"I am sitting there nibbling a sandwich," he went on, "when a hick comes along and looks at me." "'Hello, pardner,' he says. 'How's the gas mine business?' "And I look at him and pretend I don't savvy at all. But this terrible looking rube grins and walks up to me, so help me God, and pulls back his lapel and shows me the big star. "'You better come along peaceabul,' he says. 'I know you, Pete Handley,' just like that. So I get up and follow this hick down the elevator and he turns me over to a cop on State Street and I am given the ride to the hoosegow. Can you beat it?" "But who was the party with the star and why the pinch?" I asked Dapper Pete. That gentleman screwed his lean, gambler's face into a ludicrous frown. "Him," he sighed, "that was Jim Sloan, constable from Grand Island, Neb. And they sent him here about two weeks ago to find me. See? And all this rube does is ride around in rubberneck wagons and take in the museums and parks, having no idee where I was. He figured merely on enjoyin' himself at Nebraska's expense. "And he was just on the observation tower lookin' over the city in his rube way when I have to walk into him. Yes, sir, Pete Handley, and there ain't no slicker guy in the country, walkin' like a prize sucker right into the arms of a Grand Island, Neb., constable. It all goes to show," sighed Dapper Pete, "what a small world it is after all." WATERFRONT FANCIES Man's capacity for faith is infinite. He is able to believe with passion in things invisible. He can achieve a fantastic confidence in the Unknowable. Here he sits on the breakwater near the Municipal Pier, a fishpole in his hand, staring patiently into the agate-colored water. He can see nothing. The lake is enormous. It contains thousands of square miles of water. And yet this man is possessed of an unshakable faith that by some mysterious legerdemain of chance a fish, with ten thousand square miles of water to swim in safely, will seek out the little minnow less than an inch in length which he has lowered beside the breakwater. And so, the victim of preposterous conviction, he sits and eyes the tip of his fishpole with unflagging hope.