“There it is.” Sandy had found the tab. “But my fingers are so numb I can’t pull it down.”
“Just hold it,” Ken directed. “I’ll stand up.” He straightened slowly, and the slide fastener slid down as he came erect. “Good. Now try to get hold of the bills inside.”
“Wait until I see if I can get the circulation going again.” Sandy began to beat his hands against the wall. “Go on with what you were saying,” he muttered.
“If we can tear these bills in half and scatter them along the way to—wherever they take us—we’ll be leaving a trail for the police to follow,” Ken said.
Sandy grunted. “But suppose the police don’t find them? Suppose somebody else does? The proportion of police to ordinary citizens in this town—”
“But it won’t matter who finds them,” Ken broke in. “Look: what good is half a ten-dollar bill?”
“No good,” Sandy said shortly. “Especially to us.”
“But suppose you found half a bill. What would you do?” Ken persisted.
“Take it to a bank,” Sandy said. “That would be the only place that would—Bank!” he repeated suddenly. “What a dope I am! The bank would spot it as a phony. The person who brought it in would be questioned.”
“Right,” Ken said excitedly. He had had to make Sandy figure it out for himself, to prove that his idea was sound—that others might reach the same conclusion he had himself. “And when they trace the location of the various halves that are picked up, they’ll have a rough chart of where we’ve gone. Provided,” he added, less hopefully, “that we’re not taken out into the country somewhere. We couldn’t count on the bills being picked up anywhere except along a city street.”