The Northing Tramp by Edgar Wallace

FIFTY thousand dollars are a lot of dollars, as Red Beard often said to Lenny. And Lenny had invariably replied "Thasso!" A few minutes afterwards, he would grin from ear to ear, for he was a slow thinker, though an excellent judge of pace. Red Beard squatted by the negro steersman, a cigar between his teeth, his arms clasped about his knees, and tried to imagine what they would look like--five hundred bills for a hundred dollars each, all spread out on a large table. It would have to be an enormously large table. He watched the dark country pass on either bank, his eyes glued on the chuffing tug. The scow had passed out of the canal and was keeping to the central channel of a little river that alternately sprawled and closed upon them. She--if a scow be not a neutral thing--was due to meet the William and Mary, a collier out of Cardiff, and Red Beard anticipated no more than a pleasant trip and a few quiet hours to exercise his thoughts. And the most pleasant of these was that fifty thousand dollars are a lot of dollars. Now suppose. The worst of men have their dreams, and they are usually about money. Now suppose he had got that walking guy down at Schenectady, or when he was leaning on the gate taking the air.

The thought thrilled him. Suppose he were on this very scow! Red Beard, though no Catholic, carried in his pocket a tiny silver medallion of St. Anthony, reputedly a great help in finding articles you mislay. He possessed all the superstitions of his illiteracy, and in a grip now safely deposited in New York at the Grand Central Station he stored innumerable charms, which were all cunningly promoted and degraded as their potency failed. But St. Anthony was one of the constants of his faith. He took it out now, rubbed it on the palm of both hands, and deposited it religiously in the deeps of his pocket. This nigger talked of a recess opening from the forward cubby hole, but niggers are born liars and imagine things; and anyway, Red Beard had not thought it necessary to pursue his search. A thought occurred to him.