Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/223

 a minute." He nodded to the "barker" in the entrance, passed the inner ticket office and disappeared. Don studied the yellow photographs of a fat woman, an acrobat in tights, a girl in dancing skirts posed on a rustic fence with her back to the seashore, a pugilist menacing a punching bag—until Tower came out again with a man of Dixon's type, who looked Don over—his hands in his pockets, a cigar in his mouth—and said: "A' right. We're goin' to start the grind in about ten minutes. Got a dime? A' right." He turned to Tower. "We're makin' three pushes to a take. Yuh don't want to do any spielin', do you? The man we got 's a heel."

"No," Tower said. "I'm out of practice. I'd sooner boost.'

"A' right, 'bo. String 'em up. The other boys 'll be along in a shake."

He went in. Tower put his hand on Don's shoulder and started him up the street again. "We have nothing to do," he explained, "but to walk up to that door when the man you saw there begins to call out that the show is 'on.' We wait inside, where they have the free performance, until a crowd has gathered; then, when the 'spieler' (they call him) says 'Right this way,' we push over to the box office, pay ten cents and pass in. He'll give you back your money inside. The idea is to start the crowd going in."

To a youth of another temperament, it might have been either an amusing adventure or a shocking fall into a lower world; but Don had not the self-detachment which could either enjoy his surroundings as