midnight push, "I'm under orders. Eh?"

"Sure thing," says I. "You're about to get 'em, too. Did you ever do such a thing as steal a barber's pole?"

Barry couldn't remember that he ever had.

"Well," says I, "that's what you're goin' to do now."

"Which one?" asks Barry.

"Otto's," says I. "From the joint where we were just before dinner."

"Right, lieutenant," says Barry, givin' his salute.

"And listen," says I. "You're dead set on havin' that particular pole. Understand? You want it bad. And after you get it you ain't goin' to let anybody get it away from you, no matter what happens, until I give the word. That's your cue."

"Trust me, lieutenant," says Barry, straightenin' up. "I shall stand by the pole."

Sounds simple, don't it? But that's the way all us great minds work, along lines like that. And the foolisher we look at the start the deeper we're apt to be divin' after the plot of the piece. Don't miss that. What's a bent hairpin in the mud to you? While to us—boy, page old Doc Watson.48

48

How many times, for instance, do you suppose you've walked past the Hotel Northumberland? Yet did you ever notice that the barber shop entrance was exactly twenty paces east on Umpteenth Street from the corner of Broadway; that you go down three iron steps to a landin' before you turn for the other 15; or that the barber pole has a gilt top with blue stars in it, and is swung out on a single bracket with two screws on each side? I points out all this to Barry as we strolls down from the theater district.

"By jove!" says Barry. "Wonderful!"

"Ain't it?" says I. "And all done without a change of wig or a jab of the needle. Now your part is easy. You simply drift down the side street, step into the shadow where the cab stand juts out, and when nobody's passin' you work the screws loose. Me, I got to drop into the writin' room and dash something off. Here we are. Go to it."

Course, he could have bugged things. Might have 

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