who uphold the law.
The ringing of the church bells had just announced the noon hour, when Slippery was stopped in the street by a neatly attired gentleman, who, after they had most cordially shaken hands, entered into a whispered conversation, which Joe overheard.
"Hello, Slippery, old boy, when did you find your way back to Chicago?" were the first words of the stranger's greeting, who acted as if he were greatly pleased with the return of Joe's pal to the "Windy City." "I too am glad to be once more where one's eyes do not tire looking into nothingness, bounded only by the horizon and the blue sky," answered Slippery, and then in a whisper, he added: "Say, Boston Frank, give me a square tip where Bunko Bill's gang is, so I can find a temporary hangout until I get straight as to the lay of the land." "Oh, is that what you wish to know, Slippery? Well they are in a private flat on South Clark, just below LaSalle Street, second house from the corner, on the fifth floor, and a dandy place at that, but," here he paused and with an ill-disguised look of resentment he stared at Joe and then queried: "Slippery, whose boy have you toting along with you?" And as Slippery did not promptly answer him he added with contempt in his voice, "I always understood that only a low-lived plinger dragged a road kid about with him and never a proper crook." Then to Joe's terror, he heard the man whom he had until this moment taken to be as honorable as his own late father answer: "Boston Frank, this lad is the wisest and shrewdest young crook that ever walked the streets of Chicago." This explanation pleased Boston Frank, who now asked Slippery to introduce him to the lad, which the former did, using his new nickname, "Dakota Joe." Listening to their further conversation, to his horror Joe became for the first time aware that Slippery was not a man looking for an honest job, but a criminal whose dislike for the police, which he had so openly manifested, was the natural result of the life he had been leading. Joe decided to keep this unpleasant discovery to himself, as he was a penniless lad in the center of an immense city.
When they parted company with Boston Frank, Slippery and Joe found the house that he had described to be the "gang's" hangout, and after they had climbed five flights up a narrow stairway, Slippery rang the door bell of a flat. A shutter in the panel of the door that fitted so perfectly into an opening that Joe did not observe its presence before, was withdrawn and from behind a heavy wire screen a pair of glistening, suspicious eyes searched their faces, and then a voice demanded what they desired. Instead of an answer Slippery gave some differently sounding knocks upon the panel above the screened opening and whispered, "It's I, Slippery, the yegg."
Joe could distinctly hear the same person who had carefully replaced the shutter over the once more invisible spy-opening unbolt, then unlock and finally slowly open the door, and after she, a middle-aged woman, had again most suspiciously scanned the features of her visitors, she permitted Slippery and Joe to slip within the slightly opened door, that she promptly shut, and then bolted and carefully locked, as if the flat, instead of a home for human beings was a safe-deposit vault of an immensely rich bank.
"Hello, Marie," Slippery addressed the woman after she had tried the door knob to assure herself that the steel sheeted door was as correctly closed as before she opened it, "how are you and the rest of the gang?" And while they shook hands Joe looked about in the semi-darkness of the hallway trying to see some members of the gang Slippery had spoken about when he inquired of Boston Frank as to their whereabouts, and about whom he had just repeated the question, which to Joe seemed odd because there was not a sound to be heard in the flat, that, as it was supposed to be the home of a "gang", should have at least shown these signs of human habitation.
After the woman and Slippery had exchanged other brief greetings all three went towards the rear of the hallway, and here she opened a door and bade them enter, and by the brilliant illumination they saw it was the dining room of the fiat. Around its well provisioned dinner table were seated a number of men and women who in a most friendly, but noise avoiding manner, greeted Slippery and while they questioned him as to his latest movements, they gave Joe a chance to recover from the surprise that completely shocked him, when he discovered that this strangely secluded flat was the home of seven men and four women, all of the latter—with the exception of the woman who had opened the door—being barely more than young girls.
