“You may get out in an hour and you may not. You never can tell. You are beginning young. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“What are you pinched for?”

I told him all about it.

“That’s everyday business here,” he said. “Usually the sucker is a married man and can’t squawk. But when he does squawk, like this one, the only thing to do is to blow back his money. Either the lawyer or one of the girls eased it into his coat pocket. That’s better than returning it to him and admitting that they tried to rob him.

“The whole thing was a stand-in from the captain down. Everybody’s satisfied. The sucker has his money, the girls are all out, Kate will charge Julia fifty dollars for the lawyer’s fee, and that ends it.