Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/40

30 was always to keep me within the law. He never so much as asked me to steal a postage-stamp. He said he didn't want a blot against me, and he said it was for business purposes. Whether or not that was the truth I could never quite tell. For Bud guarded me in ways that weren't always necessary. He kept me away from what he called the "skirts" and "ribs" of his profession. He seemed to have known a good many of these women, in his time. Sometimes I used to wonder what his relations with them had been. And sometimes, too, I used to be jealous of them. At first it was of Third-Arm Annie, who had beryl-green eyes and a thatch of red bangs that made her look out of place off Fourteenth Street. But Bud told me that she was one of the cleverest "dips" and pickpockets in America, and explained how she'd got her name working as a shop-lifter, with a dummy third arm which she rested on a counter or show-case while her own unnoticed right hand was busy raking the chattels into her split-skirt pocket.

But later on it was another woman who most disturbed me, for I couldn't help feeling that this woman had her ropes laid for the rounding up of my Bud. Her name was Cookson, but in her own circle she was always known as Copperhead Kate,