Extending an invitation to call and quench their thirsts with his raisinade when next they came to town, Tucker unlocked the door.
After the two had wormed their way through the bureaus and stoves and were once more in the street, they turned and gave each other a long, inquiring look.
"Pink," demanded Wallie, solemnly, "did you smell anything when he raised that plank?"
"Did I smell anything! Didn't you see me sniff? That joker has got a cache of the real stuff and he gave us raisinade! I couldn't git an answer from a barrel of that. He couldn't have insulted us worse if he'd slapped our faces."
"A man ought to be punished that would do a wicked thing like that."
"You've said somethin', Gentle Annie."
The two looked at each other in an understanding that was beautiful and complete.
The behaviour of the visitors was nearly too good to be true--it was so exemplary, in fact, as to be suspicious, and acting upon this theory, the barber closed his shop early, pinned on his badge of office, and followed them about. But when at ten o'clock they had broken nothing, quarrelled with nobody, and drunk only an incredible quantity of soda pop, he commenced to think he had been wrong.
At eleven, when they were still in a pool-hall playing "solo" for a cent a chip, he decided to go home. There he confided to his wife that no more striking example of the benefits of prohibition had come under his observation than the conduct of this notorious pair who, when sober, were well mannered and docile as lambs.
It was twelve or thereabouts when two figures crept stealthily up the alley behind Mr. Tucker's Second-Hand Store and raised the window looking out on the areaway. As noiselessly as trained burglars they pried up the plank and investigated by the light of a match.
"Well, what do you think of that!"
"I feel like somebody had died and left me a million dollars!" said Pinkey in an awed tone, reaching for a tin cup. "I didn't think they was anybody in the world as mean as Tucker."
"You mustn't get too much," Wallie admonished, noting the size of the drink Pinkey was pouring for himself.
"I've never had too much. I may have had enough, but never too much," Pinkey grinned. "I don't take no int'rest in startin' less'n a quart."
"I hope he'll have the decency to be ashamed of himself when he finds out we know what he did to us. I shouldn't think he'd want to look us in the face," Wallie declared, virtuously.