"I did; and I had a funny experience—or have I told you about it?"
"No, you didn't tell me," I contrived to say.
"I didn't know but I had; I've talked so much about everything to-day. It was this way: when I got out of the cab I saw a sort of hobo-ish looking fellow standing at the curb with his hands in his pockets and all doubled over as if he were cold. It never occurred to me for a minute that he was anything but what he looked to be."
The porter, with Barton's suit-cases, was disappearing in the direction of the cab stand, and I suggested that we walk along. I had learned all I needed to know. But Horace Barton never left a story unfinished if he could help it.
"Yes, sir; that fellow fooled me good and proper," he went on, as we hurried to overtake the suit-cases. "He wasn't any hobo at all; he was a pickpocket, and one of the finest. I was hunting for a half-dollar to pay the cabby, and I could have sworn that that 'dip' never got within six feet of me. And yet he 'frisked' me before I could get across the sidewalk and into the hotel. Luckily, all he got was a little pocketbook with some sixty or so dollars in it."
"You reported your loss to the police?" I asked.
"Not for one little minute!" was the laughing rejoinder. "I didn't discover the loss until after I got up to my room and found the St. Louis wire waiting for me; and then there wasn't time. But I shouldn't have done it anyway. Any fellow fly enough to do me that way when I'm wide awake and 'at' myself is welcome to all he gets.… Well, here's our jumping-off place, I guess. My man 'll be waiting for me at the Southern, and I must go. Take care of yourself, and so long!"
I let him go; saw him climb into a cab and disappear. There was nothing to be done about the money, of course: I had spent more than half of it for my Denver ticket. But, since honesty, like all other human attributes, dies hard in any soil where it has once taken root, I turned away with a great thankfulness in my heart. The owner of the black pocketbook was found, and some day he should have his own again—with interest.
Nothing of any consequence happened after Barton left me. Finding upon inquiry that the westbound connecting train would not leave until eight o'clock, I ventured out in search of a slop-shop where I could purchase a cheap suit to go with the clean shirt and collar given me by the free-handed sales manager. The purchase left me with less than ten dollars in my pocket, but it made a new man of me otherwise. In the old life at home I had never dreamed that a few rags and wisps of cloth, properly sewed together, make all the difference in a moralizing world between the man and the vagrant.
There was a wreck on the Missouri road some time during the night, and our train was caught behind it and delayed. For this reason another rainy afternoon was drawing to its close when I had my first glimpse of Kansas City, high-perched on its hills from my glimpsing view-point on the opposite bank of the Missouri River, but low-lying and crowded to suffocation with railroad yards in that part of it where the train came to a stand.