«I will,» says Mike, «and I'll put it in the drawer next to the bills that was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at the church fair to build a new parsonage for the parson's daughter to live in.»
At 1 o'clock when the hod–carriers were making ready to close up the front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door of the restaurant and comes up to Old Jack's table. You've seen the kind—black shawl, creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes a cross between Gabriel's and a sick kitten's—the kind of woman that's always on the lookout for an automobile or the mendicancy squad—and she stands there without a word and looks at the money.
Old Jack gets up, peels me off the roll and hands me to her with a bow.
«Madam,» says he, just like actors I've heard, «here is a tainted bill. I am a gambler. This bill came to me to–night from a gentleman's son. Where he got it I do not know. If you will do me the favor to accept it, it is yours.»
The woman took me with a trembling hand.
«Sir,» said she, «I counted thousands of this issue of bills into packages when they were virgin from the presses. I was a clerk in the Treasury Department. There was an official to whom I owed my position. You say they are tainted now. If you only knew—but I won't say any more. Thank you with all my heart, sir—thank you—thank you.»
Where do you suppose that woman carried me almost at a run? To a bakery. Away from Old Jack and a sizzling good time to a bakery. And I get changed, and she does a Sheridan–twenty–miles–away with a dozen rolls and a section of jelly cake as big as a turbine water–wheel. Of course I lost sight of her then, for I was snowed up in the bakery, wondering whether I'd get changed at the drug store the next day in an alum deal or paid over to the cement works.
A week afterward I butted up against one of the one–dollar bills the baker had given the woman for change.
«Hallo, E35039669,» says I, «weren't you in the change for me in a bakery last Saturday night?»
«Yep,» says the solitaire in his free and easy style.