You step down off the chair and find his vest and trousers. His watch hefts heavy. You take it, and you take the silver out of his trousers⁠—just to penalize him for trying to be foxy.

You go out, closing the door carefully behind you. Back in your room you examine the bills and silver carefully⁠—you remember the twenty-dollar bill that cost you two years and two lashings. You find you have more money than you would have got out of both the places you failed in; enough to last you six months if you are careful and don’t gamble.

You plant your instruments in the little room down the hall. Then you go out the back way to dodge the night clerk, and down to an all-night saloon where you put the bills away in your compartment in the big safe. The night bartender is square; he knows you and your business. You want to get rid of the watch as quick as possible. It’s worth a hundred dollars. You sell it to him for a twenty-dollar note, glad to be done with it.

Yes, reader, I know what you say to yourself now. You are saying: “Well, he doesn’t have to go to the hop joint this time.”

You are right. I didn’t have to go, but I went just the same. The opium smoker can always find a good excuse for an extra smoke. I went to the joint to celebrate my changed fortune and to propitiate whatever deformed deity it is that is supposed to look after the luck of a burglar. I must have propitiated to some purpose, for within a week another stroke of dumb luck more than doubled my bankroll, and I decided to take a layoff.

Always in the back of my mind was the thought that someday I would go back and see my father. It was ten years since I ran away from him. Many things had happened to me. Something may have happened to him. He might need money or help. I was free to go; I had no associates to cling to; I was under no obligations to anybody. My time and money were my own. The hop habit was getting fastened on me, and this trip would give me a chance to break away from it. The notion of being respectable and feeling safe and secure for a few months took my fancy, so I started in to do the thing right.