"And I just wouldn't stand for that," says Sadie. "Those bookmakers are nothing but swindlers, anyway. I know, because I bet ten dollars on a race once, and didn't win."
Say, I had a lithograph of Buddy and his beanery tip goin' up against an argument like that. Of course it wa'n't more'n two minutes before Sadie'd got her Sullivan up. She offered Buddy his choice between a railroad ticket home to mother, or nothing at all. Buddy wouldn't arbitrate on those lines. He said he was a desperate man, and that she'd be sorry before night. Sadie'd heard that before; so she just laughed and said the steam-car ticket offer would be held open until night.
She didn't see anything more of Buddy for a couple of hours, and then she caught him as he came up from the billiard-room. Bein' an expert on such symptoms, she knew why he talked like his mouth was full of cotton, but she couldn't account for the wad of bills he shook at her. Buddy could. He'd run across a young Englishman down there who thought he could handle a cue. Buddy had bet hot air against real money, and trimmed his man.
"That wasn't the worst of it, though," said Sadie. "After I had got him up to my rooms he pulled out the money again, to count it over, and out came a three-inch marquise ring—an opal set with diamonds—that I knew the minute I put my eyes on it. There were her initials on the inside, too. Oh, no one but Mrs. Purdy Pell."
"Tut, tut!" says I. "You can easy square it with her."
"But that's just what I can't do," says Sadie. "She loves me about as much as a tramp likes work. She tells folks that I make fools of her boys. Her boys, mind you! She claims every stray man under twenty-five, and when I came here she had three of them on the string. Goodness knows, I didn't want them! They're only imitation men, anyway. And it was her ring that Buddy had in his pocket."
"Maybe he hadn't lifted it," says I.
Sadie swallowed a bit hard at that; but she raps out the straight goods. "Yes, he did," says she. "He must have sneaked it out of her room as he went down stairs. Think of it! Stealing! He's done a lot of foolish things before; but I didn't think he would turn out a crook. The Lord knows where he gets that kind of blood from—not from the Sullivans, or the Scannells, either. But I can't have him put away. There's mother. And he won't mind a thing I say. Now what shall I do, Shorty?"
"Where's Buddy now?" says I.
"Locked in my clothes-closet, with his hands tied and a gag in his mouth," says she. "Oh, I can handle him that way, big as he is; and I wasn't going to take any more chances. But it's likely that Mrs. Pell has missed her ring by this time and is raising a howl about it. What's to be done?"