"You look it," says I; "but cheer up. You never was much account anyway; so there's no great harm done."
Then he begins to blubber, and leak brine, and take on like a woman with a sick headache. "It wasn't my fault," says he. "I was led into it. Torchy, tell them I was led into it! You'll believe that, won't you?"
"Cert," says I. "I'll make affidavit I seen 'em snap the ring in your nose. But what's it all about?"
"Oh, it's something awful that's happened to me," he wails. "It's too terrible to talk about. You'll know to-morrow. I sha'n't be alive then, Torchy."
"Ain't swallowed a buttonhook, have you?" says I.
Next he begins throwin' a fit about what's goin' to become of the missus and the kid. Say, I've been in at two or three acts like this before, and I gen'rally notice that at about such a stage they play that card, the wife and kid. Your real tough citizen don't, nor your real gent,—they shuts their mouths and takes what's comin' to 'em,—but Mr. Weakback has a sudden rush of mem'ry about the folks at home, and squeals like a pup with his tail shut in the door.
"Ah, say," says I, "cut it out! You ought to move up to Harlem and learn to pound the pipes. You're a healthy plunger, you are, sneakin' bonds out of the safe to stack up against a crooked game, and then playin' the baby act when you lose out! Come now, ain't that the awful thing that's happened to you?"
He couldn't have opened up freer if he'd been put through the third degree. I gets the story of his life then, with a handkerchief accomp'niment,—all about the house he's tryin' to buy through the buildin' loan, and the second-hand bubble he wants to splurge on 'cause the neighbors have got 'em, and how he was tipped off to this sure thing in Blitzen by a party that had always been a friend of his but couldn't get hold of the stuff to turn the trick himself. He put in all the fine points, even to the way he came to have a chance at the safe.
"If I could only put them back!" says he, sighin'.
"What then?" says I. "Next time I s'pose you'd swipe the whole series, wouldn't you?"