Slippery assured Joe and quieted him by saying that it would be merely a matter of days before they would meet Jim in the street in the same manner that they had met Boston Frank.
They returned to the flat in time to join the others at supper, and after this had been served Joe wondered why one after another, all the members of the gang cautiously slipped out of the door and vanished down the stairway with the sole exception of "Dippy Marie", who showed them to their bedroom.
In the morning Boston Frank made a call at the flat, and behind locked doors had a long conference with Slippery and the others.

After his visit Slippery became a busy man and Joe watched him oiling, filing and tempering a collection of jimmies, nippers, wedges, pliers, saws, and other such tools for which an expert mechanic could find a proper use.
When Joe carelessly picked up a small bottle that stood upon the table before Slippery, the yegg's face turned pale, and then he explained to the boy who too commenced to shudder the longer he listened, that the harmless looking liquid in the bottle was fearfully dangerous nitro-glycerine.
The following afternoon Boston Frank made a second visit and then he and Slippery, each carrying a heavy satchel filled with the tools Slippery had so carefully looked after, followed by Joe, around whose left leg they had bandaged, despite his most vehement protests, the small bottle containing the deadly explosive, left the flat.

They took a street car to the railroad station, where Boston Frank purchased tickets to Dixon, one of the prettiest and most hustling cities in western Illinois.

Soon they were rolling out of the railroad yards and across the fertile plains and arrived at their destination late in the night.
They left the train from the rear platform of the last Pullman, and climbed to the ground from the opposite side of the station platform, and after they had hurriedly walked about a mile in the darkness, Boston Frank stopped at a barn, and while Slippery and Joe walked ahead, he noiselessly opened the barn door and after hitching the owner's fastest horse to his best buggy he leisurely overtook the others and made them climb in, after they had placed the heavy satchels in the buggy's body, and then he carefully drove the horse on into the night.
During their conversation, which Joe overheard, Boston Frank mentioned to Slippery that the "P.-O." had been reported to be a regular mint, and he repeatedly assured him that no one was sleeping in the "P.-O." as he had tried several nights in succession to purchase tobacco at the "P.-O.", but his knocks were not answered.
At a cross-roads country store they stopped and here Joe understood what Boston Frank had meant with "P.-O.", as it bore a large sign that had the words "Post Office" painted upon it.
While Boston Frank hitched the horse and buggy to a nearby tree, Slippery carried the heavy satchels containing the tools to the rear of the store, while he ordered Joe to carefully unwrap the nitro-glycerine bottle from his leg, which the boy gladly did to be rid of the dangerous explosive, and then handed it to Slippery.
Joe, who had not yet the least inkling what sort of mysterious night work was contemplated by his older companions, suddenly came to the realization of his own danger when Slippery in a decidedly unfriendly manner, roughly commanded him to stand guard in front of the store, and after he had placed the lad so he could scan the different roads, he did something that has made more blood thirsty desperadoes out of harmless boys than any other trick, he pressed a cocked, large calibered revolver into the unsuspecting boy's hand and curtly ordered him, under pain of losing his own life if he failed to obey this order, to blaze away at any approaching human being.

Then he disappeared towards the rear of the building.
For a moment Joe's brain worked overtime, especially when he looked at the murder tool the other fellow had placed into his trembling hand and he promptly decided to cast the pistol into the middle of the roadway and run for his life to escape not only the clutches of these fellows, whom he now realized were desperate robbers, but to escape a possibly far worse fate.