"Best way you know how, I guess," answered Tommy.
"Precisely. Sometimes I am a gambler, at others a thief, now and then a monte man; but here, where I am not known by the police, I mean to work the confidence game."
"How's that done?" asked Tommy.
"It's as simple as playing policy. We'll go out presently and look for a victim. I can always tell a countryman. When I point him out to you, it will be your job to go up to him and say:
"How are you, Mr. Jennings?"
"But suppose his name isn't Jennings?"
"Of course it isn't," replied Thompson, "and he'll say: 'My name is not that, you've made a mistake.' Then you say: 'Didn't my father work for yours in Buffalo,' and he'll most likely answer by telling his real name and address, after which you beg his pardon, and fall back to tell me who he is."
"What then?"
"I shall go up to him, you keeping in the background, accost him by his real name, and worm myself into his confidence, the end of which will be that I shall get all his money and valuables out of him in some saloon."
"That's cheating," said Tommy, bluntly.