Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/63

Rh he'd tarry to strap it up. If he got a minute or two alone in that car he made it a point to pick out the most promising trunk and switch claim-checks between it and his own. His own claim-check, at the end of the trip, would call for the good trunk, a transfer company would deliver it at a address, and Bud would move on as soon as it came, without leaving too many traces as he went.

The new coup, Bud claimed, was the better of the two. And he was glad to get to Detroit to try it out. He was as interested in it, in fact, as a Belasco would be in a new production. But that particular performance never got to the footlights. For it was at Detroit that poor old Bud got his fall.

I was cooped at the Stattler, and Bud was holding out at the Pontchetrain. He'd sidetracked there for a day, working out a slough against a Grosse Pointe automobile nabob who'd made half a million out of war munitions and was trying to spend the most of it in one dinner orgy. He was just laying the last ropes when Shy Sadie Driscoll blew into Bud's kennel and invited him to swing in with her on a turn of the old panel game with some new trimmings. Bud "threw her flat" as she put it. Shy Sadie tried to wipe out that throw-down by blowing the tout and having a fancy cop walk in on Bud when he