“I been thinkin’ the same thing. Gee whiz, Nickie, it’s awful, huh? He’s like you say—a devil! We gotta be pretty foxy with a feller like that. He ain’t afraida nothin’, I don’t think.”
“Yeah, an’ don’t think we can beat him to it. Lissen, kid, he’s twice our size an’ the gun he carries ain’t no water pistol. It looks like if he don’t get us one way, he’ll get us the other. Kid, the only way we’ll get a break is for your friends to round up the dicks an’ come down here and surprise Devlin. An’ how can that happen when they don’t know....”
“But maybe they will, Nickie,” Skippy whispered hopefully. “I didn’t know the name of this place when I wrote that note. Even I didn’t have a chance to hardly get it outa my shoe so I wouldn’t a’ had a chance....”
“An’ that old lady,” Nickie interposed ruefully. “Holy Smoke, kid, what a chance that was to slip her that note if Devlin hadn’t kep’ watchin’ every move. Just the kinda old lady we was talkin’ about too.”
“What you talkin’ about, Nickie, huh?”
“That note what you was gonna slip the first old lady you could—remember? An’ you’d a’ had a swell break if it wasn’t for Devlin. He’s a hoodoo with that funeral pan o’ his.”
“Gee whiz, Nickie, did I get away with it as swell as that? Gosh, I was scared skinny that maybe Devlin was wise I knocked her pocketbook outa her hand on purpose. She didn’t know I did it on purpose.”
“On purpose—how come?”
“Sure, I thought you knew it, Nickie. Gee whiz, was that a break that it opened up an’ her stuff ran all over the walk! When I give it back that note was inside.”
“Kid, that’s the pay-off! If that ain’t a break.”