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“You know how them mysterious premonitions comes to a feller. A little bird whispers to you, or you have a dream, or else you walk into the mitt-joint and hand a he-note to a dark complected lady wearing a red kimono and a brown mustache, and she takes a flash at your palm and seems to see a dark man coming with a warrant, followed by a trip up a great river to a large stone building like a castle. Or else Headquarters issues a general alarm, giving names, dates, personal description, size of reward and place where last seen. This time it’s a general alarm. From what I could gather, a downcasted Issy Wisenheimer has been up to the front parlor beefing about his vanishing bankroll and his disappearing breast-pin. You wouldn’t think a self-respecting citizen of a great Republic like this’n would carry on so over thirty-eight dollars in currency and a diamond so yeller it woulda been a topaz if it had been any yellower. But such was indeed the case. I gleans a little valuable information from a friendly barkeeper who’s got a brother-in-law at the Central Office, and so is in position to get hold of much interesting and timely chit-chat before it becomes common gossip throughout the neighborhood. So then I takes the Sweet Caps Kid off to one side and I says to him, I says:

“‘Kiddo,’ I says, ‘listen: I’ve got a strong presentiment that we should oughter be going completely away from here. If we don’t, the first thing you know some plain-clothes bull with fallen arches and his neck shaved ‘way up high in the back will be coming round asking us to go riding with him down town into the congested district, and if we declines the invitation, like as not he’ll muss our clothes all up. Do you seem to get my general drift?’ I says.

“‘Huh,’ he says, ‘you talk as if there’d been a squeal.’

“‘Squeal?’ I says. ‘Squeal? Son, you can take it from me there’s been a regular season of grand opera. You and me are about to be accused of pernicious activity. What’s more, they’re liable to prove it. There’s a movement on foot in influential quarters to provide us with board and lodgings at a place which I will not name to you in so many words on account of your weak heart. The work there,’ I says, ‘is regular, and the meals is served on time, and you’re protected from the damp night air; but,’ I says, ‘the hours is too long and too confining to suit me.’ I’ve knowed probably a thousand fellers in my time that sojourned up at Bird Center-on-the-Hudson anywhere from one to fifteen years on a stretch, and I never seen one of them yet but had some fault to find with the place.

“‘Whereas, on the other hand,’ I says, ‘all nature seems to beckon to us. Let’s you and me steal forth under the billowy blue caliber of Heaven and make hay while the haymakers are good. Let us quit the city with its temptations and its snares and its pitfalls, ‘specially the last named,’ I says, ‘and in some peaceful spot far, far away, let us teach Uncle Joshua Whitcomb that the hand is quicker than the eye, him paying cash down in advance for the lessons. Tubby sure, the pickings has been excellent here in the shadow of the skyscrapers, and it’ll probably be harder sledding out amongst the disk-harrow boys. Everybody reads the papers these days, only the Rube believes what he reads and the city guy don’t. I hate to go, but I ain’t comfortable where I am. When my scalp begins to itch like it does now that’s a sign of a close hair-cut coming on. I’ve got educated dandruff,’ I says, ‘and it ain’t never fooled me yet. In short,’ I says, ‘I’ve been handed the office to skiddoo, and in such cases I believe in skiddooing. Let us create a vacancy in these parts sine quinine–which,’ I says, ‘is Latin, meaning it’s a bitter dose but you gotta take it.’