"And a good job too!" said Hickey with undisguised relief. "I knew you had a head on you," he added propitiatingly. "Oh you did, did you? You and I have got a long account to settle, old fellow!" "Aw, be nice," said Hickey cajolingly. "What have you got to grouse about? You've got the flivver, haven't you? I've got nothing." "Where's the two hundred you got from me?" Hickey blew into the empty air. "Gone! Just like that! I'm cleaned out." "Booze?" "No. Craps." Greg shrugged. "Oh, I know I'm a fool," said Hickey with a kind of cheerful despair. "You don't have to tell me. Every man has his own special kind of dam foolishness. Mine's the little bone cubes." He snapped his fingers. "Come you little lubly seben!" "You've got a nerve to show yourself around here." "Only place I had to come to," said Hickey simply. "Besides somepin told me you wouldn't be hard on a poor mutt like me,"--this with his inimitable insinuating grin. "Let me sleep awhile in the flivver, will yeh? I'm all in." In spite of himself Greg began to relent. "If you want to square yourself with me you've got to tell me the truth about how you came by that body," he said. "You didn't think _I_ croaked the guy, did you?" said Hickey. "No. But I want to know all the circumstances. A lot has happened since you unloaded it on me." "Ain't got much to tell," said Hickey. "I see by the papie last night that the _Allianca_ from Central American ports was sighted off the Hook and was going to dock about ten o'clock. Well, when one of them little vessels docks at night it gives us fellows a show, see? for the swell drivers won't come down-town for it. So I goes to the pier and I draws two of them dagoes; one was him that I threw in with the flivver, see? and the other was a small slender fella with a little black mustache. The old guy couldn't speak no English; the young fella talked for him. He told me to take them to Jersey City by the Twenty-third Street ferry, see? "Well, I drove up West and up Eleventh Avenue and I was almost to the ferry when I hear a funny noise in the cab behind me, a scrabbling sort of sound. I looked around, and it looked to me like the old boy was having a fit. So I pulled up beside the curb and opened the door. That was in front of the Brevard House where I met up with you later. "The old fella was hanging over all limp-like with his hands hanging to the floor, and the young guy was trying to pull him up. Say, that young guy was scared, he was. He was so scared he was green. He says to me as well as he could for his teeth chattering: 'My friend is took sick,' says he, 'real sick.' "Well, I didn't need anybody to tell me that. It seemed natural for the fella to be scared. I helped him boost the old dago up on the seat comfortable. 'Hold him up a minute,' says the young guy, 'and I'll run in here and ast where's the nearest doctor guy.'