"Ye've guessed it ag'in."
"You didn't want the bosses to be robbed?"
The escaped convict had his face propped between his hands with his elbows resting on his knees.
"I'm thinkin' maybe it's six o' one and a half-dozen o' tother," he said soberly. "I wasn't carin' so damned much about the bosses, square as they've been to me. But I puts it up like this: here's you, and you'd spotted me, and you hadn't snitched; you'd been in 'stir' yourself, and knowed what it was: d'ye see?"
I smiled in the darkness. It was the brotherhood of the underworld.
"And you lined up square at the finish, too, as I knowed yous would," he went on. "You sees me pipin' yous off in town, and you was thinkin' maybe I'd drop in here to-night and crack this old box f'r the swag there'd be in it. You laid f'r me alone, because yit you wouldn't be willin' to give me up. Ain't that the size of it, pally?"
"You've guessed it," I said, handing his own words back to him. "And now one more question, Dorgan: have you quit the crooked business for keeps?"
He was up and moving toward the open window when he replied.
"Who the hell would know that? I was a railroad man, pally, before I took to the road. These days I'm eatin' my t'ree squares and sleepin' good. But some fine mornin' a little man that I could break in halves wit' my two hands 'll come dancin' along wit' a paper in his pocket and a gun in his fist; and then it'll be all over but the shoutin'—or the fun'ral. There's on'y the one sure thing about it, pally: I'll not be goin' back to 'stir'—not alive; d'ye see? So long … don't let them ducks get loose on yous and come at yous fr'm behind, whilst maybe you'd be dozin' off."
And with this parting injunction he was gone.