I now put on a disguise, consisting of a laborer's overalls and tattered cap, while Gottlieb wheeled out a safety bicycle which had been carefully concealed in the basement.
I had ten thousand dollars in the pocket of my ragged trousers and a forty-four-calibre revolver at my hip.

Gottlieb drew me back into the shadow and whispered harshly in my ear.
"Quib," said he, "this fellow must never come back!--do you understand?
Once the district attorney gets hold of him, it's all up with us! It's Sing Sing for each of us--ten years of it! For God's sake, hire somebody to put him out of the way!--quietly.
Many a man would take him off our hands for a thousand or so." I shuddered at the cold-blooded suggestion, yet I did not utter one word of refusal, and must have led Gottlieb to believe that I was of a mind with him, for he slapped me on the shoulder and bade me good luck.

Good luck! Was ever a man of decent birth and education forced upon such an errand?
The convoying of a drunken criminal to--where?
I knew not--somewhere whence he could not return.
Thus I set forth into the night upon my bicycle, my money bulging in my pocket, my pistol knocking against the seat at every turn of the wheel, my trousers catching and tearing in the pedals.

At last I crossed the bridge and turned into the wastes of Queens.

Gas- houses, factories, and rotting buildings loomed black and weird against the sky.