Say, Cap--"
"Close your face, Whitie, and get the works out!" Malone cut in shortly.
"We've only got the whole night ahead of us--but we'll need it all.
We're going to run the queer off that cracked plate."
One of the others, Marty Dean this time, a certain brutal aggressiveness
in both features and physique, edged forward.
"Say, what's the lay?" he demanded. "A joke? We printed one fiver off
that plate--and then we knew enough to quit. With that crack along
the corner, you couldn't pass 'em on a blind man! And Gregor saying he
thought we could patch the plate up enough to get by with gives me a
pain--he's got jingles in his dome factory! Run them fivers eh--say, are
you cracked, too?"
"Aw, forget it!" observed Malone caustically. "Who's running this gang?"
Then, with a malicious grin: "I got a customer for those fivers--fifteen
thousand dollars for all we can turn out to-night. See?"
The others stared at him for a moment, incredulity and greed mingling in
a curious half-hesitant, half-expectant look on their faces.
Then Whitie Burns spoke, circling his lips with the tip of his tongue:
"D'ye mean it, Cap--honest? What's the lay? How'd you work it?"
Malone, unbending with the sensation he had created, grinned again.
"Easy enough," he said offhandedly. "It was like falling off a log.
Gregor said, didn't he, that the only way he had been able to get
his claws on that plate was on account of young Matthews going away
sick--eh? Well, the old Matthews woman, his mother, has got money--about
fifteen thousand.
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