They were walking along the platform, Thubway Tham a few feet behind them. Once more the wallet was exhibited; again the flap of it was thrust back and the bundles of currency revealed. Thubway Tham licked his lips as he watched.
And then he almost gasped. The man ahead, returning the fat wallet to his pocket, talking to his friend meanwhile, had missed the pocket—and the wallet had dropped to the floor.
Tham, his heart pounding at his ribs, stepped forward briskly and bent. He picked up the fat wallet and stood erect again. He looked ahead—and smiled.
Half a dozen quick steps he took; and touched the owner of the wallet on the shoulder.
“Pardon me, thir, but you jutht dropped thith,” Thubway Tham said. “I wath walkin’ right behind you, and I thaw it.”
The eyes of the other bulged. For a moment his face went white, and then resumed its natural color.
“Great Scott!” he roared. “What luck! Just made a killing in the market, and almost lost the coin through my carelessness. I’ll say this for you, sir—you are an honest man. There are eight thousand dollars in this wallet. Allow me to reward you.”
“That ith not netheththary,” Tham said.
“But it is necessary, my man. I wouldn’t feel right if I did not reward you. Here is a hundred-dollar bill, sir, and let me say again that you are an honest man.”
Thubway Tham accepted the bill thankfully and humbly and voiced his appreciation, The owner of the wallet went on up the stairs. For the second time that day, Tham felt a touch on his shoulder, and turned to find Detective Craddock regarding him in a puzzled manner.
“Tham, you are beyond me,” Craddock said. “You didn’t shake me, boy, as you thought. And I’ve been watching you trail that guy for almost a couple of hours. I know you were after the boob’s wallet. Yet, when he drops it, you pick it up and return it to him.”
“Why, what elthe could a gentleman do, Craddock?” Thubway Tham demanded.
“I don’t seem to get this.”
“I may be a dip,” said Thubway Tham, his face serious, “but I do not take advantage in a cathe like that. That man lotht hith wallet. I thaw him lothe it, and returned it. My goodnethth, Craddock, ith there anything tho very wonderful in that?”
Thubway Tham sniffed and went up the stairs to the street. Detective Craddock looked after him, scratching at his head just over the left ear, as he always did when badly puzzled. Craddock could not understand it.
Up on the street, Thubway Tham, despite the loss of the fat wallet, allowed himself to grin again. It was his lucky day and he knew it. What Detective Craddock did not know was that Thubway Tham, as he stood erect after picking up the wallet, had glanced ahead into the tiny mirror on a slot machine that dispensed candy and gum, and had seen the reflection of Detective Craddock behind him. How easy it would have been for Craddock to have seized him with the wallet in his possession and made the assertion that Tham had picked a pocket?
“It payth to be honetht thometimeth,” Thubway Tham said to himself, grinning yet again. “A hundred buckth inthtead of a thell in the hoothgow ith not tho bad!”
THUBWAY THAM’S HOODOO ROLL
Slowly Thubway Tham turned over in his bed and opened his eyes upon another day. The bright sunshine, striking through the dirty window that looked down upon a littered alley, flooded the dingy room in Mr. “Nosey” Moore’s lodging house. Thubway Tham blinked his eyes in the face of this brilliance, and then glanced at his watch to discover that it was only eight o’clock.
“It thertainly ith a funny thing that I thhould wake up jutht now,” Thubway Tham told himself. “Ath a uthual thing, it ith nine o’clock that theeth me openin’ my eyeth on thith cruel and dithmal world. There mutht be thome reathon for it. My goodnethth, maybe it ith a hunch!”
However, despite the early hour, he did not feel like sleeping more. He yawned and stretched his arms and finally got out of bed. Halfway from the bed to the washstand in one corner of the room Thubway Tham stopped suddenly, and a grin spread itself over his countenance.
“I know!” he whispered to himself, as he maintained the grin. “It ith a lucky day!”
Thubway Tham, be it known, was superstitious to a high degree. Being a professional pickpocket, Tham was compelled by the nature of affairs to use a certain amount of caution during his business hours. During the years he had acquired the conviction that certain things were fortunate for him, and that certain other things were not. And above all, he had learned to respect a “hunch,” and to “play” it for all that it might be worth.
It was a common hunch that he felt now—that this was to be a day of good fortune. So he hummed a song as he bathed and dressed, and then stood before the window and looked down into the alley with its litter of boxes and cans, its shrieking children, its complaining women, and its tired-looking men. Tham was in such good spirits that he found the spectacle pleasing.
A few minutes later Thubway Tham descended the rickety stairs and so came to the second floor of the lodging house, where Nosey Moore had an office. Nosey was sitting behind his battered desk, puffing with evident contentment at a huge pipe which Thubway Tham had given him the Christmas before. He looked up as Tham approached and took the pipe from his mouth.
“Good mornin’, Tham!” Moore said.
“And good mornin’ yourthelf. Nothey!” Thubway Tham responded. “It ith goin’ to be a fine day!”
Ordinary morning greetings, you will notice, such as might have been exchanged between a respectable grocer and an ambitious butcher. Nothing queer or mysterious about it. Yet Thubway Tham was the best pickpocket in the city—even the police department admitting that—and Nosey Moore was a retired burglar who claimed that he had retired because the game was too tame for him these days. Conducting a lodging house gave him more genuine excitement, he declared, and he thought that it was burglary, in a way, to be a landlord.
And yet these two precious rascals, whose photographs adorned the rogues’ gallery, gave ordinary morning greetings, showing that they were human beings only, though connected with nefarious lines of endeavor. And then both grinned.
“What ith the newth, if any?” Thubway Tham asked, pausing in the act of lighting his morning cigarette.
“Tham, my boy, if there is any news worth mentionin’, I haven’t heard about it,” he declared.
“Well, then there ithn’t any,” Thubway Tham replied. “Nothey, I’ve got a hunch that thith ith goin’ to be a lucky day for me!”
Nosey Moore glanced up in sudden alarm.
“You watch out for that hunch, Tham,” the landlord said earnestly. “I got in trouble once, playin’ a hunch like that. Old Mrs. Fate makes a guy feel that he’s about due for a run of good luck, gets him a little careless, and then slips over a knock-out on his chin! Take my warnin’ and play the game close to your manly chest, Tham, if you’ve got that lucky feelin’. Maybe it’s only indigestion, anyway!”
“Well, my goodnethth!” Tham gasped out. “You’re quite thome peththimitht, Nothey. You’d thour pickleth!”
“Is that so?” Moore asked.
“Yeth! You look on the dark thide of thingth all the time, and that ith the bunk!”
“Uh-huh!” the landlord replied sarcastically. “I’ve seen you optimistic birds lose your feathers several times durin’ my short career. Grin and bear it—that’s your motto! Be happy, happy! Smile at the judge and thank him when he hands you a ten stretch! That’s you!”
“Great Thcott!” Tham ejaculated.
“And now you’ve got the idea that this is goin’ to be a lucky day