Anyway, he fixes the explosive in one of the holes he drills near the combination lock on
the safe, and then he puts in a fuse, and just before he touches off the fuse Butch picks up
John Ignatius Junior and hands him to Little Isadore, and tells us to go into the room
behind the office. John Ignatius Junior does not seem to care for Little Isadore, and I do
not blame him, at that, because he starts to squirm around quite some in Isadore's arms
and lets out a squall, but all of a sudden he becomes very quiet indeed, and, while I am
not able to prove it, something tells me that Little Isadore has his hand over John Ignatius
Junior's mouth.
Well, Big Butch joins us right away in the back room, and sound comes out of John
Ignatius Junior again as Butch takes him from Little Isadore, and I am thinking that it is a
good thing for Isadore that the baby cannot tell Big Butch what Isadore does to him.
'I put in just a little bit of a shot,' Big Butch says, 'and it will not make any more noise
than snapping your fingers.'
But a second later there is a big whoom from the office, and the whole joint shakes, and
John Ignatius laughs right out loud. The chances are he thinks it is the Fourth of July.
'I guess maybe I put in too big a charge,' Big Butch says, and then he rushes into the
office with Little Isadore and me after him, and John Ignatius Junior still laughing very
heartily for a small baby. The door of the safe is swinging loose, and the whole joint
looks somewhat wrecked, but Big Butch loses no time in getting his dukes into the safe
and grabbing out two big bundles of cash money, which he sticks inside his shirt.
As we go into the street Harry the Horse and Spanish John come running up much
excited, and Harry says to Big Butch like this:
'What are you trying to do,' he says, 'wake up the whole town?'
'Well,' Butch says, 'I guess maybe the charge is too strong, at that, but nobody seems to
be coming, so you and Spanish John walk over to Eighth Avenue, and the rest of us will
walk to Seventh, and if you go along quiet, like people minding their own business, it
will be all right.'
But I judge Little Isadore is tired of John Ignatius Junior's company by this time, because
he says he will go with Harry the Horse and Spanish John, and this leaves Big Butch and
John Ignatius Junior and me to go the other way. So we start moving, and all of a sudden
two cops come tearing around the corner toward which Harry and Isadore and Spanish
John are going. The chances are the cops hear the earthquake Big Butch lets off and are
coming to investigate.
But the chances are, too, that if Harry the Horse and the other two keep on walking along
very quietly like Butch tells them to, the coppers will pass them up entirely, because it is
not likely that coppers will figure anybody to be opening safes with explosives in this
neighbourhood. But the minute Harry the Horse sees the coppers he loses his nut, and he