“I’ll explain all that to you later. You’ve got to outthink them. You have to have something besides guts at this racket. I sent them to the phone so they wouldn’t follow us out. I couldn’t have stood them off on the street with this bottle. I had to keep waving it about wildly for fear they would see it wasn’t a gun. I found it right at my hand on the porch, and it served the purpose,” he said, throwing it into a yard. “I seldom carry a gun at this evening work because I can flatten the average man with a punch. However, I think I shall put a small rod in my coat pocket hereafter.”

We walked away briskly without attracting attention; it was early evening and there were people in every block. At a corner I started to turn toward downtown. He stopped me. “No, no; we must assume that they phoned because they did not follow us. That way you might meet the coppers on their way out.”

A short walk brought us to a car line. “Take this car, Kid, and go straight to your room. I’ll be on the next one; and don’t lock your door when you go in. It looks and sounds suspicious at seven o’clock in the evening in a decent, quiet hotel.”

He came in ten minutes after me, without knocking, and locked the door softly. “Now, kid,” he said in his best manner, “we will proceed to estimate the intrinsic value of our takings in dollars and cents. That amount, divided by four, will give us an idea of what we have earned this evening.”

“Why divide it by four, Sanc?”

“Because it’s crooked and no fence will give you more. It’s a great game, Kid. The fence divides it by four, taking seventy-five percent of the value to pay him for the chances he takes. The loser, reporting to the insurance company, multiplies it by four to pay himself for the extrinsic value of his junk, and the annoyance caused by his burglar.”