"Ain't youse goin' to put on your gum-shoes, boss?"
Jimmy frowned reflectively, as if there was something in what this novice suggested. He went into the bedroom, and returned wearing a pair of thin patent-leather shoes.
Spike coughed tentatively.
"Won't youse need your gun?" he hazarded. Jimmy gave a short laugh.
"I work with brains, not guns," he said. "Let us be going."
There was a taxi-cab near by, as there always is in New York. Jimmy pushed Spike in, and they drove off. To Jimmy, New York stopped somewhere about Seventy-Second Street. Anything beyond that was getting on for the Middle West, and seemed admirably suited as a field for the cracksman. He had a vague idea of up-town as a remote, desolate district, badly lighted—if lighted at all—and sparsely dotted with sleepy policemen.
The luxury of riding in a taxi-cab kept Spike dumb for several miles. Having arrived at what seemed a sufficiently remote part of America, Jimmy paid the driver, who took the money with that magnificently aloof air which characterizes the taxi-chauffeur. A lesser man might have displayed some curiosity about the ill-matched pair. The chauffeur, having lighted a cigarette, drove off without any display of interest whatsoever. It might have been part of his ordinary duties to drive gentlemen in evening clothes and shock-headed youths in parti-colored sweaters about the city at three o'clock in the morning.
"We will now," said Jimmy, "stroll on and prospect. It is up to you, Spike. Didn't you say something about knowing a suitable house somewhere? Are we anywhere near it?"
Spike looked at the number of the street.
"We got some way to go, boss," he said. "I wisht youse hadn't sent away de cab."