Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 100: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ham = and AM ba FV eerie ee ves << Hefti Sf By JOHN D. SWAIN TTLE JEM had done his part faithfully and well. He was one of the clever- est cat-kids unjailed, and ‘‘ Thumb ” Carlin himself had picked him up to get the necessary dope about the town of Bing- its First—and last—National Bank. Easing himself gently into a burg large enough to be prosperous yet small enough to take notice of strangers, Jem had got a job at the garage as an expert gas-engine and general repair man, and had made him- self useful and inconspicuous, as a good gay cat should. His work had justified the confidence the yege leader reposed in him. He learned the habits of the bank personnel from its president down to the porter. He knew that the Bingham police force was divided into two platoons; the chief, who was on duty days, and his assistant who took the night trick, and whose unbreakable custom it was to drop into Hedstrom’s lunch cart at exactly midnight for beans, pie and coffee, the repast just taking half an hour. He had been inside the bank several times on errands for the garage man, and had drawn a fairly accurate plan of the layout, together with a description of the safe, and the type of locks used on the bank’s two doors, front and back. He had listed the buildings in its immediate vicinity, with notations as to their occupants, and had added several picture postcards of the square on which the First National stood. Upon receipt of a postal from Thumb Carlin with the words: All well and hope you are the same, Little Jem had com- plained of chills, had developed a realistic cough, and when he seemed to grow worse rather than better had thrown up his job and departed, to the sincere regret of the garage man. | At about the same time Jem passed out oi the life of Bingham forever, a group of a dozen men were receiving final instructions in Thumb Carlin’s boudoir in an obscure lodging house in Boston’s south end. The room was on the second floor back, and there was at the time no occupant in any 410 Ecomichooks = — a ig = = com,