“Yes. Great game up, if I can only get on the track.”
“What is it?”
“There's a cast-off baby in Dirty Alley, and Fan Bray knows its mother, and she's rich.”
“What?”
“Fan's getting lots of hush-money.”
“Goody! but that is game!”
“Isn't it? The baby's owned by two beggar-women who board it in Dirty Alley. It's 'most starved and frozen to death, and Fan's awful 'fraid it may die. She wants me to steal it for her, so that she may have it better taken care of, and I was going to do it last night, when I got into a muss.”
“Who's the woman that boards it?”
“She lives in a cellar, and is drunk every night. Can steal the brat easily enough; but if I can't find out who it belongs to, you see it will be trouble for nothing.”
“No, I don't see any such thing,” answered Nell Peter. “If you can't get hush-money out of its mother, you can bleed Fanny Bray.”