I spread my money on the table to look it over. My sad experience with the twenty-dollar bill had made me careful. The paper money looked safe enough, and so did the silver except one fifty-cent piece that was worn smooth and had a monogram engraved on one side of it—a pocket piece or keepsake.
“Take this out in the back and throw it away,” I said to him; “it’s deadly poison.”
Instead, he rang it up on the register, saying, “That will pay your check; no use wasting it. It will go to the bank in the morning.”
I went to his room and to bed. At seven o’clock he came in with this amazing story, and I suggest a careful study of it by any young man who thinks stealing is an exact science, and all he has to do is outwit the coppers.
“Thirty minutes after you left the restaurant,” said he, “a guy came in and ate his breakfast in silence. He laid down a five-dollar bill to pay his check and the four-bit piece you threw me was in the change I gave him. He jumped stiff-legged and began frothing at the mouth when he saw it.
“‘I was robbed last night in my room. I had to wake the clerk up this morning and borrow five dollars. This fifty-cent piece is mine. I had it last night. It has my initials on it. I’ve carried it five years. How did it get into your till?’
“I told him I took it in an hour before from a short, stout, red-headed man with a broken nose and about forty years old. He is going to have a policeman at the place until the redhead shows up again. I promised to point him out if I see him anywhere. You’re safe; but you had better eat somewhere else for a while.”
CHAPTER XXI
This strange coincidence of the marked piece of silver more than ever convinced me of the necessity for keeping something ahead so I wouldn’t be forced to go out and take long chances for short money. With enough in my pocket now to last me a month, I gave the town a thorough canvassing for something worth while. I found many places that appeared to be advertising for a burglar, and the most promising was the big general store. It was packed to the roof with merchandise, and the owners, to save floor space, had placed the safe behind stairs, where it could not be seen from the street. I “pegged” the spot for a week and satisfied myself that after the store was closed at night no one entered it till opening-up time in the morning.
The expression, “I have him pegged,” which has crept into common usage, is thieves’ slang pure and simple, and has nothing to do with the game of cribbage as many suppose. The thief, to save himself the trouble of staying up all night watching a spot to make sure no one enters after closing hours, puts a small wooden peg in the door jamb after the place is locked up. At five or six o’clock in the morning he takes a look. If the peg is in place the door has not been opened. If it is found lying in the doorway, that means somebody has opened the door in the night. If he finds the place is visited in the night he must then stay out and learn why and at what time and how often. He now has the place “pegged” and plans accordingly or passes it up as too tough.