"Where do I come from?" Timmy repeated in answer to Skippy's question. "Albany. Barker comes in the jug where I'm doin' five years--for stealin'. Well, he looks like a minister an' I think he passes it out that he is one. Anyway, he spies me an' gets talkin' kinda religious an' fatherly while the guard's around. When the bloke strolls off, Barker quick drops the fatherly act an' wants to know would I like to crash. Sure, I tells him. He tells me to be set the next night--that he'll be waitin'. When he leaves he slips me fifty bucks an' tells me to slip it to the guard I think'll look the other way for that much jack." "You made it, huh?" Skippy asked. "Easy. Fifty bucks is big money for them guards. The one I stake lets me slip without no trouble at all. Barker was waitin' outside in a big closed car." "Frost with him?" Skippy asked curiously. "Nope. I never seen that grinnin' skunk till Barker brings me down to this hole. That's a month an' a half ago. Barker took me straight to a house in Albany where he said he rented a room. On the way he tells me that from then on I should say I'm his son. So I do. We only stay in the house three days. I'm willin' to keep under cover so he tells the landlady an' everybody I ain't feelin' so well, that's the reason I don't go out. Barker steps out plenty an' I hear him talkin' to the landlady down the hall." "What'd they talk about?" Skippy asked. "Sure--it was nothin' much. A lotta boloney! Barker makes the dame think he's one grand old man--all for his wild son--all that bunk. Anyways, the last day we're there he drags me out right after dark. Takes me to a doctor. When I ast him what for, he says that's his business; that I should act like a sulky son. Well, I do it. The doc gimme the up an' down an' says O. K. So we go back to the house an' the landlady hands Barker a telegram that I found out afterward was from Frost. It says somethin' about grandma bein' sick; that he should come home to New York. It was signed Joe." "Then you packed up an' come here, I bet," Skippy said. "Sure," Timmy murmured. "He leaves the telegram on the bureau an' down in the hall he gives the landlady a coupla weeks' rent. Tells her if we ain't back by then, he'll send the dough every week till we do get back. He give her a song and dance bout wantin' a farm when he come back an' that he wanted the room to come back to so's he'd have a place while he was lookin'. When we come away he tells me it's a lotta boloney he give her; that he only wanted the room till this little business broke O. K. He says he ain't got no idea of goin' back there." "Mm," said Nickie, "sounds like he was buildin' an alibi for hisself, hah?"