“Well, ain’t dere no chance for me now, boss? I wuz burned out of a factory, carried down de ladder by a mug dat found me burnin’ up, and den dey took me to de hospital, and here I am. But where’s his nibs gone ter?”
“Yes,” said the bookkeeper, scornfully, “you’ve been to the hospital, no doubt, but I guess it was a judge sent you there. But you come in here at twelve o’clock, and perhaps there’ll be a little work for you.”
“Dat’s it all de time,” said Skinny to himself, as he walked away. “Wot’s de use of doin’ de right ting when nobody won’t believe yer, and tinks all de time yer been up to der Island? Dat’s wot comes of goin’ to work reg’lar,” he added, and he shook his head with a determination never to do any business in the future except on his own account.
Twelve o’clock found him standing once more in the little office on the side street, and when he entered, the old bookkeeper, who was still making entries in the big leather-bound volume as if he had been at it without a second’s interruption all the morning, scarcely raised his eyes, while he said to him: “Do you remember going up to a house above the Harlem river, one day, to take a letter to an old gentleman who lived there?”
“So you’ve been in the hospital, have you?”—Page [225].
“A big, square house, wid evergreens around it? Yes, I could find it again in de dark.”
“Very well,” continued the bookkeeper, whose pen did not cease scratching for a single moment, “you’d better go up now and find it, for there’s a gentleman up there who may give you a job; but let me give you a bit of advice, young man. Don’t remember too much or see too much when you’re sent on errands. It’s the boys who forget what they see, and the places that they’re sent to, who make the most money nowadays. Here’s twenty-five cents for car fare, and now you go up there, and you’ll find the gentleman whom you politely refer to as ‘the bloke with the black whiskers’ waiting for you.”
Skinny made haste to obey, and within an hour was entering the dark, shady grounds of Mr. Dexter’s house with the same furtive, cautious way of looking about him that he had shown further down town. His old acquaintance, the man with the black beard and the deeply-scarred face, was walking up and down the roadway in front of the house, smoking a cigar.
“So you’ve been in the hospital, have you?” was his salutation. “What sort of a hospital was it? One with bars to the window?”