Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 83

In these days if anything gets past the up-to-date train butcher it isn't because the public knows any more than it did in Barnum's time. We get a customer every minute by the birth records.

For a genuine, all-round, dyed-in-the-wool separator of coin from its proud possessor, the train butcher is the limit. Here is a word for word story by a train "butch" of how the thing is done. He excuses his tactics much the same way that the little rogue does who points out that the giant malefactors are doing the same thing, but "getting away with it." Enter Mr. Butch.

"I got back yesterday from a two days' trip—out and in. I had $29.65 to the good, and the company satisfied, and nary a kick from the railroad. At one little place down the line, though, a railroad detective got aboard and tried to detect.

"'Say, young feller,' he said to me, 'I saw you go through here yesterday lookin' pretty spruce, and I thought I'd better take a look through yer grips as you came back. What yer got in there?'

"He kicked my grip, and I opened her up on the minute. He went through it like an old goat through a cracker barrel, but he didn't find anything—see? If he'd looked under the cushion of a seat in the smoker he might have found a whole lot of stuff that didn't look like a prayer meeting layout.