A lot of good it did us, too. The spaghetti works was in full blast, with a lot of husky lowbrows goin' in and out, smokin' cheroots half as long as your arm, and acting as if the referee had just declared a draw. The opening for a couple of bare fisted investigators wasn't what you might call promisin'. Not having their grips and passwords, we didn't feel as though we could make good in their lodge. "I could round up a gang and then we could rush 'em," says I. "That wouldn't do," says the Boss. "Strategy is what we need here." "I'm just out of that," says I. "Perhaps there's a back door," says the Boss. So we moseys around the block, huntin' for a family entrance. But that ain't the way they build down in Mulberry Bend. They chucks their old rookeries slam up against one another, to keep 'em from fallin' over, I guess. Generally though, there's some sort of garlic flue through the middle of the block, but you need a balloon to find it. "Hist!" says I. "Hold me head while I thinks a thunk. Didn't I come down here once to watch a try-out? Sure! And it was pulled off in the palatial parlors of Appetite Joe Cardenzo's Chowder Association, the same being a back room two flights up. Now if we could dig up Appetite Joe--" We did. He was around the corner playing 'scope for brandied plums, but he let go the cards long enough to listen to my fairy tale about wantin' a joint where I could give my friend a private lesson. "Sure!" said Joe, passing out the key, "but you breaka da chair I charga feefty cent." There were two back windows and the view wasn't one you'd want to put in a frame. Down below was a court filled with coal boxes and old barrels, and perfumed like the lee side of Barren Island. But catty-corners across was the back of that spaghetti mill. We could tell it by the two-decker bill board on the roof. In the upper windows we could see Dago women and kids, but the windows on the second floor were black. "Iron shutters," says the Boss. "And that's where she is if anywhere." "Got a scalin' ladder and a jimmy in your pocket?" says I. "Then I'll have to run around to a three ball exchange and see if I can't dig up an outfit." A patent fire escape and a short handled pick-axe was the best I could do. We made the board jumper fast inside and down I went. Then there was acrobatics; swingin' across to that three inch window ledge, balancin' with one foot on nothing, and single hand work with the pick-axe. Lucky that shutter-bar was half rusted away. She came open with a bang when she did come, and it near sent me down into the barrels. Me eyelashes held though, and there I was, up against a window. "See anything?" says the Boss. "Room to rent," says I, for it looked like we'd pried open a vacant flat. Just then the sash goes up and something shiny glitters in the dark. I was just lettin' go with one hand to swing for a head when someone lets loose a Dago remark that was mighty business like and more or less familiar.