the matter and fact, he never sent her a nickel. Rags gets red and wants to know how do I know whether he sent the money or not. I says because I am the guy which really done it! This stops him for a minute, then he busts out laughing and says I'll have a fine time proving that, because the hundred was sent "anonymously"—whatever that is. So I tell him that I don't want to prove nothing with the regards to myself. For my part, Mrs. Willcox will never know where the sugar came from, but I want him to own up that he didn't have nothing to do with it, so's that Mrs. Willcox and Judy won't feel that they're under obligations to him. Well, Lem being there and hearing all this seems to steam Rags up. He lets forth a sneer and says where would a fellow like me ever get a hundred dollars? I says I borrowed it—which was true—but Rags says I'm just a tenth-rate liar and I probably stole the money from Ajariah Stubbs while I was working for him.
I choked back some choice remarks which I wanted to make, and asked Rags to put up his hands. He says he wouldn't lower himself, so I lowered him with a right hook to the jaw, placing it carefully so's not to mark him. He's a good two inches taller and fifteen pounds heavier than me—but soft, awful soft, and his heart's made of dough. When he got up he blowed a police whistle, and that's why I'm leading the parade to Judge Tuckerman's with Constabule Watson.
The first case before the judge that day is Lafe Weston, charged with selling bootleg in his near-beer saloon.
