“If they come here they'll git somethin' they ain't lookin' for,” muttered Chrisfield.
“I'm goin' down to Nice; getting too hot around here,” said Slippery. “I've got travel orders in my pocket now.”
“How did you get 'em?”
“Easy as pie,” said Slippery, lighting a cigarette and puffing affectedly towards the ceiling. “I met up with a guy, a second loot, in the Knickerbocker Bar. We gets drunk together, an' goes on a party with two girls I know. In the morning I get up bright an' early, and now I've got five thousand francs, a leave slip and a silver cigarette case, an' Lootenant J. B. Franklin's runnin' around sayin' how he was robbed by a Paris whore, or more likely keepin' damn quiet about it. That's my system.”
“But, gosh darn it, I don't see how you can go around with a guy an' drink with him, an' then rob him,” cried Al from the bed.
“No different from cleaning a guy up at craps.”
“Well?”
“An' suppose that feller knew that I was only a bloody private. Don't you think he'd have turned me over to the M. P.'s like winkin'?”
“No, I don't think so,” said Al. “They're juss like you an me, skeered to death they'll get in wrong, but they won't light on a feller unless they have to.”
“That's a goddam lie,” cried Chrisfield. “They like ridin' yer. A doughboy's less'n a dawg to 'em. Ah'd shoot anyone of 'em lake Ah'd shoot a nigger.”