Picture Dictionary & Books : Free for English Learner!

But if I want to walk around the street without worrying about every cop, I'll have to do more than that.

I put on a shirt and necktie and suit jacket and stick a cap on my head.

I head uptown on the subway.

At Sixty-eighth Street I get off and find a barbershop.

"Butch cut," I tell the guy.

"That's right. I'll trim you nice and neat. Get rid of all this stuff."

And while he chatters on like an idiot, I have to watch three months' work go snip, snip on the floor.

Then I have to pay for it.

At home I get the same routine.

Pop looks at my Ivy-League disguise and says, "Why, you may look positively human some day!"

Two days later I find out I could've kept my hair.

Town and Village has a new story: "Nab Cellar Thief Returning Loot. 'Just A Bet,' He Says."

The story is pretty interesting.

The guy I met in the cellar is named Tom Ransom, and he is nineteen and just sort of floating around in the city.

He doesn't seem to have any family.

The police kept a detective watching Number Forty-six, and pretty soon they see Tom walking along with the stolen suitcase.

He drops it inside the delivery entrance and walks on, but the cop collars him.

I suppose if it hadn't been for me shooting my big mouth off to the super, the police wouldn't have been watching the neighborhood.

I feel sort of responsible.

The story in the paper goes on to say this guy was broke and hunting for a job, and some other guy dares him to snatch something out of a cellar and finally bets him ten dollars, so he does it.

He gets out and finds the suitcase has a lot of stocks and legal papers and table silver in it, and he's scared stiff.

So he figures to drop it back where it came from.

The paper says he's held over to appear before some magistrate in Adolescent Court.

I wonder, would they send a guy to jail for that?

Or if they turn him loose, what does he do?

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