McCord looked surprised.
“What fer?” he demanded. “Don’t you t’ink I can take care of him all by my lonesome? Why, I can eat dat chap! He’s nutting but a boy.”
“But he may have friends with him. You will need at least two or three companions to keep his friends off while you do him up. I suggest that you take not less than three. Then if you happen to run onto a bunch of them you will be all right.”
“Mebbe dat’s good advice,” confessed Bingo. “I want to do der job in a hurry. I’d better have some good scrappers wid me.”
“Any one here you can get?”
“None of my gang, but I guess I know where ter find der boys. Tapper Mullin is fingering the pasteboards down at Mike McGinnis’ joint. He picked up a couple of sailor chaps what t’ought dey knew a lot about poker, and he’s skinning dem of dere loose coin. I’ll git him all right, and den I’ll look after Skip Billings, anodder good man. You say der baseball chaps are at der Corndike? Well, you jest stroll back dere and hang around. If you see dis feller we’re arter stroll out for a walk, jest watch which way he goes. I’ll be along wid my pals in twenty or t’irty minutes.”
Fernald left the place and retraced his steps toward the hotel. Instead of following him, the young hobo, who had listened outside the window, waited until Bingo McCord came out. He then trailed McCord.
Bingo had made no mistake in saying he knew where to find one of his pals. At McGinnis’ place he was admitted to the room where the poker game was in progress, and he appeared just as one of the sailors vociferously announced that he had been cheated. There were five persons in the game, and three of them proceeded to jump on the two sailors without a moment’s delay. The encounter that followed was decidedly brief, for McCord sailed into it and McGinnis himself took a hand. In less than two minutes the sailors, badly battered and minus their money, found themselves kicked into the street.
McCord tapped a tall, perspiring, red-headed chap on the shoulder.
“Seems ter me I dropped around jest in time, Mullin,” he said.