“Ye-e-es, but this Wallingford person called the turn,” insisted Phelps. “The only times we ever made it stick was on the kind of farmers that work in eleven-story office buildings. You can fool a man with a stuffed dog, but you can’t fool a dog with it; and you couldn’t fool Yap Wallingford with a counterfeit yap.”
“Well,” announced Mr. Pickins, with emphatic finality, “you may have my part of him. I’m willing to let him go right back to Oskaloosa, or Oshkosh, or wherever it is.”
“Not me,” declared Phelps. “I want to get him just on general principles. He’s handed me too much flossy talk. You know the last thing he had the nerve to say? He invited us up to play stud poker with him.”
“Why don’t you?” asked Pickins.
“Ask Larry,” said Phelps with a laugh, whereat Larry merely swore.
Badger Billy, who had been silently listening with his eyes half closed, was possessed of a sudden inventive gift.
“Yes, why don’t you?” he repeated. “If I read this village cut-up right, and I think I do, he’ll take a sporting chance. Get him over to the Forty-second Street dump on a proposition to play two-handed stud with Harry there, then pull off a phoney pinch for gambling.”
“No chance,” returned Phelps. “He’d be on to that game; it’s a dead one, too.”
“Not if you work it this way,” insisted Billy, in whom the creative spirit was still strong. “Tell him that we’re all sore at Harry, here; that Harry threw the gang last night and got me put away. I’ll have McDermott take me down and lock me up on suspicion for a couple of hours, so you can bring him down and show me to him. Tell him you’ve found a way to get square. Harry’s supposed to have a grouch about that stud poker taunt and wants to play Wallingford two-handed, five thousand a side. Tell him to go into this game, and that just when they have the money and the cards on the table, you’ll pull off a phoney pinch and have your fake officer take the money and cards for evidence, then you’ll split up with him.”