JOSIAH FLYNT 
 
 AND 
 
 FRANCIS WALTON 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 

 (p* 
 
 
The Powers that Prey 
 
The 
 
 Powers That Prey 
 
 by 
 
 Josiah Flynt 
 
 Lc^o-A 
 
 I, tffltf 
 
 Francis Walton /t^^^ ^ 
 
 ^ty^Afe***^ 
 
 li ii 
 
 New York 
 
 McClure, Phillips & Co. 
 igoo 
 
GENERAL 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1900, 
 By McCLUEE, PHILLIPS & CO. 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSION, OCTOBER, 1900. 
 SECOND IMPRESSION, NOVEMBER, 1900. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION, . ... . . . v 
 
 IN THE MATTER OF His NIBS,, . . . t 
 
 A BILL FROM TIFFANY S, : 27 
 
 THE REVENGE OF THE FOUR, . . . .56 
 
 THE ORDER OF THE PENITENTS, . . . .85 
 
 THE PRISON DEMON, . . .* . . . in 
 THE GREAT IDEA, . . . . . .136 
 
 FOUND GUILTY, . . ".,-. .... 167 
 
 ON SENTENCE DAY, 189 
 
 PEGGIE NIVEN, 209 
 
 A DEAD ONE, ....... 242 
 
 1.03096 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Criminologists have thought it more impor 
 tant to photograph the outcast s facial angle than 
 to see the outcast and his world as he himself sees 
 them. Having determined from the start that the 
 outcast is an inferior, they have looked for stig 
 mata of degeneration in him and have found what 
 they looked for. They would have found stig 
 mata of degeneration in any other body of men 
 whom they had examined with a like pertinacity 
 and preconception ; they have found them indeed 
 in practically all of the men of light and leading 
 known in history. Men of science and romanti 
 cists have used the outcast as a point of departure 
 for the esthetic imagination and have taken it for 
 granted that he is not so interesting as they can 
 fancy him. They have constructed for them 
 selves two stock characters a simplified human 
 brute, an epitome of the stigmata of degenera 
 tion, half-witted, cunning, sullen, furious ; and an 
 abstract mathematical detective who sees the hu- 
 
Introduction 
 
 man world as a magnified chessboard and solves 
 problems in check and checkmate. 
 
 It may with great safety be said that both 
 these stock characters belong to the realm of in 
 tellectual opera bouffe. People in the Under 
 World differ more in their circumstances than 
 in their psychology from people in the Upper. 
 In both worlds there is a majority disposed rather 
 to bear the ills they have than to fly to others 
 that they know not of; and in both there is a 
 minority to whom the ordinary lot of their class 
 is simply intolerable. In the Upper World this 
 minority become the " plungers " in the bus 
 iness, social, and political spheres ; the entrepren 
 eurs, who assume great risks on the chance of 
 great returns, and are reckless of disaster whether 
 to others or themselves. In the Under World 
 this minority become the gambler, the thief, and 
 the harlot. In both worlds the minority want 
 honor and power in their own world, and in both 
 they obtain their success by a combination 
 of enterprise, intelligence, unscrupulousness, 
 diligence, and sheer, rude power of will. The 
 unscrupulousness in the Upper World may con 
 sist only in a bold stand against public opinion 
 to gain an advantage, or in the violation in case 
 vi 
 
Introduction 
 
 of need of the conventions of a class ; but it must 
 be remembered that the Under World has its 
 conventions as well as the Upper, and that a levy 
 of blackmail is regarded in the side-streets with 
 the mixture of indignation and admiring approval 
 with which a ruthless manipulation of stocks or 
 a particularly audacious stroke in politics is re 
 garded in " society." If Huxley is right in his 
 contention that there is a " fixed order of things 
 which sends social disorganization upon the 
 track of immorality as surely as it sends physical 
 disease after physical trespasses," then a correct 
 understanding of the Under World and its rela 
 tions to the whole body of society is a matter of 
 prime importance. 
 
 High life in the Under World consists in the 
 doings of the personages and potentates of side- 
 streets; and the most significant feature in their 
 life, both to themselves and to the rest of us, lies 
 in the league between the Powers That Rule and 
 the Powers That Prey. The Platonic idea of the 
 case is that between detective and criminal there 
 exists a natural feud like that between the shep 
 herd and the wolf. The similitude is perfect in 
 but one respect : both wolf and shepherd live at 
 the expense of the flock. High life in the Un- 
 vii 
 
Introduction 
 
 der World is a maze of tolerances, private con 
 tracts, understandings, courtesies; the shep 
 herd and the wolf not infrequently kill and eat 
 their lamb together. The Powers That Rule 
 take tithes, the Powers That Prey prey by per 
 mission and surrender part of their plunder for 
 the right to walk invisible. 
 
 Nor is this league a mere accident or a simple 
 exhibition on the part of the Powers That Rule 
 of total depravity : without the league the govern 
 ing body would t>e helpless to perform their offi 
 cial duties even so well as they at present perform 
 them. It is not true that the Powers That Rule 
 protect in part the Powers That Prey in order 
 that on the whole they may keep the Powers That 
 Prey in check ; it is true that the condition of their 
 being able on the whole to keep the Powers That 
 Prey in check is that they in part protect them. 
 A community wholly policed by men of perfect 
 integrity would lie at the mercy of its criminal 
 contingent. A policeman or detective protects 
 the spot he stands on and so much of the street 
 as he can see and can reach with a bullet from his 
 revolver. His actual presence at the commission 
 of a crime is an accident against which great pre 
 cautions have usually been taken ; and apart from 
 viii 
 
Introduction 
 
 his actual presence he is only less helpless than 
 another man to trace the criminal. The real de 
 tective in a community is the whole body of well- 
 disposed citizens; the official detective or police 
 man is mainly serviceable in making the arrest; 
 and even the vigilance of the whole body of the 
 well disposed is to an extreme degree insufficient. 
 The professional criminal does not consort with 
 the well disposed ; they do not live in his world ; 
 they are not familiar with his face nor privy to his 
 goings and comings; they have no means of 
 knowing when he is " broke " and when he is 
 flush; it is not to them in his moments of unre 
 serve that he makes his indiscreet confidences. 
 The only men that know who has committed a 
 given crime are the criminal and his associates; 
 the really effective detectives in the great cities of 
 the United States are the unofficial detectives, the 
 spies and traitors in the criminal classes ; and the 
 official detective who does not know where to lay 
 his hand on such a spy or traitor and how to lay 
 it on heavily is practically useless except as a 
 watchman. 
 
 The following tales are records of incidents in 
 the working of the league. A reader who looks 
 in them for monsters of hate and wickedness 
 
 ix 
 
Introduction 
 
 brought to the point of arrest by monsters of in 
 tellectual astuteness will be disappointed. He 
 will find in them the history of certain incon 
 spicuous events, of some of which he will have 
 read notices in the public prints. He will find 
 in them the inner history of the adventures of 
 waifs and strays, who at their best needs must 
 play a losing game; who, with all their energy 
 and pride of life are doomed to pay ; who almost 
 never die rich ; who end oftenest " dead " ; who 
 have the world abidingly against them, and never 
 greatly concerned, even when it does not know 
 them for what they are, to protect their property 
 or life. It is this element in the rogues tragedy 
 which justifies, aesthetically, the blackness of the 
 role assigned to the detective. He that striketh 
 with a sword shall perish by the sword, or rather 
 by a thousand swords. 
 
THE POWERS THAT PREY. 
 
 IN THE MATTER OF HIS NIBS. 
 
 I. 
 
 There were two James Bisons, one of eminent 
 respectability in a small city of the Empire State ; 
 the other " one of the boys " in the naughty 
 city of New York. These two gentlemen never 
 met, though they possessed a metaphysical iden 
 tity with each other and an alternate existence. 
 When James Dison of the little city went to the 
 metropolis to purchase goods, James Dison of the 
 naughty city received his letters and answered 
 them; in particular, letters from Mrs. James 
 Dison of the little city, in reply to which he in 
 sisted, very properly, on his eagerness to return 
 to the delights of her society, and added certain 
 instructions demonstrating that even during his 
 absence his thoughts were of the moral welfare 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 of that community. In return for these cour 
 tesies in the metropolis, when James Dison of the 
 small city revisited his accustomed office it 
 was his practice to sign and forward to the 
 naughty city certain checks in payment of bills 
 which his metaphysical double had contracted ; 
 some of them for ponderable goods to be de 
 livered at home, some of them for imponderable 
 goods such as the naughty city notoriously af 
 fords. 
 
 One evening in April, 18 , James Dison of 
 the naughty city found himself possessed of a roll 
 of " greenbacks " and of a handsome watch, 
 which bore a striking resemblance to a gift offi 
 cially and oratorically presented in February, 
 1 8 , by the Chamber of Commerce and the 
 Bankers Association of the other city to their 
 " eminent and universally honored and esteemed 
 fellow citizen James Dison, who, by a timely ex 
 hibition of public spirit and self-sacrifice lament 
 ably rare in this day of pecuniary ambition and 
 short-sighted greed, saved the prosperous com 
 munity of from a local panic." The 
 
 roll of greenbacks James Dison of the naughty 
 city diminished from time to time in the course 
 of the evening with the manner and gesture of 
 
In the Matter of His Nibs 
 
 never-mind-the-change. The watch he con 
 sulted toward six o clock in the morning with an 
 intellectual intensity, and decided, in a moment 
 of lucidity remarkable under the circumstances, 
 that he had made a night of it and would take 
 a Turkish bath. When he had emerged from 
 the bath and had breakfasted, he remembered 
 that he had an appointment in Newark at the 
 hour of ten, and that the ideal way to go to that 
 place is to take the trolley, which he did. The 
 conductor, who was an artist in words, requested 
 the motorman in polite reference to the electric 
 fluid to be good enough to " turn on that 
 juice." 
 
 Burke Ryan was a gentleman who took his fun 
 where he found it and to whom the universe owed 
 a living. A certain portion of his fun he found 
 in the naughtier delights of the naughty city, but 
 he had received a good education and read Taci 
 tus and Livy in the " aboriginal " and was a con 
 noisseur in scarf-pins. In the intervals of his 
 pleasures he collected what the universe owed 
 him; and if he discovered it for the most part in 
 the pockets of other people, so much the worse 
 for the other people; a man has a right to his 
 own. 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 At the time when James Dison was making a 
 night of it, Burke Ryan saw his watch-chain, and 
 surmised his watch, and took stock of his roll of 
 bills and his manner and gesture of never-mind- 
 the-change. Also he recognized that by a singu 
 lar exhibition of astuteness he himself had that 
 day at the races lost the largest odds it was 
 mathematically possible to lose, and that it was 
 " up to him " to cut and cash with all prompti 
 tude a number of the coupons on the securities 
 to which his creditor the universe had given him 
 a right. One of the coupons that was obviously 
 due lay for safe-keeping at the end of Bison s 
 watch-chain in Bison s waistcoat pocket. Burke 
 had discovered this fact at the moment when 
 Bison had returned his watch to its resting-place 
 after having consulted it with an intellectual in 
 tensity. Bison s manner of handing out his bills 
 Burke had looked upon with a near approach to 
 moral indignation; there was an offensive lack 
 of principle in throwing away money that the 
 universe owed to some one else. 
 
 When Bison entered the bath-house, Burke 
 also entered it. He had not wanted a Turkish 
 bath, but he took one out of complaisance. What 
 he wanted really was to " touch " the little sum 
 
 4 
 
In the Matter of His Nibs 
 
 which was coming to him, and to go to bed. 
 When Dison lingered at breakfast, Burke also 
 lingered at breakfast, though with a growing im 
 patience at the prolix etiquette of modern times. 
 Not so many hundred years ago a baron of the 
 Under World in his position would have taken 
 shame to himself; he would have advanced upon 
 Dison openly and, tapping him familiarly on the 
 breast, would have explained that he had taken a 
 fancy to certain insignificant trinkets, of which he 
 doubted not their actual possessor, whose atten 
 tion as a connoisseur he claimed for a glance at 
 the elegance of his stiletto, would be delighted to 
 make him a present. 
 
 When Dison entered the trolley-car, Burke 
 also entered it and took a place beside him, al 
 though he had no business whatever in the city 
 to which that gentleman was going. When 
 Dison slept, his watch transferred itself to Burke s 
 waistcoat ; when Dison woke he discovered in his 
 trousers-pocket the two longest and deftest fin 
 gers of Burke s right hand. Burke was at once 
 so obliging as to withdraw the fingers and with 
 them the remnant of Dison s roll of bills. Then 
 the etiquette of modern times ceased to be prolix 
 and the scene became as medieval as Burke 
 could have wished. 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 Dison seized Burke by the shoulder and spoke 
 his mind with a medieval vigor and idiom which 
 it would be an anachronism to record. There 
 were two women and twenty men in the car. 
 The two women expressed the judgment of their 
 sex upon the situation inarticulately, each at the 
 top of her voice; the twenty men with one im 
 pulse lurched toward Burke. Burke had no 
 stiletto to the elegance of which he could call 
 Bison s attention as a connoisseur, but he pro 
 duced a remarkably handsome razor, to the ele 
 gance of which he called Bison s attention and the 
 attention of every one in the car. Everybody, 
 Bison in particular, evinced a sudden interest in 
 reaching the street; they fell over themselves in 
 their eagerness; the women forgot even to 
 scream, and one of them forgot the way to the 
 door and used the window. The facetious con 
 ductor said the reason he got off was that he 
 wanted to see what Burke s razor would look like 
 from a distance. The last to desert his place was 
 the motorman, whom Burke s approach seemed 
 to afflict with acute insanity. As a preliminary 
 to jumping off he turned on the full current, and 
 when the car bounded forward at full speed he 
 leaped. He did not wait to hold by the handles 
 
 6 
 
In the Matter of His Nibs 
 
 and steady himself before his feet touched the 
 ground; he just naturally got off and did gym 
 nastics. When he was picked up afterward he 
 explained that he had been in a hurry. 
 
 " Stop thief ! " yelled the chorus in the road. 
 
 " Go to hell ! " grinned Burke. 
 
 " Find a telephone," said one of the crowd, 
 while another called on a man on a bicycle to 
 " catch that car " and explained that there was a 
 thief on it. When they explained also the na 
 ture of the thief and of his company, the bicyclist 
 guessed he was tired and that they might catch 
 the car themselves. " If any of you gentlemen 
 wants the loan of my wheel, he can have it," he 
 said generously ; " but for me to-day s Friday ; 
 it s always bad luck for me to catch stolen trol 
 leys on Friday ! " None of the gentlemen 
 wanted the loan of his wheel. 
 
 None of them wanted even to risk a pistol-shot 
 by riding forward and attempting to keep Burke 
 within hailing distance. The car was speeding 
 along a stretch of deserted road with the first 
 house by the wayside a half-mile off. Every one 
 preferred to assure every one else that Burke 
 must leave the trolley soon, for he would overtake 
 the car ahead of him; though what difference it 
 2 7 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 made, when once he was out of sight, whether he 
 left the trolley soon or not, nobody could suggest. 
 
 He did leave the trolley soon. In front of the 
 one house visible stood a horse and buggy, which 
 he halted the car to borrow, saying that he needed 
 them in his business. A minute afterward he 
 had disappeared. 
 
 In the meantime James Dison discovered that 
 he had lost his watch. 
 
II. 
 
 It was distinctly understood in the Front Of 
 fice that the " force " is the servant of the pub 
 lic and that every member of the public, whether 
 a big man or a little one, was entitled to receive 
 the best attention the force could give. It was 
 distinctly understood also that this theory was 
 in the nature of a party platform or declaration of 
 principles, and was well enough in its place, but 
 that its place was not in practice. In practice 
 there are differences to be observed. The chief 
 had found it necessary to become well-to-do on 
 his savings from a small salary, and he had 
 achieved this seeming miracle by exercising the 
 virtues of judicious discrimination and friendship. 
 He had never soiled his hands with bribes he 
 had " never done nothing not morally right 
 savvy? " but it was undeniable that he had dis 
 cretionary powers, and undeniable that he used 
 them. As nobody will suppose that he used 
 them to comfort his enemies and to discomfit his 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 friends, it must be found natural that he received 
 a just return for benefits bestowed. 
 
 When James Dison of the naughty city discov 
 ered that he had lost his watch, the first step he 
 took in regard to it was admirable. The first 
 step, to be Irish, was to stand still and meditate 
 on what his metaphysical double should say to 
 Mrs. Dison of the other city ; in particular if the 
 affair should reach the newspapers and the om 
 niscient reporter should employ his inalienable 
 right of pertinent scandal. He could see the 
 head-lines as he stood there : " Prominent Citi 
 zen on a Bat ; Decorous Dison s Double Life ; Re 
 vealed by Robbery at End of Spree ; Bold Thief 
 at Large in Jersey ! " He could likewise see the 
 altered countenances of the friends and fellow 
 citizens who had glorified his double in present 
 ing to him the watch and money so scandalously 
 parted with. He had an exquisitely tender sen 
 sibility for what concerned his double ; he felt for 
 him as for himself. He escaped with all possible 
 haste from the witnesses of his mischance and de 
 clined to give his name. 
 
 Dison s second step was to seek out the Front 
 Office and obtain a private interview with the 
 chief; and here for a moment he made a blunder. 
 
 10 
 
In the Matter of His Nibs 
 
 He had the temerity to demand a favor before he 
 had founded its indispensable basis in friendship. 
 The chief paused in the midst of his scrutiny of a 
 pile of documents; official business was sus 
 pended everywhere within ear-shot, and Mr. 
 Dison listened to the voice of authority. The 
 chief was a man of wrath; his speech was rude 
 and his figures of rhetoric unconventional. " No. 
 I will not; you will take your chances like any 
 body else ; I will keep nothing quiet. Every 
 dashed up-state son of a hayrick thinks he can 
 come down here and play the goat and go back 
 home an forgit it. If my town s tough it s you 
 hoosiers that come down here an turn yourselves 
 loose an make it so ; and it s me the newspapers 
 roast." 
 
 At this point James Dison of the naughty city 
 was inspired to remember that James Dison of 
 the good little city owned a block of delegates at 
 the state capital and was high in the good graces 
 of a Great Personage. He recited his titles to 
 respect and mentioned the Great Personage. 
 
 " I don t care who you are, or who you know," 
 thundered the Olympian in a passion of rectitude 
 that made him superior to grammar ; " I don t 
 owe you money nor anybody else; you can go 
 
 ii 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 tell him so. I m not put here to do favors ; I m 
 put here to execute the law, and you bet your 
 life I ll do it!" 
 
 This was diplomacy. There are forms of 
 speech in the Great Republic which it needs a 
 long initiation to interpret ; and James Dison was 
 initiated. The chief had the most exalted friend 
 ship for the Great Personage Mr. Dison had 
 named. It was the custom of that Great Per 
 sonage from time to time, when he suffered with 
 the spleen, to speak his mind to the chief with an 
 unreserve which made the chief s eyes water 
 with affection ! When Mr. Dison had withdrawn 
 from the Front Office, the chief made the tele 
 phone wires hum with hurry-up calls to 
 trusted lieutenants with names suggesting that 
 gifted race whose people can govern everybody 
 except themselves. When Mr. Dison returned 
 with his credentials, his reception reminded him 
 that Mr. Dison of the other place was not the 
 only man in the naughty city who is blessed with 
 a metaphysical double. 
 
 " Have already moved in that matter of yours, 
 Mr. Dison; an accident that might happen to 
 any gentleman." 
 
 " Even to an up-state son of a hayrick ! " said 
 the facetious Dison. 
 
 12 
 
In the Matter of His Nibs 
 
 " I will have your property delivered to you at 
 nine in the morning at your hotel," said the chief; 
 " and in the meantime if there are any little cor 
 ners of the city that you would like to look into, 
 I shall be glad to place a competent guide at 
 your disposal." 
 
 " I might find some things that would be of 
 service to me in directing our home interests; I 
 am actively employed in local affairs," said Mr. 
 Dison. 
 
 " Happy to be able to do anything for you I 
 can," said the chief, offering the glad hand. 
 
 " A pleasure to have made your acquaintance," 
 said Mr. Dison, accepting the glad hand. 
 
 This also was diplomacy; the rest was bus 
 iness. The chief s face and bearing when he met 
 his lieutenants were a hurry-up order personified. 
 He named a dozen powers and potentates by their 
 noms de guerre and indicated their customary 
 places of resort. His instructions were figura 
 tive : " Rake this town with a fine-tooth comb ; 
 I want em here by one o clock. If they don t 
 understand kindness, pinch em." 
 
 There is a wireless telegraphy in the Under 
 World which is quite as effective as Marconi s, 
 and it was soon noised about among the guns 
 
 13 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 that there was to be a round-up at the Front Of 
 fice. A number of gentlemen who felt a deli 
 cacy about intruding upon the chief, even in the 
 way of friendship, incontinently made themselves 
 invisible; but the majority of those that he had 
 mentioned were " copped out." The detectives 
 were as much in the dark as to what was up as 
 were the guns, and the latter consoled themselves 
 with facetious remarks as to the object of the ap 
 proaching interview. " The chief wants t ask 
 us to break a bottle o sham or to notify us that 
 he has shifted the dead-line further down town 
 so s to give the likes o us a chanst t turn an 
 honest penny," said Billy the Bruiser; and Me- 
 Klowd remarked : " PYaps he is goin to let us 
 rubber over the recovered stolen goods mu 
 seum to see if we recognize any little trinkets o 
 our own." 
 
 The interview took place in the chief s private 
 office. 
 
 " Curly," he asked in confidential tones, ad 
 dressing the man from Frisco, " what do you 
 know bout that touch that was pulled off over in 
 Jersey this morning on the trolley? Somebody 
 got a thimble [watch] and a roll o dough." 
 
 " First I ve heard of it, Chief. I don t know 
 nothin ." 
 
 14 
 
In the Matter of His Nibs 
 
 " It s up to you, MeKlowd." 
 
 " I m dead about it too, Chief. Just got out 
 a-bed a little while before Curry found me." 
 
 " How about you, Billy? " 
 
 " Dead too. Keeps me busy keepin track o 
 touches this side the river." 
 
 " Well, a touch came off, an I want the thing 
 cleared up. I ll give it to you fellows straight 
 the touch never should a come off, an it s up to 
 me to get the gun an the things. I ve got you 
 up here to read the riot act to you, an you d bet 
 ter read it to the rest o the gang. I ve been easy 
 on some o you blokes cause I know t you ve 
 got families here an want to stay with em, but 
 I ll tell you on the level that if you don t cough 
 up that gun I ll put a dead-line around this whole 
 town. Now, you can take your choice. That s 
 all I ve got to say to you, but I want you, Me 
 Klowd, to wait a little." 
 
 The consultation with MeKlowd was short but 
 significant. 
 
 " Ruderick, I might as well give you the truth 
 as a steer. The sucker that was touched is a 
 friend o his Nibs you know who I mean an 
 his Nibs is hostile. It s the second time t he s 
 had a grouch on, an I ve got to put up a good 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 front. If the thing don t go right, I ll be in a 
 hell of a hole, an I want to know if you ll pull 
 it through. I can t get that gun inside of a 
 month if you blokes don t help me, an I ve kept 
 the sucker here in town on the plea that it ll all 
 be over in a day or so. Will you get the push 
 to cough up? " 
 
 " Any thin doin afterward? " 
 
 " I can t make no deal with you, Ruderick 
 you know that well enough. I been pretty 
 square with you an the push, ain t I? Well, it 
 stands to reason t I ain t goin to get a grouch 
 on if you an the push do me a favor, don t it? " 
 
 " A right. Forty-eight hours you said, didn t 
 you? If it s only twenty-four you won t object, 
 I suppose? " 
 
 " It ll make my rep all the better if it s only 
 twelve." 
 
 " A right. So-long." 
 
 " So-long, Ruderick." 
 
 16 
 
III. 
 
 Ruderick MeKlowd was a product of the city 
 of tall buildings and tall talk the " Western 
 Metrolopis " he sometimes called it, and some 
 times " Chi." His passion for the town was only 
 less pronounced than his passion for his profes 
 sion, and he had arrived at that stage in his de 
 velopment when the name of his birthplace had 
 been incorporated in his personal appellation, aft 
 er the manner of powers and potentates and no 
 bility in general: he was known to the initiated 
 as the " Slick Chi Gun." 
 
 His business engagements were so far-reach 
 ing that it was only infrequently that he was to 
 be met in the city of his name, and there were 
 periods when, on account of another commu 
 nity s interest in him and demand upon his time, 
 he was compelled to deny the town the honor of 
 his presence for years at a stretch ; but he always 
 spoke affectionately of the place, and it was a 
 well-understood ambition of his to be buried " on 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 de Lake Front." In appearance he would not 
 necessarily have been picked out for an inhabit 
 ant of Chicago. He had, to be sure, the Chi 
 cago business man s plunging walk; he was al 
 ways in a hurry ; his ability to interest other peo 
 ple and other people s money in his enterprises 
 may possibly also be characterized as a Chicago 
 trait; but in other respects he fitted into the life 
 of New York or any other great city with as few 
 rough edges to be polished off as probably any 
 man of his temperament and training. An in 
 nocent little histrionic gift that he possessed and 
 exercised commonly enabled him to pass with 
 a casual acquaintance for almost anything, from 
 a successful lawyer to a sea-captain. But there 
 were those in whose presence he frankly admit 
 ted that he was " Ruderick MeKlowd and what 
 are you going to do about it? " 
 
 He was some five and forty years old, tall, well- 
 built, clean-shaven, with a look in his face which 
 was described by knowing ones as the obvious 
 " mug of a crook/ By those who did not know, 
 it might easily have seemed the intense look of 
 a preoccupied and rather hard man of affairs. 
 When on the loaf, he sauntered through the 
 streets unobtrusively, sometimes greeting his 
 
 18 
 
In the Matter of His Nibs 
 
 friends and sometimes not, taking in the sights. 
 Certain wiseacres claimed that he was " rubber 
 ing," and attention was sometimes called to " that 
 greedy look of his eyes " ; but this could not have 
 been proved in a court of law. If he passed a 
 friend whom he found it convenient not to recog 
 nize after the ordinary forms of greeting, he gave 
 a peculiar guttural cough, sometimes called the 
 thief s cough, or made a noise with his lips such as 
 goes with a kiss, and it was frequently his misfor 
 tune to have these signs misinterpreted by deni 
 zens of the Front Office; but he had very con 
 vincing explanatory powers, and seldom found it 
 difficult to square misunderstandings to the satis- 
 isfaction of all concerned. On occasions, par 
 ticularly if he had been " hitting it up," he made 
 no attempt to explain or to excuse, but suggested 
 that the Front Office " come out an get its face 
 put in." 
 
 MeKlowd was almost as popular at the Front 
 Office as he was in his push. From the strict 
 moralist s point of view his record there was 
 bad; but there were some things esoterically to 
 his credit, which the moralist does not under 
 stand. The chief himself had more than once 
 declared that " if Ruderick had only had an ed- 
 
 19 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 dication he would have ranked among the salu 
 brious men of history." It was the opinion of 
 Ruderick s intimates that he had made a mark 
 enviably high without taking his doctor s de 
 gree; but, of course, they judged him by a stand 
 ard of their own. The chief s liking for Ruder- 
 ick was appreciated and respected. In the days 
 when the chief had been struggling for honor and 
 promotion in " the street," it fell to his lot to ar 
 rest certain " gentlemen of fortune " who pro 
 tested vi et armis, which is hieroglyphic for "with 
 knife and fist." The chief might never have come 
 out of the scrimmage alive if Ruderick hadn t 
 " happened around " about that time. The 
 chief, to his credit be it said, never forgot this 
 coincidence. 
 
 It has been said on good authority that, if the 
 thieves of a town could be persuaded to become 
 its policemen, and to act " on the level," the ap 
 propriations for municipal defense migHt be very 
 greatly reduced. Certain it is that they have a 
 sense of the thing necessary to be done a theft 
 having been committed which our municipal 
 and private detective organizations have failed to 
 improve upon. 
 
 " How much time we got, Ruderick? " asked 
 Billy the Bruiser. 
 
 20 
 
In the Matter of His Nibs 
 
 " Twenty-four hours." 
 
 " He jus wants the thimble an the roll, ain t 
 that it?" 
 
 " No, he wants the gun too. His Nibs is 
 hostile, you see, an this yap from the country 
 s got pull, an it s up to the chief to make a 
 splurge." 
 
 "Will he let the bloke go?" 
 
 " Didn t say nothin bout that. P r aps he 
 will after he s let the yap rubber at him. I don t 
 give a damn whether he does or not. It was a 
 bunglin job, an the bloke deserves a stretcher. 
 Besides, see all the trouble he s givin us. He ll 
 queer the whole of us if we don t get him." 
 
 " That s right," commented Billy. " No one 
 bloke s got any business queerin the push ; if he 
 has got to take a stretcher then he has, an that s 
 all there is about it. Same thing happened out 
 in Chi once. Old Frisco Slim touched up one 
 o the big joolry places not knowin that it was 
 in the Eye s dead-line. We had to cough him 
 up it ud been a case o drill if we hadn t. Well, 
 I tell you, Ruderick, I ll screw my nut down town 
 an rubber around, lettin the blokes know what s 
 doin . You ll put the people up here next, will 
 you? A right. Where ll we report? " 
 
 21 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Up in my rooms." 
 
 The two men separated and began " putting 
 the blokes next." Ruderick dropped into saloon 
 after saloon, talking quietly with men sitting at 
 tables or standing at the bar, and pretty soon 
 these men were to be seen coming out on to the 
 street and taking different directions. He talked 
 to them in a language unique for its abbrevia 
 tions and directness. There were no long ex 
 planations. The simple statement, backed up 
 by Ruderick s presence, that " the Front Office 
 wanted to know who made that touch in Jer 
 sey, and wanted the swag and the gun," sufficed 
 to set going an unequaled detective agency. 
 
 There were no silly trips to Jersey to inspect 
 " the scene of the crime," no long interviews with 
 reporters about suggested clues, and no " keep 
 ing the wires hot." " Guns " of all ages and 
 conditions strolled quietly up and down Manhat 
 tan, " rubbering," passing the time o day and 
 putting people " next." One would enter a 
 " joint," give a cough and pass on to a rear room 
 where he was joined by those whom his cough 
 had attracted. " Find out who got that thim 
 ble an the roll on the trolley over in Jersey 
 the chief is hostile an wants to know Ruderick 
 
 22 
 
In the Matter of His Nibs 
 
 MeKlowd is on the case," and another half dozen 
 recruits were enlisted for the honor of the chief. 
 A " touch " is to the Under World what an 
 Associated Press news item, or " the flimsy, * is 
 to the newspaper world : knowledge of it is com 
 mon property to those who are in the guild. 
 There are a hundred " touches " and more every 
 day of which the police hear nothing, but the 
 Under World knows all about them, who made 
 them, what was realized on them, and where 
 the " get-away " took place. Gossip about 
 " touches " is as essential to the Under World as 
 is gossip about marriages and births to the Up 
 per World. Burke Ryan could no more forego 
 the pleasure of telling his pals about the " touch " 
 on the trolley in Jersey than he could resist the 
 temptation to " pull it off." He had " hocked " 
 the watch and invested the greater part of the 
 roll in a quiet little game of poker by the time 
 Ruderick MeKlowd and the push were on his 
 trail, and he had also published widely the de 
 tails of the theft, only Ruderick and his compan 
 ions had not yet reached the " joints " where the 
 story had been told. At the very moment that 
 Ruderick and Billy the Bruiser were agreeing on 
 the campaign to find him, Burke was in a saloon 
 
 3 23 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 not over ten blocks distant telling some cronies 
 how he had " to clear the deck " on the trolley 
 with his razor to make good his " mooch," and 
 giving them amusing accounts of how the " Molls 
 dove out o the windows " in their haste to give 
 him room. 
 
 " An the sucker t I d touched," he went on, 
 referring to the naughty Mr. Dison, " he jus sat 
 down an t rew a fit. Yelled like a stuck pig." 
 
 Burke had his friends in the push as well as did 
 Ruderick, and there was one, " Jimmy " Ryer- 
 son by name, who felt that it was " up to him " 
 to let Burke know that Ruderick and his push 
 were in pursuit. He had a score to settle with 
 the chief which had been troubling him for 
 months in his sense of honesty, and he considered 
 the present occasion a good one to discharge his 
 debt. Burke had told him of the " touch " early 
 in the day, and Ruderick s enterprise had been 
 made known to him not long after. He knew 
 that the majority in the push were with Ruderick, 
 but the opportunity to " turn down " the chief 
 was too good to be lost, and Burke was advised of 
 his peril. 
 
 " Do they jus want the dough an the watch," 
 asked Burke, " or are they after me too? " 
 
 24 
 
In the Matter of His Nibs 
 
 " They re after you, you duffer," said Jimmy, 
 " an they ll have you if you don t mooch. You ve 
 been chewin the rag all over town, an some 
 body s told em by this time." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that they re goin to 
 turn me over to the chief? " 
 
 " That s what they are, an you ll be settled, 
 too. His Nibs is on his ear, they say, an the 
 chief s got to square things." 
 
 " Well they can go plump to hell. I ain t 
 no sucker to help out that chief let him help his- 
 self out. I m goin to mooch right" his 
 speech was cut short by the entrance into the 
 saloon of Ruderick and two " pals." 
 
 It was a chase which is talked about still when 
 chases come up for discussion. It began below 
 Twenty-third street and ended in a vacant lot 
 near the Eighth Avenue Elevated Railroad Ter 
 minal, and is probably the only pursuit of a crim 
 inal in whose arrest criminals alone were inter 
 ested. Trolley-cars, cabs and the " elevated " 
 were all used by both the pursued and the pur 
 suers, and a fierce struggle ended the flight. As 
 a last resort Burke took his stand in a fence cor 
 ner of the vacant lot, drew his razor, and dared 
 
 25 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 Ruderick and his two companions to touch him. 
 " It s a case o knock-out," said Ruderick, and 
 poor Burke was made the target for stones swiftly 
 thrown and carefully aimed. He stood it as 
 long as he could, his face and hands being cut 
 and bruised and smeared all over with blood, and 
 then cried out : " I cave I cave ! " 
 
 " Couldn t help it, Burke, old man," said Rud 
 erick soothingly. " Three to one ain t fair, but 
 it s business. The chief needs you, an we need 
 the chief see? " 
 
A BILL FROM TIFFANY S. 
 I. 
 
 The beginning of things was a woman, and the 
 middle was another woman, and the end was mis 
 cellaneous naughtiness, casualties and matri 
 mony. Metaphysically speaking, there are causes 
 other than women at work in determining human 
 affairs, but it has never been found at once indis 
 pensable and impossible to take them into ac 
 count. 
 
 Miss Sadie Meeker was a young woman who 
 was interested in the market value of things ; par 
 ticularly in the market value of herself. As a 
 money-changer at the desk in Major & Fairbank s 
 her market value was just four dollars a week; 
 but a woman s real market value, as Sadie well 
 knew, is never what she can honestly earn, but 
 what the best man who wishes to marry her can 
 earn, whether honestly or not. Later she came 
 to think seven times out of ten of her husband and 
 the remaining three of her children; but for the 
 27 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 moment she was conscious mainly that Margie 
 Payne had married a saloon-keeper, and Kittie 
 Barwin a part-owner in a dance-hall ; and saloon 
 keepers and part-owners in dance-halls are lords 
 and landed gentry in the Under World. 
 
 Margie and Kittie had been Sadie s next 
 friends, and for some time after their marriage 
 she too would have been contented to wed a sa 
 loon-keeper or a part-owner in a dance-hall ; but 
 Margie, when all was said, did wear her clothes, 
 no matter how expensive, as if they were on the 
 point of sliding off, and Kittie, in spite of her 
 pretty hair, had bad teeth. That is to say, in the 
 Under World a chief of detectives is a prince and 
 potentate; and if Charley Minick was not yet a 
 chief of detectives he well might become one, at 
 least with a woman whose clothes cost money to 
 spur him on. Sadie s teeth were perfect, and 
 she filled out her gown like a dressmaker s model ; 
 her hair, besides, was quite as good as Kittie s, and 
 her complexion was wonderful. After some 
 hesitation she concluded, therefore, with a de 
 lightful sense at once of playing for high stakes 
 and of generosity, to become engaged to marry 
 Charley Minick. Also his mustache curled 
 beautifully. 
 
 28 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 Charley Minick in his twenty-eighth year had 
 achieved a knowledge how the world is made. 
 This perception is strictly a matter of male in 
 telligence ; women know nothing whatever about 
 it, their concern lying wholly with fictions. He 
 had joined the " force " with a resolution to be an 
 " honest copper " ; and his high aspirations still 
 clung to him, though they had become modified. 
 He would not be so honest as to be unpleasant; 
 he would be just a little oh ! the veriest trifle 
 better than his neighbors. This course permit 
 ted him to attain the delights both of popularity 
 and of pride, and may be said to be sanctioned by 
 the example of a working majority of the truly 
 great. " I don t set up for no saint," said the 
 magnanimous Minick, " but there are places 
 where I draws the line." A Pitt or a Lincoln 
 could have said no more. 
 
 He was capable on occasion of a certain 
 doggedness and intensity of reflection ; and at the 
 time of his engagement Sadie had provided an 
 occasion. Margie s gifts from her lover had been 
 diamonds of price; Kittie s gifts from her lover 
 had been diamonds of even greater price; and 
 Sadie was perfectly aware of every woman s in 
 alienable right to possess better jewels than any 
 
 29 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 woman of her acquaintance, if she can induce a 
 man to give them to her. She explained 
 her views to Minick with vigor and point; 
 she revealed to him the double jurisdiction 
 under which he had agreed to live; he must 
 .stand his trial in the judgment of her peers. 
 Therefore Minick referred to her hilariously as 
 her Grace the Duchess of Major & Fairbank s, 
 and looked upon her with increased happiness 
 and admiration. A man always looks upon a 
 woman with increased happiness and admiration 
 when she asks the impossible and makes him do 
 it. 
 
 " Well, you wouldn t have me be ashamed be 
 fore Kit and Marge, would you? " 
 
 "The Pearl of Pie Alley couldn t stand 
 ashamed before Kit and Marge; she hasn t got 
 the shape ! But I forgot ; it s a man that s proud 
 of a woman s shape ; the woman s only proud of 
 what she s got on it ! " 
 
 " Even now they say I m a fool to tie up with 
 you. They say there s no scale in your job the 
 way there is in Jim s and Bob s ; they call you a 
 hundred-a-month man ; they say you don t take in 
 nothing on the side. Kit and Marge said last 
 night I was marrying you for your mtf&rtache. 
 
 30 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 " Kit and Marge ! " said the alert detective with 
 theatric scorn ; " Kit and Marge are a couple of 
 clapper-tongued pot-wrestlers; you ll make your 
 ears long as a government mule s a-listenin to 
 em. Jim married Kit for her musstache, you 
 know he did; an what she says o mine is pure 
 envy!" 
 
 " Yes, I suppose. But I ain t talking of 
 1 musstaches ; I m serious; it means a lot to me. 
 You ve got to get me what I want; that s what 
 you marry me for! and you ve got to go to the 
 right place to get it I tell you those ; I want to 
 show Kit and Marge the box." 
 
 " All right," laughed Minick, " I ll get you the 
 box!" 
 
 Three days after this conversation there was a 
 great social " event " at the town house of Ed 
 ward Sandys of Sandys & Merton, who served 
 God and mankind to the amount of some mil 
 lions per annum. They performed their service 
 largely by accepting a controlling interest in un 
 dertakings to which the name of Sandys & Mer 
 ton lent a commercial value. The great social 
 "event," with its great display of plate and jewels, 
 was followed by a great cracksman s " events." 
 Before the awakening of the Sandys household 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 after the festival a judiciously selected portion of 
 the jewels had disappeared. The reward offered 
 was so large that the Front Office was touched 
 in its tenderest sensibilities; there seemed some 
 thing almost wicked in declining to supply a man, 
 anxious to part with a sum like that, with a 
 chance to hand it over. 
 
 The instructions of the chief were a model of 
 manly eloquence : " Somebody s got to get that 
 dough; Sandys 11 t row a fit if he can t cough 
 up, and you coppers got to help him. I ain t 
 goin to have the Eye people snake in all the 
 loose coin; I give it to you straight. They 
 more n did us on that Hogan deal ; an the papers 
 roasted me. They called me a jaundiced 
 tutelary dodo ; / don t know what the blamed 
 thing means, but I won t stand for it. I can t 
 get at the feller that wrote it, but I can make your 
 skins too hot to hold you if he gets a chanst to 
 do it again. A town as big as this can find its 
 own guns without callin in private fly cops. You 
 fellows spread yourselves on this case, you take 
 my tip. Get your mouthpieces on the run, bribe 
 em, pinch em, do what you damn please, but 
 get that dough. An get the gun too. Some 
 o the country papers have been shoutin bout 
 
 32 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 this force bein crooked ; they say that we re only 
 out for the dough in jobs like this, an let the gun 
 make a get-away. I m sick o this hollerin , and 
 if it don t quit I ll make every man jack of you 
 sick of it too ! " 
 
 That afternoon an ornate reporters -column in 
 one of the public prints consisted of an interview 
 with the " subtle and competent Detective Min- 
 ick " ; it referred to him alternately as another 
 Sherlock Holmes and as a second Old Sleuth. 
 Sadie did not know who Sherlock Holmes and 
 Old Sleuth were; when Kittie asked her, she 
 said they were former chiefs of police; and there 
 were a number of words in the article she could 
 not understand; but the general drift of it she 
 perceived was commendatory, and she felt an im 
 mediate access of affection for Charley and was 
 sorry she had not asked for a bigger diamond. 
 Charley was alleged to be " working " on the 
 Sandys case. His work for the moment con 
 sisted in examining the scene of the robbery, in 
 making notes of seventeen particulars which he 
 perfectly believed to be insignificant, and in ar 
 resting three servants whom he perfectly believed 
 not guilty. Out of the seventeen insignificant 
 
 33 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 particulars he formulated a " theory " of the case 
 so ingenious that no man in his senses would act 
 upon it. Happily he did not make it to act 
 upon; he made it to give to the newspapers. 
 These things he did in order that Mr. Sandys and 
 the public might recognize that he was " taking 
 an interest." When he had secured this point, 
 he was perfectly at a loss what to do next except, 
 as he phrased it, " to rubber around," which is 
 technical and esoteric for keeping his eyes and 
 ears open. Every one else who was " working " 
 on the case was equally at a loss ; every one was 
 just rubbering around. 
 
 One morning while matters were at this pass 
 the chief handed Minick a telegram which was 
 dated Akron, Ohio. It signified that one Bud 
 Denmer, age thirty-six, height five feet eleven 
 and a quarter, complexion dark, eyes blue hazel, 
 hair prematurely gray and black, beard solid 
 black, teeth good, nose large and pugnacious, 
 weight a hundred and sixty-five pounds, was 
 " wanted," and was supposed to be in New York. 
 The reward was five hundred dollars and the par 
 ticulars would follow by letter. 
 
 34 
 
II. 
 
 Women, in the Great Republic at least, are su 
 perior to men in everything, except the ability to 
 remain in large cities during the hot season. This 
 is the almost universal testimony of those who 
 have given the question the greatest amount of at 
 tention, and, when specialists agree, it ill becomes 
 the uninformed to profess an opinion. The 
 point is that Mrs. Richard Cober was an excep 
 tion to the general rule; she found it impossible 
 to master the elements of applied mathematics. 
 Even in the matter of the currency she could 
 never be got to understand that one dollar is no 
 better than another dollar, when the first dollar 
 was her own and the second was some one else s ; 
 and when the calculation came to concern hus 
 bands and children her incapacity reached its ex- 
 treme. 
 
 Richard Cober was fast becoming the head of a 
 profession of which he was proud, but which he 
 disliked to hear called by its right name. He 
 was only from time to time actively engaged in 
 
 35 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 it, and it took him for the most part out of town 
 into the beyond. He was understood by his chil 
 dren, and nominally by his wife, to be a " travel 
 ing " man. His absences would last for a few 
 days or a few weeks, and out of the beyond he 
 would commonly bring back a great deal of 
 money or a very bad temper. Once his absence 
 lasted nearly three years, and he brought back 
 only a new suit of clothes, a pallid face and a 
 most unpleasant trick of the eyes. Little Bes 
 sie said that he looked like a " bogy-man," and 
 little Bobbie said he " ooked ike a fief " ; and 
 both cried out and clapped their hands and ran 
 in great glee to greet him. Mamma afterward 
 explained to them that he had had an accident in 
 the beyond and had been for a long while con 
 fined to the house, and that it had been bad for 
 him to use his eyes. Bessie told him she was 
 "so sorry ever so sorry really!" for his ac 
 cident; and Bobbie assured him that he did not 
 look in the least " ike a fief," but " ike a dear 
 dorable papa." 
 
 When Richard Cober was in luck he was lavish 
 with his " kids," and at all times liked nothing 
 better than to have them tumbling over him ; and 
 whether or not he was in luck, there was nothing 
 
 36 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 their mamma could want that he did not find a 
 way to provide. Bobbie may have erred in the 
 letter in his consolatory assurance, but he was 
 right in his main intention. It may be doubted 
 whether Richard " looked " adorable ; for the 
 most part he looked uncommonly sharp and 
 hard ; but in his daintily upholstered flat in Clin 
 ton Place he was at least adored. He sang songs 
 and cut a double-shuffle for the kids and played at 
 blind man s buff; and Mrs. Cober possessed 
 jewels that would have made Sadie Meeker s 
 frosty eyes burn with desire. Of an evening it 
 was his habit to spend some hours in brilliantly 
 lit rooms supplied liberally with mirrors and with 
 round hardwood tables, at which men with dia 
 mond scarf-pins and boutonnieres sat or lolled In 
 easy chairs and called for drinks. Because his 
 own diamond scarf-pin and boutonniere were not 
 conspicuously large but unmistakably more 
 " choice," everybody hailed him admiringly as 
 " Buck," and demanded what he would " take." 
 
 One afternoon while Bessie was dandling a doll 
 half as big as herself, and Richard and Bobbie 
 were doing a cake-walk with an energy and free 
 dom of grimace and gesture that made her scream 
 with laughter, the door opened and a gentleman, 
 
 37 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 who had held a little colloquy with the maid in the 
 hall, entered unannounced. The gentleman was 
 Detective Minick. 
 
 There was an instant in which if Detective 
 Minick had been a timid man he would have 
 found the sight of Richard bad for his nerves. 
 That the sight of Minick was bad for Richard s 
 nerves there was not the slightest doubt. But 
 there are courtesies in the Under World; even 
 men who play for stakes as high as life, liberty 
 and the pursuit of happiness permit themselves 
 the luxury of treating one another with respect. 
 
 " Eighteen-carat place you got here, Buck, old 
 sport ; pie-anna, French clock, Turkey rugs, nice 
 kids ; things been goin your way." 
 
 " Don t look as if you d been up against hard 
 luck yourself. Skip, kids. Mr. Minick and me 
 will be wanting to bill and coo in private." 
 
 These were amenities. People do not shake 
 hands in the Under World except as a sign of 
 extreme formality ; neither do they look one an 
 other steadily in the face except in anger; they 
 glance at one another from time to time and con 
 verse at an angle of forty-five degrees. Also a 
 certain gruffness of manner and voice are de 
 rigueur. It was Detective Minick s profession 
 
 38 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 to bring every man s trouble home to him; but 
 he had the reputation of executing his disagree 
 able task with as little offense as possible. It 
 was an incident of Richard Cober s profession 
 that he did not like to have people call on him ; it 
 always made him uncomfortable until they stated 
 their business, and then sometimes it made him 
 still more uncomfortable. 
 
 " Somethin doin ? " he asked with laconic ele 
 gance. 
 
 " A little matter o my own. I want you to 
 put me next." 
 
 " What the blazes do you come to me about 
 * next for? I ain t next to nothin in this town 
 except you dead ones at the Front Office." 
 
 "Read the papers lately?" 
 
 " One o you fly cops croaked an you want to 
 touch me for a bouquet for the stiff? " 
 
 " Seen the details o that Sandys job? " 
 
 " Oh it s that, is it? You can search me. 
 You ll have to guess again if you want to pick a 
 winner. I ain t mixed up in that. I haven t 
 done any work in this town for five years; I live 
 here, an you know well enough that where I live 
 there s nothin doin . I ve got too much at 
 stake." 
 
 4 39 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Don t suppose I d be sittin here rubberin at 
 your wall-paper, if you done it, do you? But I 
 want you to get mixed up in it. There s five 
 thousand semoleons reward, an I need em in my 
 business." 
 
 " Who told you t I was interested in your bus 
 iness? I got troubles o my own." 
 
 These also were amenities. The next state 
 ment was open combat. 
 
 " It won t do, Charley ; I give it to you 
 straight, I didn t do the job myself an don t 
 know who did ; but if I did know I wouldn t tell 
 you. I ain t got nothing against you personally ; 
 you always treated me square, an I d go as far for 
 you as another man ; but I never yet beefed on a 
 pal an I m not goin to begin. I know it s done, 
 as well as you do; I haven t heard of a reward 
 these last ten years that you people have copped 
 out that some gun didn t help you get ; but you 
 can keep the dough for all me when you get 
 it. I m a bad lot if you like, but I wouldn t turn 
 mouthpiece for the whole five thousand." 
 
 " Better wait till I offer em," said Minick in 
 tently; "what ll you do for this?" Minick 
 passed him with one hand a telegram from Ak 
 ron, Ohio, and with the other fingered a revolver 
 
 40 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 in his coat-pocket. Minick s acquaintances whom 
 he met in the way of business were sometimes 
 spasmodic in their movements. Also Richard 
 Cober was age thirty-six, height five feet eleven 
 and a quarter, complexion dark, eyes blue hazel, 
 hair prematurely gray and black, beard that is 
 to say, close-cut mustache solid black, teeth 
 good, nose large and pugnacious, weight a hun 
 dred and sixty-five pounds. 
 
 " Swell place you got here, Buck; pie-anna, 
 French clock, Turkey rugs, nice kids; I should 
 think you d hate to shift." 
 
 Minick was to be congratulated on the com 
 pleteness with which he had thought out his case. 
 
 " I don t want to be hard on you, Buck ; I ll 
 give you time all right to turn the thing over in 
 your mind; but understand me, I want those 
 semoleons. If you should happen to discover a 
 way of helpin me get them, well ! it s been six 
 years since I seen Bud Denmer in Joliet ; I might 
 be so stuck on myself I couldn t recognize him 
 in the street if I passed him a dozen times a day ; 
 an I m the only man on the force that s onto his 
 mug. If you shouldn t happen to discover a 
 way of helpin me, that telegram reads cuffs in 
 Clinton Place, jail in Akron, Stir in Columbus, 
 41 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 free rides between pints, an free grub an lodgin 
 everywhere." 
 
 " Dick, you ve said time after time that if it 
 ever came to a pass again where you had to 
 choose between me and the kids and a gun, you d 
 let the gun go; and you re up against that 
 choice now," urged Mrs. Richard Cober when 
 Minick had said " so-long " and taken his leave. 
 " You ve got enough money saved up to quit the 
 business anyhow. I ve often told you that with 
 what we have in the bank we could go over to 
 London, bring up the kids respectably and live 
 decently ourselves." 
 
 " A man like me s no business with kids, Nell, 
 old girl; nor with a woman either," said Cober 
 wearily, not for the first time in his life " up 
 against " the eternal difference between a 
 woman s world and a man s. 
 
III. 
 
 Be it known that in the Under World as in the 
 Upper everybody minds his own business when 
 his own business is pressing; when it is not, he 
 minds conscientiously and discusses with unction 
 the business of everybody else. Speaking broad 
 ly, the only person who knows nothing and can 
 discover nothing of who did what is the detective ; 
 he is as well known as if he moved about pre 
 ceded by a town crier; on all sides of him the 
 words that it concerns him to hear are vibrating 
 in the air; the vibrations die away just before they 
 reach his ears. 
 
 That evening, after his pacific interview with 
 Minick, Cober loitered listlessly about the better 
 sort of haunts of the Powers That Prey. He was 
 caught up by groups who back mathematics 
 versus confidence and stand to win, and heard the 
 latest gossip about the favorite, the odds offered 
 and asked, the latest news of the champion s 
 " condition," the latest arrangements for a 
 " fake " match of bantam-weights, in which ev- 
 
 43 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 erybody who put money on the sure thing was to 
 gain experience at the end of a rally in the eighth 
 round. He heard the last great score at billiards, 
 the last great game at hazard, and received an in 
 vitation to make one of a select party forming to 
 work the crowd at the coming Cincinnati Saen- 
 gerfest. From time to time in the lull of more 
 urgent affairs a remark was dropped that 
 " Blinky " pulled off a good thing two days ago 
 at " Phillie," that that had been a tidy " get 
 away " the night before on Fifty-ninth street 
 (" Long Morgan, you know," was added in a 
 lower tone by way of complete information), and 
 that " Barney " had not been seen for some days 
 and must have something " on." 
 
 Richard would have been too shrewd, which is 
 to say he loved his own skin too intelligently, to 
 put direct questions about the Sandys job; nor 
 would there have been the least reason why he 
 should ask questions. The Sandys job was just 
 becoming a subject of impassioned surmise. 
 Twenty times in the evening Cober himself was 
 asked if he knew who did it ; twenty times he lis 
 tened to notes of admiration of the cleverness 
 with which it had been planned and executed and 
 to the opinion that it was the work of " outside 
 
 44 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 talent." Before the evening was gone he came 
 to loathe outside talent; he was sick of outside 
 talent, he was sick of the neatness of the Sandys 
 job, he was sick of the choice that he must make, 
 and of the evil that must befall him no matter 
 what he chose. For himself he cared really little 
 enough, if the truth were told, but it was alto 
 gether true that a man like him had no business 
 with a woman and kids. 
 
 He had fully mastered his ideas in this connec 
 tion when he entered " The Green Dragon " and 
 the presiding Belial stepped forward and handed 
 him a note. It consisted of but two lines and a 
 signature he had received the precise duplicate 
 of it just as he was leaving Clinton Place : " I 
 want to see you in a hurry, Buck. Pull the ringer 
 at the number given in the other note. L. C." 
 Half an hour afterward he was sitting at the bed 
 side of Lubin Cavanaugh, in a house on Sixteenth 
 street, where single gentlemen were permitted to 
 pay exorbitant rates for lodging in exchange for 
 the privilege of presenting introductions which 
 guaranteed their reputability. When in obedi 
 ence to a weak-voiced summons to " come in " 
 Richard first entered the room, he perceived an 
 emaciated head fallen back in an ecstasy of ex- 
 
 45 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 haustion among the pillows ; when the emaciated 
 head had identified its visitor as " Buck " Cober, 
 it hailed him with " Hello, Old Sport ! " and the 
 man to whom it belonged sat upright, threw 
 back the bedclothes and resumed an interrupted 
 labor, which was the labor of " setting," or pos 
 sibly, as Richard judged, of resetting, jewels. 
 
 "Thought you might be the doctor with some 
 more dope. He an I are doin a little song an 
 dance together while I fix up this pennyweight 
 job. I m playin the pennyweight game alone, 
 an he might want to cut in. He d speculate on 
 these sparklers in his bill, if he knew I had em 
 beutes, ain t they?" 
 
 The time had been when a " sparkler " had the 
 same fascination for Richard Cober that it had for 
 Lubin Cavanaugh, but he was in no mood that 
 evening to admire another man s plunder. A 
 wonder as to the previous ownership of the jewels 
 he could not repress even in the " Stir " men 
 make guesses as to the origin of an unscheduled 
 piece of bread but the etiquette of the Under 
 World forbids inquiry in regard to such matters. 
 
 "Then it s just a song an dance?" Richard 
 asked, referring to the bottles of medicine on the 
 table and Cavanaugh s reclining position. 
 
 46 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 " That s all. Never felt better in my life. The 
 doc calls it symptoms o pneumonia, but they re 
 the kind you an I had when we made out we 
 was dyin o consumption out in the Joliet Stir. 
 Member how we got into the hospital, don t 
 cher? You faded away on soap, an I jus kept 
 a-coughin . There was bout fifty of us dyin o 
 consumption that stretcher, wasn t there? What 
 you so blue about, Buck? Dig into that booze 
 there, an get a brace on. You an Nell ain t 
 been havin a row, have you? " 
 
 The reference to Richard s domestic relations 
 was merely experimental. Cavanaugh was in 
 such good spirits himself that he could only fall 
 back on the bachelor s chronic surmise when a 
 married friend is out of sorts. 
 
 " No. It s jus a general case o grouch. I 
 get hipped ev ry now an then jus as I used to. 
 What can I do for you, Lubin? I got to shift in 
 a few minutes." 
 
 The two looked at each other for an instant in 
 that quick, but piercing way which all guns, let 
 alone pals, have. Merely a week s separation is 
 sufficient to make necessary this preliminary test 
 of a comrade s loyalty, before new contracts can 
 be entered into. Cavanaugh believed that he 
 47 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 saw in his old companion the same " Buck " 
 Cober of " square deals " and no " beefs." 
 
 " I d a let you into the job, Buck," he said, 
 " but it was jus the kind o game to attract an 
 old single-handed stiff like myself, an I played 
 it alone. What I want is a dopp just like this 
 one without the break," and he handed Cober a 
 little instrument newly broken. " I ve got to 
 have a new one by eleven o clock to-morrow 
 morning, an I ll be dead obliged to you if you ll 
 get it for me. I d get it myself, but I got these 
 symptoms, you know, an the push thinks I m out 
 at that crib in Mexico, rollin the wheel. Under 
 stand, don t cher? Say, Buck, if it s dough you 
 need, reach under my pillow here an you ll find 
 a roll. I been there myself, you know." 
 
 " That s all right, Lube. Tain t as bad as 
 that." 
 
 " Well, take care o yourself, old man, an if 
 you see any o the push, tell em I m baskin in 
 the sun down among the Mexies. So long, 
 Buck." 
 
 "Well?" said Mrs. Cober expectantly, when 
 Richard paused at the close of his account of the 
 evening s interview with Cavanaugh. 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 " Well ! It s cuffs in Clinton Place, jail in Ak 
 ron, free rides between pints, free grub an lodgin 
 everywhere. I can t beef on a pal like Cava- 
 naugh, Nell. A man s got to stick by his 
 friends." 
 
 " It ain t a case o beefin on a pal, Dick; it s 
 a case o doin dirt by me an the kids. There 
 ain t one o your friends has stood by you like me 
 an the kids ; if you got to stick by your friends, 
 you got to stick by us." 
 
 " It won t do, Nell ; a gun s seen his luck 
 when he turns mouthpiece ; I ve watched it since 
 I was a little shaver sellin papers an graftin 
 molls. Be square with the push an the push ll 
 be square with you, an it ll be the better for you 
 in the end. I don t even know for sure that 
 Cavanaugh made the touch ; but whether he did 
 or not, he d know I had split on him, an he d 
 follow me till he croaked." 
 
 In an earlier period of her married life Mrs. 
 Cober would at this point have resorted to tears 
 or to blandishments. She had learned, how 
 ever, that there were times when Dick meant what 
 he said, and she was of opinion as she studied 
 him that this was one of the times. She did not 
 in the least give up the battle ; a hard man makes 
 
 49 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 a hard wife unless he kills her! and she had 
 her idea. If she had been altogether wise she 
 would have held her tongue, but it is not in nature 
 to be so wise as that. 
 
 " A woman is perfectly helpless when she s tied 
 to a man that means to play the fool," she said 
 bitterly. " You have to be square to the push 
 or the push will get even with you ; you can do 
 as you like by the woman an the kids. No mat 
 ter what you do, they ve got to stand for it." 
 
 This statement being self-evident, Richard 
 Cober made no reply to it; he went to bed. 
 Half an hour later Mrs. Cober put on her hat and 
 shawl and softly left the house : that perhaps was 
 a part of her idea. 
 
IV. 
 
 The raid was one of those ordinary man-hunts 
 with the game at bay, the details of which even 
 the newspapers have long since wearied of re 
 porting. The " flatties " in uniforms surrounded 
 the place, and Minick with three fellow huntsmen 
 went into the building to face an animal rather 
 more dangerous than one of the larger carnivora. 
 The animal, however, was intelligent. Cava- 
 naugh had not the slightest chance of escape, and 
 knew it the minute his door was forced open and 
 the detectives drew their revolvers. " They re 
 good," he remarked in the gambler s jargon, and 
 allowed himself to be handcuffed. His only 
 comment on the capture lay in the words : " An 
 other case of beef." 
 
 The Sandys jewels were all found in Cava- 
 naugh s possession, a number of them very skill 
 fully reset and two of the larger very skillfully dis 
 figured. The public prints rang the next day 
 with the praise of the celebrated Minick and re 
 peated their version of the unrecognized intellect- 
 
 S 1 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 ual profession, which taxes the swiftest and sub 
 tlest powers of the mind and to which society 
 owes its immunity from crime. " If a man is 
 built for the perfession," the illustrious Minick 
 was reported to have said, " he can cop out a gun 
 as if by miracle; if he ain t, he can sit at table 
 with the man that s wanted an study his photo 
 graph an go home a dead one." . . Every 
 reporter agreed that the celebrated Minick was 
 " built for the perfession," and had laid his hand 
 as if by miracle on the man that was wanted ; what 
 they did not give him credit for was a gift for 
 statement not greatly unlike their own. 
 
 Sadie Meeker drew the attention of both Mar 
 gie and Kittie to the most highly ornate para 
 graphs in praise of the celebrated Minick and en 
 joyed the proud delight of fame. She had been 
 in some doubt until the newspapers took him up 
 whether she cared for him " really," but the re 
 porters eloquence decided her. When the ring 
 was brought a great flush of triumph came into 
 her face the diamond was bigger than Kittie s 
 and prettier. " Oh, Charley, there is scale in 
 your job," she exclaimed, " and I will marry you 
 for your mustache ! " The " box " was as 
 satisfactory as the stone, and a receipted bill from 
 Tiffany s was even more satisfactory than the 
 
 5* 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 box ; but there were a number of items of which 
 Tiffany took no account. 
 
 The week that the marriage of Detective 
 Minick was announced, an incident occurred in 
 one of the side-streets of the city of Mexico. Dif 
 ferent accounts of the affair appeared at the time 
 in the police columns of the daily press of the 
 city, but the only arrest that was ever made was 
 of the young man who, on reading the items in 
 the newspapers, volunteered the information that 
 on the night of the incident in question he had 
 seen a suspicious-looking figure loitering about 
 the corner where the injured man was found. He 
 said furthermore that on turning the corner him 
 self he had heard the sound of a bit of scuffling, 
 but there was no outcry. He very much regret 
 ted, as he stated to the police, that he had not 
 turned back and investigated, but he was in a 
 hurry at the time and gave no serious heed to the 
 episode. He described the suspicious-looking 
 man that he had seen merely as a heavily built 
 man with noticeably square jaws, and added that 
 he looked like an American, although of this he 
 was, of course, not sure. Naturally, the police 
 tried to find a reason for " holding " the young 
 53 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 ^ 
 man ; it served him right for offering information 
 
 that led to nothing; but his good name among 
 his neighbors as well as with certain influential 
 city officials, made it impossible seriously to sus 
 pect him. At the city hospital, where the injured 
 man was taken, certain papers and checks found 
 in his pockets showed that he conducted his 
 financial affairs at least over the name of Oliver 
 Hewes, but the police were much puzzled to find 
 tattooed in blue ink on the left forearm, the name 
 " Buck Cober." The lettering was somewhat 
 blurred, and the inference of the police was that 
 the man had tried to prick it out with milk. He 
 never regained consciousness, and it was impos 
 sible to obtain any statement from him. The 
 wound in his head seemed to indicate that he had 
 been hit with an uncommonly heavy billy. A 
 woman came forward from nowhere in particular 
 to claim the body, but she showed no disposition 
 to supply biographical details ; she dedicated her 
 energy to hysterics. 
 
 It has, perhaps, no connection with this in 
 cident that two weeks previously the following 
 paragraph appeared in various newspapers in the 
 United States : " Lubin Cavanaugh, alias New 
 
 York Lube, escaped from prison last 
 
 54 
 
A Bill from Tiffany s 
 
 night. He is a notorious professional burglar 
 and has a record against him which takes up sev 
 eral pages of the prison s blotter. A re 
 ward of $500 is offered for his capture and im 
 prisonment until the prison authorities can be 
 -ommunicated with." There are those who rate 
 themselves " wise/ however, who believe that 
 the two trivial incidents are connected, and that 
 a belated item should be added to the Bill from 
 Tiffany s. 
 
 55 
 
THE REVENGE OF THE FOUR. 
 I. 
 
 One evening, or rather one morning, in May, 
 189 , in the " Slide," which everybody knows, 
 though that is not its name, a mixed company of 
 men and women were glad that they were young. 
 Therefore they ordered miscellaneous drinks 
 and smoked cigarettes and listened to three 
 " darkies " explain, to the accompaniment of 
 three guitars, that they find the Western Union 
 a convenience no matter where they roam, and 
 that they will telegraph their baby, who ll send 
 ten or twenty maybe, and they won t have to 
 walk back home. 
 
 In marked contrast with the other visitors that 
 evening at the " Slide," there sat close about a 
 table, in earnest consultation, four celebrities, 
 whom the " house " treated with distinguished 
 deference. 
 
 There is a little black book without a title or 
 title-page in which very good woodcuts may be 
 
 5* 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 seen of the faces of the four celebrities and of 
 other celebrities, friends and rivals of the four. 
 Also there are capital photographs of the four and 
 of their friends and rivals; and on each of the 
 photographs as on each of the woodcuts there is 
 a number, and corresponding to each number 
 there is a minute description, beginning with 
 " Name and Alias " and ending in " Remarks." 
 This book and these photographs are not dealt 
 in by the trade, neither are they for sale or gen 
 eral distribution by any one; they are made for 
 the use of gentlemen who commit such portraits 
 to memory as if they were words in a strange 
 language, and who walk abroad, with the knowl 
 edge thus acquired, in the deliberate wish to 
 make trouble. 
 
 These four celebrities were persons of varied 
 accomplishments, and of considerable capital and 
 industry, which they placed at the service of an 
 appreciative public. The four were instruments 
 of that fall which it is good divinity and common 
 observation to believe cometh after pride of 
 sapience. Wherever there gathered people 
 whose confidence was greater than their discre 
 tion and who were willing to back their opinion, 
 the four lent them every facility ; thereby benefit- 
 
 57 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 ing them and forming them in the self-knowledge 
 which philosophers declare is the beginning and 
 the end of wisdom. The four were clever with 
 their hands, had mastered in some of its most 
 profitable applications the truth that motion may 
 be quicker than sight, and drew a steady revenue 
 from the desire of mankind to learn by experience. 
 Their fellow-countrymen showed their apprecia 
 tion of talents like these by first enriching the 
 possessors, by private contribution, then from 
 time to time by offering them public receptions 
 at which speeches were in order, and by tender 
 ing them for a considerable period the hospitality 
 of the State. It should in justice, be added, that 
 every^one of the four was of a retiring disposition 
 and shunned these public attentions whenever 
 possible. 
 
 This May evening in the " Slide " they had met 
 by appointment in the way of business. Their 
 business for the moment seemed to consist in the 
 attentive contemplation of a calendar of local 
 shows and festivals and generally of occasions on 
 which anywhere in the United States in the next 
 three months extraordinary crowds would con 
 gregate. At any expense of labor or of incon 
 venience to themselves they were ambitious to af- 
 
 58 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 ford their services to the greatest number of peo 
 ple in the greatest number of places, in the short 
 est space of time possible. The question of the 
 day was, in which part of the country and with 
 what " graft " the benefit of their services should 
 first be offered. The four had traveled widely 
 and observantly, but not always in one another s 
 company, and there were differences of opinion 
 in regard to the territory most likely at once to 
 receive them with due appreciation and to respect 
 the modesty which disinclined them to public 
 attentions. 
 
 Mr. Eady, called "Mike" among his intimates, 
 and " Tier 4, No. 30,896 " among his attendants 
 at a mansion of more than monastic seclusion, 
 facetiously known as his " lying-in hospital," 
 favored a preliminary jaunt to a reunion of Civil 
 War Veterans to be held in the South. He 
 backed up the suggestion with promises of suc 
 cess, which, on account of his experience and age 
 he had just passed his fifty-sixth year were 
 listened to with marked attention. 
 
 " There s more suckers in a day down in that 
 part of the country," he declared, " than there 
 is up here in a week. We ve all been in the 
 hill country in West Virginia on circus days, ain t 
 we? Well, the class o people you find there are 
 
 59 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 runnin loose all over the South. They take in 
 bout one show a season, an when they get to 
 town they rubber so that they ain t thinkin bout 
 their leathers at all. W y, I ve seen those yaps 
 come to town an throw up their hands at sights 
 that a Bowery kid wouldn t drop a cigarette 
 snipe to see. Put em in front of a side-show s 
 banners an they ll screw their necks till you d 
 think they was never goin to get em in shape 
 again. They work like steers on their farms an 
 don t see enthin excitin more n once or twice a 
 year, an when a big thing conies along it stag 
 gers em. The same class o yaps is goin to be 
 at the reunion. I can see jus exactly how the 
 thing s goin to be. Those old soldiers, you 
 know, 11 come in from the country an rubber 
 themselves silly. They ll chew the rag right in 
 a crowd, blockin up the way an makin pushes 
 so s a bloke won t need any stalls. Colonel Jim- 
 J ams from Kentucky 11 see Captain Coffee 
 Cooler from New Orleans, an they ll beller.an 
 holler, an han round plug tobacco an fine-cut 
 right in a big jamb, an Jim-jams 11 suggest a 
 mint julep. Then they ll push an squeeze to 
 get out o the crowd, an off comes the touch. 
 You know the single-handed worker, Sneezy 
 
 60 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 Johnson? Well, he told me not more n six 
 weeks ago that jus such yaps as Jim-jams an 
 Coffee Cooler stalled for im at a gatherin in 
 South Carolina better n a trained push. W y, 
 Mike/ he says, I don t want nothin easier n 
 gettin those people to bite. They re jus like 
 sheep. Let somebody holler that the elephants 
 is comin an they crowd an shove s if they was 
 bughouse. I was amongst em when Bryan 
 struck Atlanta, an it s God s truth, my hands 
 actually got tired weedin the leathers I pulled 
 up. Now, I tell you, blokes, we don t want to 
 lose a chance like the reunion . less there s some- 
 thin a damn sight better somewhere else. It 
 won t cost us over ten days to take it in, an then 
 we can jump West, or where you like." 
 
 " You re all right bout the yaps bitin , Mike," 
 remarked Mr. Burras, familiarly known as 
 " Larry," " but there s goin to be an all-fired big 
 push o guns at that reunion, an you know how 
 those yaps are. They take the bait like catfish, 
 but look out when the hollerin begins. W y, 
 they nearly lynched Jerry Simpson an the Michi 
 gan Kid in a jerk town in Georgia las winter. 
 The two was hittin it up pretty lively, and an old 
 hoosier woke up out o one of his dreams while 
 61 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 the Kid s fist was in his pocket, an he went bel- 
 lowin like a moose all over the shop. If the 
 coppers hadn t jumped in an rescued the Kid the 
 yaps ud a croaked im sure, an it cost his push 
 a thousand plunks to spring him from the cop 
 pers. There s goin to be a big push o visitin 
 coppers at the reunion, too, an if any of em 
 knows us they ll beef dead sure, less we square 
 em, an they ll beef anyhow if the guns go it too 
 strong, an that s jus what s goin to happen. 
 There ll be such a lot o suckers that the guns 11 
 work em hard, an there ll have to be a lot o 
 springin done. My advice is course, if they 
 ain t nothin better that we take in the through 
 rattlers on the Pennsy or the Central for the next 
 few weeks an go it sort o quiet like till we see 
 how things are pannin out. Them passengers 
 on the through rattlers are always good for twen 
 ty-five or fifty, an we can give em the change 
 an raise rackets. At night we can pull off some 
 Pullman touches. I ain t stuck on this kind o 
 graftin , but it s my opinion that it ll suit us bet- 
 ter n the reunion will at this stage o the game." 
 Mr. Renn, with the descriptive " monikey " 
 Shorty, agreed with Mr. Burras that the reunion 
 was impracticable, but for reasons which the oth 
 
 62 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 ers understood but did not seriously consider, 
 favored remaining in town, and " taking in " such 
 events as funerals until the season was more ad 
 vanced. " Coin to be some big stiffs to work 
 at this month," he remarked appreciatively, " an 
 if we don t attend to em somebody else will 
 take my tip for that." Mr. Renn was engaged 
 to be married to " a sweet little thing " on the 
 East Side, and, as his companions well knew, was 
 not competent to make acceptable suggestions. 
 
 Mr. Frood, affectionately termed " Eddie " by 
 an indulgent wife, as well as by his three pals, 
 proposed a jaunt through the great State of Ohio, 
 and made good his reasons for the selection of 
 this locality with very convincing arguments and 
 illustrations. 
 
 " There s no use talkin , blokes," he said, 
 " there ain t been no improvement on old Ohio 
 in any State o the Union. She s been touched 
 up right an left, backward an forward, an side 
 ways an crossways, an there she sits still, sayin : 
 Gimme some more, honey, gimme some more/ 
 W y, blokes, it s one o the phenomenons o the 
 age, as Jimmy the Greek used to say, the way 
 Ohio has been ripped open by politicians an 
 guns, an keeps as chipper as ever. W y, them 
 
 63 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 railroad junctions o hers has been touched up for 
 the last twenty-five years, an they re as good as 
 government bonds yet. Better, by Jove ! I 
 don t want any neater graft than floatin round 
 them junctions. An I d like to know where 
 there s another State where you can fix things the 
 way you can in Ohio. The politicians a got 
 the State by the throat, an you know as well as I 
 do, that where they get their graft in guns can 
 too. 
 
 " Now s the time when the circuses begin their 
 rounds, an the thing for us to do is to jump over 
 there, tie up with one o the shows, an jus take 
 its dates. I was over there last season with 
 Myers an Randall, an we only had to make one 
 spring, an that didn t cost us over six hundred. 
 By August we had six thousand plunks even 
 money banked. We can t do any better n that 
 anywhere, an I say that we hunt up a good sneak 
 an climber (sneak-thief and burglar) an jump 
 over there." 
 
 " Do you know what fixers are travelin with 
 the shows? " asked Mr. Eady. 
 
 " There ain t been any changes. I saw Cin 
 cinnati Red day before yesterday, an he said the 
 shows had the same coppers. Some of em has 
 
 64 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 come up a little in their commission charges, but 
 most of em are askin twenty per cent, same as 
 usual. Fifteen per cent, goes with some of em 
 if you ain t on the dip, an are jus doin the sure 
 thing act." 
 
 This conversation took place in the inscrutable 
 lipless enunciation of the profession. The night 
 festival in the " Slide " was still at its height, and 
 above all the sound of light laughter, of popping 
 corks and shuffling feet, the voices of the three 
 " darkies " proclaimed to the accompaniment of 
 the three guitars, that they had got a horseless 
 carriage an a footman too, and yellow coachmen 
 by the score ; that they d said good-by to all the 
 coons, cause we ain t poor no more. 
 
II. 
 
 Adolph Hochheimer, mayor at this time of the 
 city of Cornville, was a politician of the school 
 whose first principle it is to let the people have 
 whatever they want, provided always they want 
 it badly enough to make a fuss about it. He 
 was not one of those spurious republicans whose 
 notion of political liberty is that every man be al 
 lowed to govern both himself and every one else 
 according to the dictates of his conscience. He 
 believed in the sacred right of the working ma 
 jority to indulge in the particular shade of mis- 
 government to which they have a fancy and in 
 the sacred duty of the minority to submit, with 
 out offensive partisanship except for campaign 
 purposes. In the absence of so marked a prefer 
 ence on the part of the people that they are will 
 ing to make a fuss about it, he believed in the 
 right of the governor to please his friends and in 
 particular his most dearly cherished friend, which 
 is himself. He had qualified himself in general 
 for knowing what the people want by offering 
 
 66 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 them for years the hospitality of his barroom; 
 they wanted insatiably to pay infinite " nickels " 
 for infinite glasses of indifferent beer which cost 
 him half a cent apiece; they made it impossible 
 for him to take the amount of rest allowed him 
 in the early morning hours and on Sunday by an 
 indulgent " license." His apprenticeship in high 
 politics he began when he constructed his first 
 block of tenement houses with thinner walls and 
 less commodious apartments than the law com 
 mands: he was obliged to " square " the building 
 committee. His serious studies he perfected 
 during the period when he humanely rented his 
 apartments to a class of people for whom the law 
 commands that there shall be no abiding-place 
 whatever. He was obliged to " square " every 
 body and keep them " squared," and they showed 
 an equal facility in taking on the required shape 
 and in losing it again. 
 
 As chief executive of the city of Cornville he 
 had succeeded an incumbent who had been the 
 candidate of a reform party. A reform party in 
 the United States is usually an acute disorder of 
 the body politic, a spasm or epileptic fit of virtue, 
 very disagreeable to any one with a sense of dig 
 nity. A reform party that has elected its candi- 
 67 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 dates becomes a lingering disease, very disagree 
 able to every one whether he has a sense of dig 
 nity or not. In regard to a sense of dignity 
 in the city of Cornville no positive statement can 
 be made; in regard to its distaste as month suc 
 ceeded month for political epilepsy as the rule of 
 life it is difficult to make a statement too positive. 
 The men of light and leading who had objected 
 to other men s getting their little bills " jobbed " 
 found it impossible to get their own little 
 bills " jobbed " : the case was intolerable. Mayor 
 Renshaw was a Cato the Censor in every man s 
 street, and no considerable body of human beings 
 have ever professed a wish (and stuck to the pro 
 fession) to be as good as Cato. Mayor Renshaw 
 was so good as to be unpleasant and was the cause 
 of an unpleasant goodness in others. Mayor 
 Hochheimer was elected as the " regular " candi 
 date, to the open rejoicing of almost every one, 
 and to the concealed rejoicing of almost every 
 one else, and the body politic resumed a condition 
 of health. Every one found it possible to get his 
 little bill " jobbed," and the new executive, out 
 of whom hitherto, as a man of business, politics 
 had made money, began to reap the harvest of his 
 long studies and with perfect mastery made 
 money out of politics. 
 
 68 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 On the morning that the " Great and Only 
 Combination Circus and Menagerie " was getting 
 ready for the afternoon entertainment in the city 
 of Cornville, a gentleman in the full-jeweled regi 
 mentals of a sport, but with a badge on his waist 
 coat which proclaimed him to be a private de 
 tective, called at the mayor s office in the town 
 hall and asked for an interview with " His Honor 
 able, Mr. Hochheimer." The interview was 
 granted him. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Hochheimer. This is a 
 pleasant day." 
 
 " Very pleasant, sir, very pleasant. Take a 
 seat, sir. Don t know as I ever saw a pleasanter 
 at jest this season of the year." 
 
 The two men made mental notes upon each 
 other while these original courtesies were being 
 exchanged. The private detective speculated on 
 whether Mr. Hochheimer was " workable," and 
 the mayor decided that the private detective was 
 in a very lucrative business to be able to afford 
 so impressive a uniform. 
 
 " I am the special officer, Mr. Hochheimer, of 
 the Great and Only Combination Circus and 
 Menagerie/ which is to show here this afternoon 
 and evening, and I have taken the liberty of pre- 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 senting complimentary tickets to your chief of 
 police, and am here now to offer some to you. We 
 should be very glad if you would make use of the 
 half-dozen in this envelope. We shall feel hon 
 ored if you can find the time to visit the enter 
 tainments in person." 
 
 " Very kind, sir, very kind. I judge from the 
 posters about town that you have a very attract 
 ive show." 
 
 " Yes, we offer the public a varied programme. 
 I think I may say very varied, sir." 
 
 It is strictly to be noted that this exchange of 
 commonplaces was not ineptitude: in the lan 
 guage of the prize ring it was sparring for an 
 opening. 
 
 The mayor, who was approached in this man 
 ner on an average of twice a week, was perfectly 
 aware that the circus representative s business was 
 not yet transacted. He leaned back in his chair 
 in an attitude of expectation. 
 
 " Mr. Hochheimer," the detective continued at 
 last, " besides being the special officer of the cir 
 cus company, I am also the business representa 
 tive of some of the side-show concerns con 
 nected with the circus." 
 
 "Jest so," said the mayor. 
 70 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 " Exactly," said the detective. 
 
 Whereupon both men looked a shade more 
 thoughtful in order to convince each other that 
 neither had the least inclination to smile. 
 
 " Among the side-show interests which I 
 represent are some amusing games which we are 
 taking along with us this summer. We try to 
 .have novelties every year, you know." 
 
 " Jest so," said the mayor. 
 
 " They are harmless little games of chance, you 
 know, at which the visitor to the show may take 
 in twenty times his money, or maybe fifty times," 
 said the detective, who labored to be accurate. 
 " We run the games, you know, more to draw a 
 crowd before the circus than anything else; it 
 isn t at all our notion to make money out of the 
 games except just to pay expenses; they re, so 
 to speak, a kind of advertisement. We thought," 
 concluded the detective, with childlike simplicity, 
 " that we ought to explain this to you before 
 hand." 
 
 " What is the nature of these games? " asked 
 the mayor, also with childlike simplicity. 
 
 " Well, one is a variation of the old shell-game, 
 that as a boy you doubtless yourself became ac 
 quainted with. Then we are experimenting with 
 6 71 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 a little wheel and a pea that we have been led to 
 believe might entertain the boys. The pea goes 
 skipping around, you know, and if it stops at the 
 right place, the boy wins." 
 
 Here there was a really impressive pause. 
 The mayor s face had become of a portentous 
 gravity ; he cleared his throat as if preparatory to 
 the declaration of a moral principle. 
 
 " There are but two other matters in regard to 
 which I need trespass upon your attention," said 
 the astute middleman, who did not conceive it 
 possible the mayor could at the moment have 
 anything to say that would be to the profit of his 
 employers. " It is the wish of the gentlemen 
 who are handling the little games of which I speak 
 to testify their gratitude to your charming town 
 for the hospitality it showed them the last time 
 they were here." This certainly demonstrated 
 a Christian spirit on the part of two at least of his 
 employers : the hospitality to which they had been 
 treated on their last visit to Cornville had con 
 sisted mainly in a new and perfectly snug suit of 
 tar and feathers. " They wish to distribute a 
 five hundred dollars amongst your private 
 charities, and would regard it as a great favor 
 if you, Mr. Hochheimer, who can apply the 
 
 72 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 money with so much more discretion than is at 
 all possible to us outsiders, would take charge of 
 the funds." 
 
 Here he produced a neat package which he 
 laid on the desk before the mayor. The mayor s 
 face assumed a look of extreme abstraction. 
 
 " The other little matter relates only to the 
 subject of police protection. It is the policy of 
 the Great and Only to rely largely upon the 
 local police for protection; paying liberally, of 
 course, for the extra service they request. They 
 find this policy more more satisfactory to every 
 one. I am about to speak to your chief of po 
 lice on the subject, but thought it more courteous 
 first to address you ; particularly as it seems much 
 simpler to make one arrangement for the protec 
 tion of the grounds as a whole the main show, 
 the side-shows, and well! all the little booths 
 that are set up along with the main show." 
 
 " Has the show taken out its license? " asked 
 the mayor with the politeness of a man who can 
 take in an idea, without having his skull cracked 
 to make room for it. 
 
 " The license? Oh, yes, Mr. Mayor, the license 
 is all right." 
 
 " I will consider the matters of which you 
 
 73 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 speak with the chief of police," said the mayor, 
 with the grand air. The chief of police was the 
 commander of fifteen patrolmen and one wagon. 
 
 " It is a pleasure to meet a gentleman who has 
 had experience of affairs," said the polite middle 
 man, rising to take his leave. " I was happy to 
 see that you were put in office by a majority 
 which promises a reelection." 
 
 " Hope your show will have every success," 
 said the mayor ; " hope you will have fair 
 weather." 
 
 " To-day at all events is a pleasant day," said 
 the detective. 
 
 " Very pleasant, sir, very pleasant ; don t know 
 that I ever saw a pleasanter at jest this season of 
 the year." 
 
 74 
 
III. 
 
 There was still an hour to while away before 
 the afternoon entertainment in the big tent of the 
 " Great and Only Combination Circus and 
 Menagerie " would begin. The parade had 
 taken place in the morning, and the visitors to 
 the show were gathering on the grounds. Since 
 early morning they had packed the highways 
 that converge at Cornville as the spokes of a 
 wheel converge at the hub. Never before, ex 
 cept during the " Free Silver " presidential strug 
 gle, when the successful contestant had favored 
 its people with a Pullman car platform speech, 
 had the city contained such a motley collection. 
 Crops were promising, the distinguished fellow 
 citizen in Washington had promised " good 
 times," the omnipotent stock-broker in Cleveland 
 was backing the distinguished fellow citizen and 
 it is only once a year that the " Great and Only " 
 visits Cornville. The " yaps " as Mr. Eady had 
 called them, or if you prefer, the " backbone and 
 intelligence of a great nation," as the President 
 
 75 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 had assured them he felt them to be, had passed 
 a private resolution that for the time being their 
 line fences could be " goll darned " : they were 
 going to take a day off. The four celebrities 
 were present to lend the charm of surprise to the 
 day off. Mr. Renn, who, on account of the 
 "sweet little thing" on the East Side, had fa 
 vored remaining at home and "workin the stiffs," 
 was playing his part behind the counter of a little 
 booth to which he allured the backbone and intel 
 ligence of a great nation with cries of " Sixteen 
 to one, gentlemen, sixteen gold plunks for one 
 if you choose the right color. It s a mere char 
 ity I m offerin you, jus to advertise the clown in 
 the show. Sixteen to one beats Bryan hol 
 low : step up, gentlemen, an try your luck six 
 teen to one ! " The " sweet little thing " on 
 Second avenue would never have recognized her 
 beloved " Shorty " in the earnest exhorter be 
 seeching the crowd to " take a spin on his wheel," 
 which was the wheel of fortune. There was a 
 fervor in his speech, and an intense look in his 
 face, that, it is to be feared, the " sweet little 
 thing " had never been favored with. The Un 
 der World makes love more or less as does 
 the Upper World ; like the Upper World also it 
 
 76 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 becomes really in earnest when it makes money. 
 
 " Dodd gast that squirt of a wheel, anyhow ! 
 Soy, you, behind there, when am I goin to win? 
 You got five o my dollars, an I ain t won 
 onc t." The words were deceiving and unnat 
 ural, but Mr. Eady s voice was the same in Ohio 
 as in the " Slide." He was a better " tool " than 
 " stall," as the Upper World knew to its sorrow, 
 but " tools " have no function in sure-thing 
 games, and he was doing his best to make the 
 people " bite." 
 
 " Roll er again. I ll chance another ; make or 
 break ; win or bust. The old woman 11 dress me 
 down, but shucks! hard words don t lower the 
 price o eggs." 
 
 The wheel began to slacken its pace for the 
 sixth time; the little pea lingered exasperatingly 
 near the blanks ; Mr. Renn made a slight move 
 ment with his foot ; the pea moved slowly toward 
 the winning colors. The wheel stopped. 
 
 " Here s your money, sir. See if it s right be 
 fore you leave: ten fives an three tens. Make 
 room for the rest. Sixteen to one, gentlemen 
 if you choose the right colors. A mere charity 
 I m off erin you, jus to advertise the show ; step 
 up, gentlemen, don t let the grass grow on your 
 
 77 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 luck. Circus day comes but once a year. Don t 
 push there. Take your time. Time s only 
 thing cheaper n circus lemonade. The big tent 
 don t open for an hour yet. Easy there, I tell 
 you! You two fellows in front stop your 
 shovin ." 
 
 Mr. Burras and Mr. Frood were leading the in 
 nocents to the slaughter. The innocents could 
 hardly wait to be led ; they jostled Mr. Eady aside 
 before he could count his winnings, and fortune s 
 wheel had made a number of turns by the time he 
 broke through the surging mob and made his 
 way to the rear to spur on those who still held 
 back. It was " a hot time " such as the four 
 celebrities had prayed for. " The hoosier pineth 
 for eddication," Mr. Eady said, and the hoosier 
 got it. The three " stalls " had to turn police 
 men and keep the crowd back, it was so eager to 
 learn by experience. Dollars, in silver and pa 
 per, were thrust into Mr. Renn s hands with a 
 rapidity which at times came very near making 
 him forget to halt the fortunate pea at the losing 
 colors. There was grumbling among the losers, 
 but fatuity is infinite and inexhaustible in the 
 ranks behind the first, and people in the rear el 
 bowed those in front of them aside in their haste 
 
 78 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 to benefit the eloquent Renn. Sixteen in ex 
 change for one! and every man convinced be 
 forehand of his natural and inalienable luck! 
 Cornville did not come to its senses till a few 
 minutes before the entertainment in the big tent 
 began. 
 
 Then there were remarks more militant than 
 consoling. " Mob em ! " cried one indignant 
 citizen who had sowed dollars and reaped wis 
 dom and scorned it. The life of a celebrity is 
 hard. There were even numbers of the crowd 
 who suggested tar and feathers. But they reck 
 oned without the Powers That Rule. " Clear 
 the way here/ commanded the chief of police at 
 the head of an imposing squad sworn in for the 
 day. " No crowding." Also the chief received 
 ten per cent, of the net proceeds. 
 
 " But, Chief, we ve been done," protested a 
 bucolic chorus. 
 
 " Get out, you milk-skins ; go in an see the 
 show ! " and the chief whisked them aside. 
 
 " But, Shief," screamed a little German, " I 
 vant mein money back. I loose two dollar. 
 Dose fellows is slickers, I vant to tell you." 
 
 " Choke it off, Dutchy, you re excited. Take 
 a run around the ring with the baby elephant." 
 
 79 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Bei Gott, I vill do noddings of de kint. I go 
 straight to de mayor. Vill some off you beeples 
 go mit me? " 
 
 The entertainment had begun, and the " bee- 
 pies " were there to see it, but ten, who had lost 
 heavily, agreed to accompany the German to the 
 mayor s office. They were not influential or 
 prominent, but the majority of them were voters, 
 and the mayor was amenable to reason when 
 reason took the form of applied mathematics. 
 
 " Do you mean to say that they are running 
 skin games gambling on the show grounds? " 
 asked the initiated mayor. 
 
 " Bei Gott, dat s vat I tell you. Von man, he 
 tell me I get seventy dollar for two. Dot is a lie. 
 Alzo I loose mein two dollar. Ven beeples 
 loose money, dat is gampling! in Chermanny, 
 in Amerika, bei Gott ! eferywhere." 
 
 " Gentlemen, you surprise me ; I will see that 
 those games are stopped immediately. I am 
 glad you called my attention to the matter. I 
 have to thank you in the name of the city of Corn- 
 ville. Good afternoon, gentlemen; it is upon 
 such public-spirited citizens as you that every of 
 ficial who is interested in good government must 
 
 depend!" 
 
 80 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 The afternoon entertainment of the " Great 
 and Only" was drawing to its close. The chariots 
 were tearing around the big ring on the last lap ; 
 the spectators were getting ready to leave, and 
 the performers for the " concert " after the 
 " show " were peeking through the curtains of 
 their dressing-rooms to see how many had been 
 persuaded to wait for them to do their " stunt." 
 The four celebrities and the gentleman in the full- 
 jeweled regimentals of a sport the " special of 
 ficer " of the " Great and Only " were in solemn 
 conclave just outside the main entrance. 
 
 " The chief says the mayor has ordered the 
 games shut clown," said the special officer. 
 " Told me to tell you t he d have to make a pinch 
 if you give the wheel another turn. It s all off." 
 
 " But we ain t even got our fixin money back 
 yet," objected Mr. Burras. "We ll be 
 losers if we have to quit now." He threw an ac 
 cent of really moral indignation into the word 
 losers. 
 
 " Losers in a pig s eye ! " exclaimed Mr. 
 Frood. " If you ll stand for the dip " and he 
 gave the special officer a dig in the ribs with his 
 thumb " we ll get our dough back ten times 
 over. How much commission have you got to 
 have? " 
 
 8l 
 

 The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Seein how things is runnin , I can t risk it 
 under twenty-five per cent." 
 
 " Will you square the hollers? " 
 " If they don t holler too loud." 
 "Done!" 
 
 It was the crowd that was " done." Mr. Eady 
 graciously consented to resume his old role of 
 " tool," and the other three hummed the tune of 
 the pickpocket s song : 
 
 " Oh, we are three statts^ 
 Three jolly old stalls, 
 We live like royal Turks ; 
 We re on the dip to win our chuck 
 To hell with the man that works ! " 
 The band began to play, the flap of the main en 
 trance to the big tent was thrown open, the 
 crowd rushed out, and the four celebrities started 
 " to do business." 
 
 So long as Cornville lasts and reminiscences 
 are permissible the story of the business that the 
 four did will be told and retold. It was a re 
 venge which has become classic even in blase 
 gun circles. As Mr. Frood graphically put it, 
 " The crowd was simply ripped open." When 
 it had dispersed, and men went over the grounds 
 to clean up for the rush and departure of the 
 
 82 
 
The Revenge of the Four 
 
 evening, the " weeded leathers " filled to over 
 flowing a bushel basket. The Cornville public 
 prints of the next day s issue estimated that three 
 thousand dollars changed hands during the short 
 space of time that the four were active. There 
 was "beefing" galore, but the " Great and Only" 
 folded its tents and stole away in the night, and 
 the special officer squared no " hollers." 
 
 The life in the " Slide " was at its height. The 
 three " darkies " were strumming their guitars 
 and vociferating in chorus : 
 
 " I se got a little baby, but she s out o sight 
 I talk to her across the telephone ; 
 
 I se never seen ma honey, but she s mine all 
 
 right, 
 So take ma tip an leave dis gal alone." .. 
 
 The room was full of smoke, the patrolman of 
 the " beat " was getting his " eye-opener " at the 
 back door, and the Salvation Army lassie in full 
 uniform was ostentatiously vending her tracts. 
 The four celebrities sat at their favorite table, 
 drinking champagne. There had been toasts to 
 Cornville, to Mayor Hochheimer, to the " Great 
 and Only," and to the Crowd, and Mr. Frood 
 rose to reply to " Ohio." 
 
 83 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 "The dear old State "and he struck the 
 Fourth of July orator s attitude " may she keep 
 her junctions open, cherish her fixers, never go 
 back on guns, an breed a fresh crop o suckers 
 every year ! Drink it down ! " 
 Chorus: "Drink it down!" 
 And the three " darkies," under the inspiration 
 of fate, which does things handsomely, struck into 
 the chorus : 
 " Get your money s worth, I ve had ma gin an 
 
 feel mighty glad, 
 Get your money s worth, an have a good 
 
 time, but don get bad, 
 Get your money s worth, dance yourself clean 
 
 off the earth, 
 If you want to have fun 
 Bring your razor an your gun 
 An get your money s worth ! " 
 
 84 
 
THE ORDER OF THE PENITENTS 
 I. 
 
 A system of biology which proclaimed the flea 
 a part of the monkey he lives upon would be re 
 garded as at the least paradoxical. A company 
 of gifted monkeys, competent to take a university 
 degree and to misunderstand the doctrine of the 
 origin of species, might possibly conceive the no 
 tion of isolating their parasites and maintaining 
 them for a time in safety and comfort, in the hope 
 that they would turn into monkeys themselves; 
 but the notion and the gifted monkeys that con 
 ceived it would be ridiculous. At least that is the 
 judgment of the scribes common friend, the il 
 lustrious Minick. He goes so far, indeed, as to 
 apply the analogy to a kindred science and to act 
 upon his convictions, which is certainly to be 
 reprehended. As near as can be gathered across 
 his reiterated " you-see-blokes " and " savvy " 
 and " you-hear-me s," his idea seems to be that 
 in every considerable company of men there are 
 
 85 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 two organized societies, the society of the pro 
 fessional business man, and the society of the pro 
 fessional " crook," and that the latter society is 
 literally a parasite upon the former. The point 
 is that he regards the current theory of the peni 
 tentiary as a joke, and thinks any hesitation on 
 the part of a member of the society of profession 
 al business men to take advantage of a profession 
 al crook as ridiculous as a hesitation on the part of 
 an enlightened monkey to dine off his flea. The 
 scribes, the illustrious Minick s common friends, 
 do not go the length of approving his idea ; far 
 less do they think his idea can be made to justify 
 his practice. They are scrupulously careful to 
 hold no opinions that are not so nearly like those 
 held by their neighbors that they may avoid scan 
 dal ; but they permit themselves to record (and to 
 condemn !) the opinions of the illustrious Minick. 
 This is the preface; what follows is the story. 
 The result of the events narrated in it is, that Mrs. 
 Minick, sometime Miss Sadie Meeker, declares 
 in confidence that her next friends during her 
 maidenhood, Margie Payne, who married a sa 
 loon-keeper, and Kittie Barwin, who married a 
 part-owner in a dance-hall, are become dreadfully 
 "common." That is not the word she used: 
 86 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 what she said was that Margie always was a 
 " slob " and that she (Sadie) had " done every 
 thing " for Kittle until she was just sick of it; but 
 the meaning is the same. The Under World 
 does not use the same idiom, but it manages to 
 express the same meaning as the Upper. The 
 illustrious Minick had money to invest and Mrs. 
 Minick was meditating a residence in a less un 
 fashionable quarter than theretofore, and a school 
 for Sadie junior, aged six, in which " references " 
 were required. 
 
 It is a matter of course that Mrs. Minick was 
 the efficient cause of her man s prosperity. It is 
 the theory in the United States that every good 
 woman is at least that, and the scribes, who are 
 scrupulously careful to avoid scandal, profess un 
 bounded belief in that theory. Mrs. Minick 
 " learnt " her man the virtues of diligence and 
 self-denial ; she put the screws on ; in his own col 
 loquialism, she made him " hustle for the dust." 
 
 The reasons why he should hustle were ex 
 plained to him by Sadie with a clearness and de 
 termination to carry her point that gave Minick 
 no alternative except to do as he was told. Min- 
 ick s chief could not have been any more explicit 
 in giving him a professional " steer." 
 
 7 8? 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " I want that apartment up in Harlem, and I 
 want it furnished the way I told you," declared 
 Sadie. " We ve been married over six years, 
 and I ve got tired of hearing what we re going to 
 do when you ve got your pile. You ve got a 
 big enough pile now to get out of this floor where 
 we ve lived ever since our wedding-day. I want 
 you to save money as much as you do yourself, 
 but we re not paupers, and I m not going to live 
 like one, and I m not going to have Sadie grow 
 up in a district like this. You know as well as 
 I do that people who entertain a little and try to 
 make an impression get on a great deal better 
 than people who live all their lives in holes like 
 this. Kit and Marge 11 never amount to any 
 thing cause they don t learn their husbands any 
 style. It s style that goes in this town, and 
 we ve got to get a move on. You let lots o 
 chances to make scale go by. Only day before 
 yesterday Curry from the Front Office was telling 
 me that if he had your front, as he called it, he d 
 be living near the Park in two years. Now, I 
 want to live near the Park, and I want you to fix 
 things so I can. You want to remember another 
 thing too, Charley. If ever we do get on our 
 feet properly, I want you to stop bringing those 
 
 88 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 detectives up to the house. When Curry was here 
 the other day, that lady that we got acquainted 
 with at Asbury Park called, and the thing didn t 
 go right at all. We can t mix up your business 
 with my social acquaintances, and you want to 
 remember it when we get up in Harlem." 
 
 " I notice you don t object to spendin the 
 money that my business brings in," Minick re 
 torted not unsuccessfully. 
 
 " After the money is in my purse it s my affair 
 where it comes from," continued Sadie with in 
 creased earnestness. " I ain t ashamed of being 
 your wife, and I don t care who knows that you re 
 a detective. But I don t propose to have the 
 whole Front Office in my parlor when lady 
 friends are calling on me. And if you d only 
 hustle a little harder, it wouldn t be long before 
 you could quit the business. If you spent half 
 the time in making money that I spend in hoping 
 that you will make it, we d be living near the 
 Park in five years." 
 
 " Ain t I square with my money? " asked Min 
 ick. " Don t I divvy with you on the level? " 
 
 " I ain t complaining about what you do with 
 the money you got ; I m simply telling you that 
 we got to get more." 
 
 89 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " How much more do we need? " 
 
 " All we can get." 
 
 There could be no doubt about this formula; 
 therefore the illustrious Minick refused himself al 
 most altogether the happiness of Sadie s compan 
 ionship ; the greatest token of affection a man can 
 give a woman after marriage (not before!), be 
 ing to see as little of her as possible and to hustle 
 for the dust. The hours which, during the pe 
 riod of courtship, he had spent in " jollying " her 
 and in " floating round " with her, which are the 
 two main categories of Under- World philander 
 ing, he devoted at present to increasing the 
 " scale " of his job and to becoming " wise." The 
 latter is a most exacting occupation and consists 
 in nothing less than in getting and in keeping in 
 touch with everything in the Under World. The 
 pursuit of it brought Minick into companionship 
 to which the fastidious Sadie, ambitious of Har 
 lem, conceived a growing distaste, notably into 
 the companionship of Gerald Noaker, Esq., mis 
 called " Jerry," official warden of a place of retire 
 ment which was very " wise " indeed, and of one 
 Timlin and one Gulp, official keepers in the name 
 less place of retirement, and of Thomas Burpee, 
 Esq., and William Marts, Esq., two great per- 
 
 90 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 sonages, who must have preferred striped clothes 
 because they wore them, and of whom Timlin and 
 Gulp and even the great Noaker spoke in accents 
 of reverence. Incidentally, Minick had been able, 
 by his intervention with the warden, to do each 
 of the great personages a favor : Burpee he had se 
 cured the much-envied privilege of a place in the 
 pavilion for the insane, where the restrictions 
 upon the penitents were less severe than in the 
 shops; Marts he had got transferred from the 
 smithy, where the labor is hard, to the feather- 
 picking department, where the labor is non-exist 
 ent, and had procured him a doctor s certificate 
 which entitled him to delicacies of a sort at table. 
 These things he did for a consideration in current 
 Treasury notes; but a favor is a favor in the 
 House of the Penitents, and Burpee and Marts, 
 as became great personages, were grateful. 
 
 Incidentally too, the illustrious Minick was a 
 special detective in the cab case of the A. A. & B. 
 Railway. He made no progress in the case for 
 some time, except in the matter of lengthening 
 the expense account which the railway officials 
 subsequently audited and allowed. He and Mrs. 
 Minick took a little jaunt to Atlantic City, where 
 they stayed a week till the "hot wave" passed and 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 till Margie and Kittie became spiteful with envy. 
 The railway officials did not see the expenses of 
 that trip in the account which they audited, but 
 they were there. The railway officials were too 
 much concerned about bringing the guilty parties 
 to justice to show themselves difficult about de 
 tails. The facts of the case as they appeared in 
 the public prints at the time are these : 
 
 Harold Diprose, paymaster of the A. A. & B., 
 was accustomed the first of every month to draw 
 a considerable sum in the private office of Ab- 
 badie & Co., Bankers and Brokers, which he took 
 up the line to be distributed on the different di 
 visions. He was usually accompanied by one 
 John Bladen, miscellaneous athlete and special 
 officer not in uniform, by way of bodyguard. The 
 evening before the robbery occurred, John Bla 
 den fell into a conversation with two men of 
 whom he could afterward give no description 
 whatever, except that they had ill-kept sandy 
 beards and rough, discolored hands, and were 
 dressed in soft hats and untidy, loose-fitting 
 clothes, considerably the worse for wear. 
 
 The next morning John Bladen was unable to 
 present himself at the offices of the A. A. & B., 
 and he stated later that he must have been given 
 
 92 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 " peter-drops," but in support of this statement 
 he could give the officials of the A. A. & B. noth 
 ing whatever but his word. 
 
 When Harold Diprose left the side door of 
 Abbadie & Co., Bankers and Brokers, that after 
 noon, he was so violently jostled by two stylishly 
 dressed young men hastening toward a cab which 
 stood in waiting for them, that he lost his hold for 
 a moment on the small valise in which he carried 
 his bank-notes. Both young men apologized 
 profusely and one of them, whose high hat had 
 toppled off in the encounter, stooped to pick it 
 up, and offered also to hand Diprose his valise, 
 of which, however, Diprose himself hastened to 
 gain possession. 
 
 " I trust you are not hurt very awkward in 
 me I am sure," said one of the young men, solici 
 tously lingering. 
 
 " Not at all," said Diprose. 
 
 " We were rushing to keep a date, but we did 
 intend to take time to look where we were going," 
 said the other young man, bareheaded while he 
 smoothed the nap of his hat with his coat-sleeve. 
 
 " I ought to have looked where I was going 
 myself as much my fault as yours," said Dip- 
 rose cordially. " If you stay to explain you will 
 miss your date." 
 
 93 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Good afternoon," said the young men to 
 gether, and entered the cab. 
 
 " Good morning," said Diprose, and made his 
 way to the offices of the A. A. & B., where he dis 
 covered that the small valise he held in his hands 
 was not the same, except to the eye, as the small 
 valise he had dropped on the pavement, and that 
 the contents thereof were not the same, nor of 
 equal value; and all of any consequence that he 
 could remember of the two young men was that 
 they both had sandy beards neatly trimmed and 
 hands neatly gloved. 
 
 Therefore the illustrious Minick arrested John 
 Bladen and let him go again, and arrested a cab 
 man and let him go again, and the higher officials 
 of the A. A. & B. employed friends and confi 
 dants of the illustrious Minick to keep Harold 
 Diprose constantly in sight. 
 
 94 
 
II. 
 
 Two days after the adventure of Harold Dip- 
 rose and the magic hand-bag, there was ar 
 rested in the streets of a city, which a courtesy 
 toward, and even a regard for the safety of, their 
 friends (and themselves!) inclines the scribes to 
 keep concealed, a clean-shaven, stylishly apparel 
 ed, young man, known to the profession as Milly 
 Matches, No. 20,547. His nom de guerre he had 
 acquired in the years when he was learning his 
 trade : he had disguised himself as a girl in the 
 time of his slim, beardless youth and had sold 
 matches on the streets and done other things less 
 permissible. It was because of the other things 
 that the number had been added to his name. He 
 was committed for the moment to a local house 
 of repose, and ultimately after certain tedious 
 ceremonies to the refuge of the Order of the 
 Penitents, of which the great Noaker was the of 
 ficial warden. The particular events which had 
 led to his joining the Order of the Penitents had 
 occurred some ten days before the adventure of 
 
 95 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 Harold Diprose and the magic hand-bag. Milly 
 Matches had strolled into the main entrance of 
 one of the principal theaters in the nameless city 
 at a time between the second and third acts of the 
 play, when the corridor was not occupied. He 
 had presented his basket and a revolver at the 
 ticket office and requested the man in evening 
 dress behind the trellis to " shell out." The man 
 afterward explained that he had thought of dodg 
 ing and taking his chances, but he had a family 
 and didn t have his life insured. Neither did he 
 dodge; he shelled out. 
 
 " Good evenin to you ; it s a large, fine even- 
 in ," said Milly Matches, and " mooched " ; find 
 ing by a fortunate coincidence a horse and buggy 
 near the theater entrance to assist him. 
 
 At the time when Milly Matches first joined 
 the Order of the Penitents in the refuge of which 
 the great Noaker was warden, the great Noaker 
 was not fulfilling the duties of that office for his 
 " health." The warden of such a refuge is com 
 monly expected to find it or to make it a " good 
 thing " ; and deeply as the scribes deplore the 
 facts, they are compelled in justice to state that 
 he had paid for the opportunity. For the rest 
 they permit themselves to record certain conver- 
 
 96 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 sations and bits of narrative which came to their 
 knowledge through their friend, the illustrious 
 Minick. 
 
 Thomas Burpee and William Marts, the two 
 great personages in striped clothes that Minick 
 included in his list of distinguished acquaintances, 
 were men whom he found very valuable to inter 
 view when there was an addition to the Order of 
 the Penitents. Although they might not know 
 the newcomer personally, if he had any real stand 
 ing in Under-world society, they were pretty 
 likely to be able to tell the degree of his distinc 
 tion, and to estimate more or less correctly the 
 probable amount of " fall money " it was reason 
 able to suppose he had at his disposal. In such 
 matters the Under World is very much like the 
 Upper : both worlds keep " tabs " on their celebri 
 ties, and the "A Number One Gun," like the 
 millionaire, is classified in a " Social Register " 
 and a " Who s Who." 
 
 It was the opinion of Thomas Burpee and Wil 
 liam Marts, partially because they knew the class 
 he belonged to, and partially because they had 
 heard of some of his most recent enterprises, that 
 Milly Matches was a penitent who woul d be glad 
 to pay hard cash for mitigations of discipline. 
 
 97 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 Where the hard cash was, they did not attempt to 
 state the Under World is somewhat more re 
 spectful than the Upper of a man s private busi 
 ness but that it would be forthcoming, if suffi 
 cient inducement were offered, they had no doubt 
 whatever. Therefore Minick made haste to have 
 an interview with the omnipotent and worldly- 
 wise Noaker. 
 
 : You mean the man has the stuff? " asked 
 Noaker, after Minick had told him of the reported 
 financial status of Milly. 
 
 " That s what Burpee and Marts say." 
 
 " It ain t hardly right for a man to have the 
 stuff and not to learn the use of it. Seems irre 
 ligious like, an a kind o buryin his talent." 
 
 " Think Hell s Kitchen ud learn him? " Hell s 
 Kitchen, in the speech of people who do not know 
 what it means to work there, is the foundry. 
 " There s a heap o wisdom in a backache, if the 
 back aches bad enough : bad enough an just a 
 leetle bit too bad, so s to set a man a-thinkin ; 
 what do you say to the foundry? You must be 
 short o hands in the foundry." 
 
 " I am always short o hands wherever one 11 
 do me the most good ; but see here, Charley, I m 
 sick o driblets ; there s as much risk in this busi- 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 ness in a little job as in a big one, an it s goin 
 to take a pile to get out o that foundry or there s 
 nothin doin ." 
 
 Noaker found, as he expected, that he was short 
 of hands in Hell s Kitchen, and to the kitchen 
 accordingly Milly was assigned. The work pre 
 scribed for him was of the fittest sort to give him 
 a backache " bad enough an just a leetle bit too 
 bad, so s to set him a-thinkin ." 
 
 One morning early, when he had had some 
 days in which to do his thinking and, as Noaker 
 said, " to get wise off his back," he was toiling 
 with a white-hot bar of iron, when Timlin and 
 Gulp found it possible to stray past him and to 
 linger a minute at his side. They had previously 
 had a little chat with the astute Minick which 
 may have nothing to do with the case. The 
 scribes know only that in Hell s Kitchen Timlin 
 and Gulp in their ordinary duties had no business 
 whatever. 
 
 " Kind of a foretaste of bein fried in yer own 
 grease ain t it, pard?" Gulp ventured. 
 
 " Hot s hell and twic t as thirsty," said Milly, 
 pausing a moment to scrape the perspiration 
 from his face and arms with the edge of his hand. 
 " Ain t got a gin fizz in yer jeans? I was jus 
 thinkin I could use one." 
 
 99 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 The three men grinned, and a grin in the place 
 -of retirement of the Order of Penitents is a means 
 of eloquent expression of more potency than an 
 unabridged dictionary. 
 
 " Seem rather light for this kind o work," 
 Timlin dropped. " Did the deputy see you be 
 fore you were put here? " 
 
 The question would have made a much less ob 
 serving penitent than Milly look the two 
 " screws " carefully over. They were not in the 
 foundry for their health ; and it is not the custom 
 of " screws " to make inquiries in regard to how 
 and why a light man was assigned to the heaviest 
 work in a prison. He sized them up in the hope 
 to read in their faces what their errand was. Tim 
 lin winked at him, Gulp also winked. 
 
 " Tain t none o my business, but if it was me," 
 said Gulp to Timlin, " I d take the first chanst I 
 got to have a word with Minick, an I d talk busi 
 ness with im." 
 
 " I d talk rocks," said Timlin. 
 
 " Rocks is business," said Gulp. 
 
 And both men passed on. 
 
 The opportunity to have a word with Minick, 
 Milly discovered in the prison garden one Sun 
 day afternoon, when the penitents were free to re 
 ceive their friends. 
 
 100 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 "Say, boss," said Milly, abruptly, " I m too 
 thirsty for de foundry: I sweats more n I kin 
 drink: I d like to shift." 
 
 " You are gettin pretty white an thin," said 
 Minick critically; "but the Stir ain t no thorough 
 fare. / can t do nothin for you." 
 
 " You kin try, I guess." 
 
 Minick did not admit explicitly that he could 
 even try; he stood mute. 
 
 " Come," urged Milly, " I ain t in for no free 
 show; I got the rocks." 
 
 " How d you like the Insane Ward? " asked 
 Minick. 
 
 " Name de price," said Milly. 
 
 Minick was much too " slick " to name a price 
 or to name anything; but any man may ask a 
 question ! 
 
 " Could you raise five hundred? " 
 
 " Try me," said Milly; " though five hundred s 
 stiff." 
 
 " Take it or leave it," said Minick ; and there 
 fell a silence for a while. 
 
 " Got to put up any looney spiel? " asked 
 Milly. 
 
 " Possibly you had better," said Minick ; and 
 they discussed the looney spiel. 
 101 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 That evening Milly betrayed oddities of an as 
 tonishing kind and variety. He was laid off at 
 the foundry, and within a week it was noised 
 abroad that Hell s Kitchen would know him no 
 more : he was " crippled under de hat." He was 
 confined in the Insane Ward which is a mis 
 nomer. 
 
 Thomas Burpee, too, was confined in the In 
 sane Ward, and confidences in that ward are as 
 inevitable as in the workshops and dining-hall; 
 the only difference being a greater freedom of 
 expression allowed to the penitents who are 
 " crippled under de hat." Garrulousness is the 
 inalienable right of the " bughouse " if they 
 have rocks. And the ease with which he had got 
 out of the foundry set Milly a-thinking with al 
 most as great lucidity as had the pain in his back. 
 
 " That bloke Minick straight? " he asked, one 
 day, after he and Burpee had discovered that they 
 were both only technically of unsound mind. 
 
 " How d you mean straight? " 
 
 " Can he keep his clapper quiet? " 
 
 " If it s made interestin for him, I guess. He s 
 got his mit out like the rest of em." 
 
 " Case o dough, eh?" 
 
 " That s my experience with him. He an the 
 warden graft together." 
 
 102 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 "Ever known him to ditch any o the guns 
 in here? " 
 
 " Not when there was dough to be made." 
 " I guess him an me 11 chew the rag." 
 
 The conference took place in Milly s cell, 
 where Minick called on him according to instruc 
 tions delivered by a " trusty." There were very 
 few prefatory remarks. The general principles 
 of both were known to each, and it was only nec 
 essary to discover how many details the general 
 principles covered. 
 
 " See here, boss, this is an A Number One shop 
 an all that, but confinement s bad for my health ; 
 what s the chance o makin a spring? " 
 
 This was a bold question for a penitent to put, 
 but innuendo is not one of the habits of the In 
 sane Ward. 
 
 " How much coin you got? " 
 
 This counter-question was not bold: Minick 
 was playing with loaded dice ; no penitent s word 
 would ever be accepted in preference to his. 
 
 Twenty-five thousand plunks. I ll give you 
 half: take it or leave it." 
 
 103 
 
III. 
 
 One of the occupations in the retreat of the 
 Order of the Penitents is the making of shoes. 
 The time was when the workingmen of the State 
 in which the retreat is situated demanded of their 
 representatives at the State capital legislation that 
 would make it impossible for the penitents to 
 make shoes or anything else likely to compete 
 successfully in the market with the manufactures 
 of people in the open, it being obvious to any one 
 that no penitent ought to be permitted to make 
 himself useful. ; But the Insane Ward filled up 
 legitimately at such a rate during this period of 
 enforced idleness, that the authorities prevailed 
 upon the legislature to make a compromise be 
 tween its sense of duty and its humanity and to 
 repeal the prison labor laws. The Insane Ward, 
 in due course, became more or less normal again, 
 containing only penitents who were indubitably 
 not of unsound mind, and the order turned out 
 shoes, brooms, cigars, and other necessities by 
 the beneficent car-load. 
 
 104 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 Six months after Milly Matches had demon 
 strated his sagacity by becoming an inmate of the 
 Insane Ward, his mental condition was inquired 
 into by the physician of the retreat, and it was de 
 cided that he was fit once more to do his task in 
 the workshop. It was the physician s opinion 
 that Milly s trouble had been merely an acute at 
 tack of melancholia, or hysterics, or an uncertain 
 third somewhat comprehensively called " fits," or 
 a combination of all three, and he said that Milly 
 would in all probability serve the rest of his sen 
 tence nine years without a recurrence of the 
 disorder. To the end that he might learn a trade 
 which would relieve him of the chagrin of being 
 a dependence on the public after his release, it 
 was deemed advisable by the authorities that he 
 be put to work in the shoe-shop, the cobbler s 
 trade being notably a sedative to perturbed 
 minds. 
 
 Milly had been in the shoe-shop some three 
 weeks, under the surveillance of the indulgent 
 Timlin and Gulp, when he was reminded of a 
 trade that he had learned in another retreat of 
 penitents in another State. He began to study the 
 possibilities of a shoe-box as a temporary place of 
 residence. Contemplation tempted him to put his 
 
 105 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 ideas into practice, and he persuaded the gracious 
 Timlin and Gulp to employ him in the boxing 
 department. He was left pretty much to himself 
 in this work, and was able to make experiments. 
 In about a week he was convinced that with a lit 
 tle squeezing a shoe-box carefully constructed 
 might shield a man s body from rain and storm, 
 at least until he was outside of the prison walls. 
 This conclusion was, in itself, of no seeming in 
 terest to any one, least of all to the illustrious 
 Minick, but Milly displayed a lively impatience 
 to consult the illustrious Minick in regard to these 
 ideas. It was just possible that the physician 
 had been wrong and that Milly was still crippled 
 under the hat. A bit of the dialogue between 
 Milly and Detective Minick, when next they met, 
 might have seemed to confirm the possibility. 
 
 " Can t nail the top on myself : I s pose Timlin 
 can do it unless he s forgot how to wink," said 
 Milly. 
 
 Why he was not as fit as Timlin to drive a nail, 
 and wherein remembering to wink was essential 
 to that operation, did not appear. 
 
 " Timlin can wink," said Minick. Possibly 
 Minick was " bughouse " too. 
 
 " An stripes ain t pretty in the open have 
 you thought of that? " asked Milly. 
 106 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 " I ve thought of it." 
 
 The two friends separated. 
 
 The following morning Minick entered the re 
 treat of the penitents looking somewhat bulky, 
 but no one challenged his right to enter ; he was 
 understood to be getting " wise," and the Powers 
 That Rule are permitted eccentricities in dress as 
 well as in manner, when " wisdom " is the thing 
 sought after. The season was not cold, but be 
 fore leaving his lodgings to visit Milly it stands 
 recorded that he dressed himself in two complete 
 suits of clothes. A half-hour after his departure 
 from the prison there was consternation among 
 
 the employees at the freight-house of the 
 
 Railroad. Certain shoe-boxes from the penitentiary 
 had been delivered, the teams had driven away, 
 the workmen were about to load the boxes into 
 the cars, when a crash of splintered wood was 
 heard, and Milly Matches made an appearance 
 from nowhere. The workmen were too dum- 
 founded to do anything but stand with open 
 mouths and stare, and Milly walked uncon 
 cernedly into the railway yards and was lost in 
 the multitude of cars by the time the freight-hands 
 realized that an escaped penitent had been among 
 them. Had they watched closely they might 
 107 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 have noticed the illustrious Minick also in the 
 neighborhood, keeping the man from nowhere 
 carefully in sight. What they could not have 
 seen unless they had given quick pursuit was 
 both men entering a cab together and driving 
 rapidly away. For the first ten minutes the cabby 
 seemed perfectly to know where he was going. 
 Later he received directions from Milly and drew 
 rein at last at the edge of a wood, where both men 
 alighted. When he had been dismissed Milly 
 led the way to a bit of a lake by which there stood 
 and stands an abandoned ice-house. 
 
 " Hustle now, Milly," said Minick, " I want 
 the thing over before the Stir people are after 
 you." 
 
 They broke open the door. Milly was tak 
 ing desperate chances: he was still perfectly in 
 Minick s power, and the instant he led the way to 
 the hiding-place of his treasure he had played his 
 last card. But even in the Under World the life 
 of business is faith. Some one Milly was obliged 
 to trust, and he preferred to trust Minick, who 
 was, after all, an accomplice. The room was 
 little and dim, and full of the smell of the dank 
 sawdust and decayed wood that lay deep and soft 
 underfoot. Milly went straight to one corner, 
 where he kneeled and dug in the sawdust with his 
 108 
 
The Order of the Penitents 
 
 hands. At the end of a minute he lifted out a 
 tin box wrapped in oilcloth, opened it, and dis 
 played it full of packages of bank-notes. As he 
 did so, Minick stooped swiftly and snapped a pair 
 of handcuffs upon his wrists and drew a revolver. 
 
 " It s all off, Milly ; you re the bloke that pulled 
 off that A. A. & B. touch. If you d had that 
 dough you d never a touched the theayter, and 
 between the time of that get-away and the A. A. 
 & B. get-away there wasn t anywhere else a graft 
 o this size. I ll be on the level with you : there s 
 bills in them packages can be identified : I ve got 
 you dead. But I ll give you a chanst. There s 
 a lot bigger stake in this for me than your twelve 
 thousand : I want the name of your pal ; an you 
 can lay to it I m goin to have it. Out with it ; 
 who was he? It s your one chanst: take it or 
 leave it : and be quick about it." 
 
 Milly s face was not good to look upon; but 
 neither was Minick s. 
 
 "You re puttin up a damn big bluff; you 
 don t know what I d touch an what I wouldn t, 
 nor where I got my pile/ 
 
 " If the bills can t be identified and the fellow 
 you touched Diprose won t swear to your 
 mug, I m ditched. I gamble I m not. You can 
 take it or leave it." 
 
 109 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Will you let me mooch if I tell you, with my 
 half of the stuff? " 
 
 "Sure!" 
 
 " Shorty Hoolan." 
 
 " Thanks," said Minick; " you re easy. Now 
 we ll go back to the Pen. Steady there, you 
 idiot." 
 
 Milly had given an inarticulate cry of rage 
 and made a break for the door. Minick caught 
 him and beat him into a sitting posture with the 
 butt of his revolver once twice about the 
 head. 
 
 The bills were identified and Harold Diprose 
 did swear to Milly s mug. Shorty Hoolan was 
 taken into custody some weeks later; and once 
 more the public prints pronounced Detective 
 Minick a second Old Sleuth and Sherlock 
 Holmes. What was of more consequence both 
 to Detective Minick and really to the future exe 
 cution of the law, there was a thrill of pride and 
 pleasure in the bosom of Mistress Sadie, who, by 
 the way, received in the public prints no credit 
 whatever. 
 
 " I told you what you could do if you d only 
 hustle for the dust," she said : " please, Mr. Old 
 Sleuth hustle some more ! " 
 no 
 
THE PRISON DEMON. 
 I. 
 
 Until comparatively recent years the official 
 Vergil who conducts visitors through the great 
 
 Penitentiary was wont to call attention 
 
 to a wooden door in the basement of one of the 
 prison buildings. It was his sacramental cus 
 tom to wait until the visitors were very close to 
 the door before explaining to what inferno it led. 
 When the eyes of every one were directed to the 
 padlock by which the door was secured, he would 
 say, in a voice charged with mystery : " On the 
 other side of that door, ladies and gentlemen, 
 lives Harvey Jeliffe, the Prison Demon." And 
 having paused to allow his words their full ef 
 fect, he passed gravely on and artistically height 
 ened the curiosity which he had aroused by de 
 clining to satisfy it. " We will now pass," he 
 said, " into the laundry department." 
 
 It sometimes happened that one of the Powers 
 That Rule arrived at the penitentiary, and ex- 
 iii 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 pressed a wish to see the inferno in all its de 
 tails. Again the official Vergil led the way to 
 the wooden door, but with a marked difference 
 of manner. He had received very definite in 
 structions to show the " gentleman " everything. 
 Arrived at the door, he said nothing about the 
 Prison Demon ; he said simply : " Would you 
 like to see him? " An affirmative answer 
 caused to be unlocked a series of doors which, 
 when opened, partially revealed, still behind bars, 
 one of the celebrities of the Powers That Prey. 
 
 The celebrity s willingness to talk depended 
 wholly on the mood he happened to be in. The 
 most successful ruse to betray him into conver 
 sation was for the guard to say : " Harvey, here s 
 a friend from Catamaran county." Unless busied 
 with a " turn " at his calisthenics or fretted about 
 the darkness of the day having diminished the 
 light in his cell, which was never sufficiently pene 
 trating to allow a spectator to see more than the 
 bare outlines of the man when he sat on his bed, 
 he generally took advantage of the invitation to 
 show himself, and walked over to the visitors side 
 of his dungeon. 
 
 " From Catamaran county, are you? " he 
 would ask. " Well, that s a damn sight better 
 
 112 
 
The Prison Demon 
 
 county n this. I ain t kickin though. All 
 they can do to me is coop me up an I can stand 
 on me head f I like. They don t dare come in 
 here an let me finger em over. I can do up 
 the whole push of em. I d like to squeeze that 
 guard s throat now. Say, you old walnut-head, 
 open up the doors an gimme a chance to be af 
 fectionate, will you? " At close range he did not 
 look strikingly like a demon. It was difficult, 
 on account of the bars, to have a satisfactory view 
 of him, but with the exception of his extraordi 
 narily piercing brown eyes, he gave the impres 
 sion, both in conversation and manner, of being 
 an ordinary prisoner. A well-built body and 
 general muscular appearance suggested good 
 health, and his complexion was not much worse 
 than that of his less closely confined fellow con 
 victs. At the time of his imprisonment in the 
 underground cell he was about thirty-five years 
 old. 
 
 On all occasions when a privileged visitor was 
 taken to see Jeliffe the official explained a little 
 how Jeliffe lived. 
 
 " He spends hours every day in gymnastics," 
 he would say. " He is one of the strongest men 
 I ever had to guard. If you ask him why he 
 
 "3 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 takes so much exercise, he says : I m tryin to 
 keep my mind above my body. He means that 
 he is trying to keep strong. Although he ha. 
 been in that cell for over ten months at a stretch, 
 he can still do up any three ordinary men. Oh, 
 he s a phenomenon all right. No doubt about 
 that." 
 
 Harvey Jeliffe had not upon his first entrance 
 into prison been the Demon of the place ; he had 
 been a most exemplary penitent. Later he had 
 committed a murder in the prison itself and had 
 escaped the death-penalty only by a surmise, to 
 which he himself refused in the least to assent, 
 of insanity. It had been plain both to judge 
 and jury that a man with but a short term still 
 to serve, who committed a murder that must be 
 brought home to him, could not be wholly of 
 sound mind. When he got a life-sentence he 
 promised openly " to do for " the warden, and 
 that is lese-majeste and half a dozen other hei 
 nous things, besides being foolish. In the mean 
 time while the warden showed respect for his 
 own skin by keeping out of the way, Harvey kept 
 himself in practice by knocking the " screws 
 heads together and miscellaneously spoiling 
 them, for weeks after they had passed through his 
 114 
 
The Prison Demon 
 
 hands, for a visit to their sweethearts. There 
 fore, as was but reasonable, he had been scien 
 tifically paddled, subjected to hot water in im 
 moderation and to electricity, and strung up by 
 the wrists for thirty-six hours, as a modest mini 
 mum, at a stretch. When he had proved after 
 these delicate attentions that he really did not 
 understand kindness, he was pronounced by the 
 warden, and became, the Prison Demon, and was 
 dealt with as such. 
 
 In connection with the " Harvey Jeliffe Case," 
 as it is sometimes called, there appeared not long- 
 ago in the public prints a paragraph entitled 
 " An Experiment in Penology," which read thus : 
 
 " The warden of the Penitentiary has had 
 
 built a very remarkable cage in which are to be 
 confined two prisoners who have heretofore been 
 an expense to the State, which it is hoped the in 
 novation will very considerably reduce. One of 
 the prisoners is the well-known professional crim 
 inal Harvey Jeliffe, popularly called The Prison 
 Demon, and the other is a murderer who, if not 
 so inherently irreclaimable as Jeliffe, has had to 
 be confined in a separate cell guarded by extra 
 prison officers. The plan is to put these two 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 men into the cage, and, if possible, to make them 
 work. Whether they work or not, however, it 
 is believed that imprisonment in the cage is the 
 most fitting punishment to be meted out to such 
 fiends. It was suggested to the warden that the 
 two men might turn upon each other and do 
 grave harm, but this possibility does not seem to 
 give the warden great concern. He said in re 
 gard to it that if the men actually killed each 
 other, he was not sure that that would not be the 
 best solution of the problem. To the layman this 
 form of execution cannot but seem irregular, to 
 say the least, but it is a question deserving of very 
 serious consideration by both specialists and lay 
 men whether it would not be wise to put such 
 wretches out of the world by process of law." 
 
 Since the publication of this paragraph there 
 have been a number of public statements by pro 
 fessorial criminologists, who have examined 
 Jeliffe in regard to his degree of degeneracy, and 
 the consensus of opinion among them is that 
 physically as well as mentally he is a pronounced 
 type of criminal abnormality. They consider 
 him the kind of criminal that Professor Lombroso 
 suggests might fitly be put out of the world. 
 They see no hope whatever of reforming him, 
 116 
 
The Prison Demon 
 
 and do not hesitate to offer his case as proof of 
 the need of legislation which will permanently rid 
 a community of men of his stamp. The prison 
 ers in the penitentiary where Harvey Jeliffe is 
 confined also have comments to make on his 
 case, but there is a very decided difference be 
 tween their remarks and those of the criminolo- 
 gists. They do not accept the notion that Jeliffe 
 is a degenerate; the majority of them believe that 
 from the time he was first sent to the under 
 ground cell until the present moment he has 
 acted exactly as they would have acted under 
 similar provocation. That the world calls him a 
 " demon " is evidence of ignorance on the part of 
 the world, which they can only laugh at. But 
 what can be expected of men publicly convicted 
 of crime? This question is rhetorical, which is 
 to say it is not to be taken seriously. 
 
 At the time that a professor of criminology 
 was conducting his university Seminar through 
 the prison in order that his students might see in 
 the flesh some of the monsters he had described 
 to them in the lecture-room, a convict by the 
 name of Jervis Harpson made a statement to a 
 group of fellow prisoners in regard to Jeliffe, 
 which is representative of the opinion concerning 
 117 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 him among the more enlightened Powers That 
 Prey. 
 
 " Course these college blokes think Harvey s 
 bughouse," he said, " cause they ain t next. I ve 
 known Harvey ever since he struck the turf. I 
 knew him when he was only a kid travelin with 
 that Western mob of grafters. The fellow s 
 a wise one dead wise. But he s got a grouch 
 on. I don t know the whole o the details, but 
 I know enough of em to understand that it s a 
 case o grouch an not bughouse." 
 
 118 
 
II. 
 
 In the life that preceded his time of bondage 
 Harvey JeliiTe was not a man who coveted, or in 
 deed who gave great occasion for, commiseration. 
 He did that which seemed pleasant in his own 
 eyes, and what his heart lusted for he took and 
 kept with a strong hand. In particular his 
 heart had lusted for Nettie Rix, and he had taken 
 her from her father and her brothers by dint of 
 his strong hand in their faces in what the neigh 
 borhood called a " mix-up," which occurred 
 when he proposed for her. To be sure his prop 
 osition was somewhat sudden and was not 
 couched in accents that could in the least be 
 called typical of the lover s whining, wheedling 
 deference toward the guardian dragons of his be 
 loved. He had said with Homeric simplicity, 
 after having listened to the family protest against 
 their main wage-earner being removed : " You 
 can stow that gas for all me: Net an me is 
 goin to flit right now. If y ain t dead set on 
 bein sorry to part with her, y can git away from 
 
 9 ^9 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 that door. If y don t git away, I ll walk 
 t rough y and it might dis-regulate y r insides." 
 It was then that the " mix-up " had occurred : 
 Harvey had " walked t rough " Nettie s male 
 kinsmen, at all events greatly to the discoloration 
 of their outsides, and quite literally had brought 
 away his bride. He had not beaten her since 
 more nor oftener than she needed: she herself 
 stood ready to testify to this with every outward 
 accompaniment of rage the instant she heard him 
 accused ; and she surely ought to know how often 
 and to what extent, she was in need. Nettie was 
 more than a little good to look upon, and it is 
 possible that her tolerance was great because no 
 matter how heavily he struck her Harvey was 
 careful never to disfigure her face. They had 
 one child Blanche of whom they were both 
 devotedly fond. 
 
 Detective Ackeray was not given to what the 
 young lady novelists would call assorted senti 
 ment. He had heard members of the officially 
 gentler sex cry out insults to which nothing but 
 a good drubbing is an answer, and that an insuf 
 ficient one ; and had seen women tantalize a man 
 to deal the blow which would dishonor him, un 
 til from the point of view of a member of the force 
 
 I2O 
 
The Prison Demon 
 
 he thought the blow had been earned and ought 
 to be delivered. " A lady that ain t a lady and 
 can t act like a lady, don t deserve to be treated 
 like a lady," he had once been heard to declare, 
 between his teeth, as he bundled a bonnet and 
 skirt et cetera roughly into a patrol wagon. To 
 be sure, the exasperation had been extreme: the 
 bonnet and skirt had behaved more as if they con 
 tained a large member of the cat species than a 
 woman, and one side of Detective Ackeray s face 
 had been laid open in broad bands from eye to 
 chin. The point is, however, that Nettie Jeliffe 
 did act like a lady, according to Detective Ack 
 eray s standard at. least, and that he once hap 
 pened to be present when Harvey Jeliffe was exe 
 cuting a bit of matrimonial discipline, and threat 
 ened to " run him in." 
 
 The discipline was being given in the street, 
 and Ackeray would not have been a fly cop had 
 he not believed it to be his right to take a hand 
 in all street happenings. Harvey believed it to 
 be his right to administer any chastisement that 
 he thought his wife needed wherever it proved 
 most convenient. 
 
 " This s my circus," he said defiantly, when 
 Ackeray threatened to " pinch " him. " You 
 
 121 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 rubber too much with y r neck, you do. If you 
 can t do anythin better than mix yourself in 
 family affairs, why I ll help you to get over the 
 habit." 
 
 " I tell you those too," Nettie declared, boldly 
 championing her husband s right to bring her up 
 according to his best light. " If you fly cops 
 ud take care o your own fam lies the way you 
 try to take care of other people s, you d save more 
 money. You re an old woman, that s what you 
 are. I wouldn t be found dead livin with you." 
 " Sock it to him! " " Hit him where he lives! " 
 " Kick him out o the street ! " bystanders sug 
 gested; and Nettie was emboldened to continue 
 her " roasting." 
 
 " You jus try to pinch my Harvey," she went 
 on. " W y, you long-legged, leather-headed, 
 Front-Office stiff, I d rather have my Harvey 
 kick me reg lar every mornin than drink a bottle 
 o sham with you every night. You go home 
 an* see f your own wife don t need a little 
 trouncinV 
 
 Detective Ackeray was not hurt by the frank 
 ness of Nettie Jeliffe s speech ; neither did he find 
 that it lessened her " ladyship." On the contrary, 
 he was old-fashioned enough to think a generous 
 
 122 
 
The Prison Demon 
 
 lie a grace in womanhood and that a family quar 
 rel is a sacred function so long as the family 
 stands ready to present a united front against the 
 intervention of an outsider. 
 
 " Long-legged, leather-headed, Front-Office 
 stiff " is not a hackneyed term of endearment, and 
 if Nettie Jeliffe had been searching for a phrase 
 by which to recommend herself to Detective 
 Ackeray s esteem, she might not have hit upon 
 it. His taste, however, was mature and sound : 
 he did not mind hard words ; they do not lacerate 
 the flesh ; he minded only bonnets and skirts with 
 feline-fiendish contents; and it stands recorded 
 that whereas before Nettie Jeliffe had ridiculed 
 him he had pronounced her a " clipper," after 
 she had ridiculed him he pronounced her 
 emphatically a " corker." No very definite 
 ideas are attached to either of these words, but 
 they both express admiration, and " corker " 
 is more nearly extreme than " clipper." Later 
 Ackeray was heard to say, " That little woman is 
 too good for Jeliffe," and to declare that he would 
 do her a good turn some time if he saw his way. 
 He was not a man to split hairs about what he 
 thought a good turn, and what she would think 
 a good turn : if she did not know what was good 
 for her, he did; it was not good for her to be 
 123 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 beaten. When he arrested Harvey 
 picion," in connection with the housebreaking in 
 Rishworth Place, she cried more bitterly than at 
 any time when she had received a beating: she 
 took her beatings for the most part in haughty 
 silence. When he succeeded in convicting Har 
 vey, altogether on circumstantial evidence, and in 
 obtaining a sentence of four years, she cried still 
 more bitterly. That was as it should be: he 
 liked her the better because she stuck to her man. 
 The farewell between husband and wife was 
 neither heart-breaking nor prolonged, but it was 
 " on the level." 
 
 " Take care o the kid, Net, old girl," Harvey 
 said. " I m innocent all right nough, but there 
 ain t no need for the kid to know where I am." 
 
 " I ll visit you reg lar every visitin day," prom 
 ised Nettie, at the time really intending to keep 
 her promise. " Remember an make good time, 
 an don t get into any rows. I ll take care o 
 Blanche, so you don t need to worry. You ll 
 write me, won t you? " 
 
 " Sure." 
 
 " Kiss me good-by ; y ain t kissed me since 
 Blanche s last birthday. So-long, Harvey ! " 
 And the train and Harvey started for the Stir. 
 
 124 
 
The Prison Demon 
 
 If Detective Ackeray had been a mere private 
 citizen and not a prince, or rather a princeling, 
 he must in mere decency have forborne for some 
 time to express his admiration for Nettie Jeliffe, 
 The customs of an aristocracy are more direct; 
 the business of a prince, and even of a princeling, 
 require haste, and their substantial power makes 
 haste possible. Courtship in the given circum 
 stances was difficult, but courtship in the given 
 circumstances is always difficult, and there are no 
 circumstances whatever in which women have 
 not been wooed and won. Detective Ackeray 
 began his courtship on a street-corner and con 
 tinued it in a station-house. He had deprived 
 her of a protector who did not protect : he wished 
 to provide her with another who would; he had 
 not hunted down Harvey out of malice; it had 
 been his business to work up such evidence as 
 there was, and he had done his business and got 
 his reward, and the prosecuting attorney had 
 done the rest. These things he told her round 
 ly, with a manly straightforwardness that should 
 have touched the heart, or the imagination or 
 fancy of any woman. When, instead of listen 
 ing to him, she reviled him, with feminine finish, 
 point, and fluency, before a gathering crowd of 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 chaffing auditors, he proved himself a man to 
 be depended upon in an emergency, one of the 
 strong dumb souls Carlyle and Ruskin used to 
 celebrate as natural leaders and governors of 
 men: he promptly placed her under arrest as 
 drunk and disorderly. The next morning in 
 court she sufficiently demonstrated her disposi 
 tion to disorder by treating his honor with an al 
 ternate haughtiness and eloquence which made 
 the audience behind the rail titter and the double 
 bench of bluecoats shake with involuntary mirth. 
 The bailiff cried " silence " and threatened to 
 clear the court ; his honor passed sentence of ten 
 dollars or ten clays; Detective Ackeray paid the 
 fine. 
 
 In the corridor of the magistrate s court he 
 gave Nettie what he would have been pleased to 
 call " professional " advice. " See here, Net, 
 the next time t I chew the rag with you about 
 cuttin up in the streets an boozin , you want to 
 listen see? " 
 
 She did not listen the next time, nor the time 
 after, though it need not be doubted that she was 
 impressed yes! and subdued and attracted by 
 the might and decision of the prince. She had 
 loved Harvey, mainly because he had vanquished 
 126 
 
The Prison Demon 
 
 her kinsmen, and a little because he had beaten 
 her as often as she needed it and not oftener. In 
 equal logic she ought to have loved the prince, 
 mainly because he had vanquished Harvey, and a 
 little because, if he did not beat her to silence her 
 tongue, he had discovered a method of proced 
 ure which much more nearly silenced it than any 
 thing that Harvey had ever done ; and the strong 
 point of every woman is logic the women in 
 their conventions and clubs say so. But the sec 
 ond strong point of every woman is her gift for 
 concealing her logic. Nettie Jeliffe concealed 
 hers, so far at least as Detective Ackeray was con 
 cerned, as long as in all human endurance a 
 woman could. She became an old offender in 
 the several magistrates courts in the district 
 throughout which Detective Ackeray had au 
 thority. The charge was always drunk and dis 
 orderly, and the complainant always Detective 
 Ackeray; and sometimes as the months passed 
 she had been drunk, and she had always been dis 
 orderly. She could not go back to her kinsmen 
 her mere presence reminded them too vividly 
 of an unpleasant incident, or coruscation of inci 
 dents, which had taken place at the moment of 
 her departure. She could not retain a position 
 127 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 even when she got one, because of the frequency 
 with which she was under arrest ; and besides, the 
 fact that she was Harvey Jeliffe s wife was not 
 commonly regarded as a recommendation. Ack- 
 eray paid her fine, or let her pay it herself or work 
 it out, as a jockey might gentle or punish a 
 spirited horse which he took a pride in training. 
 Whether he paid her fine or not, he always re 
 peated to her that the next time he tried to chew 
 the rag with her she had better listen see? Her 
 absences from home and her proved intemper 
 ance made her an improper guardian for little 
 Blanche. When the child was taken away from 
 her, also at the instigation of Detective Ackeray, 
 Nettie JelifTe listened. 
 
 Three months afterward she was legally and 
 absolutely separated from Harvey and was mar 
 ried to a man whom she addressed sometimes as 
 " George," sometimes as " dear," and little 
 Blanche, who was restored to her home, was out 
 spoken in her approval of her new papa. De 
 tective Ackeray was " George." He was also 
 dear. 
 
 128 
 
III. 
 
 It has been remarked in the first part of this 
 tale that Harvey Jeliffe on becoming a penitent 
 
 in the great Penitentiary, had no notion 
 
 or intention of ever bidding for the notoriety that 
 has come to him in later years as the Prison 
 Demon. He went to the Stir originally with 
 the idea of getting all the " good time " that the 
 law allows a man who has been sentenced to four 
 years, and of keeping out of all rows as his wife 
 had advised. He did that which all wise men 
 who are sent to prison do : in the language of the 
 pugilist, he gathered himself together. Men who 
 go to prison for the first time have more difficulty 
 in achieving this feat than those who have been 
 there before, but to live at all successfully and 
 even prisoners have their standard of success 
 all must sooner or later hit upon a plan by which 
 they are to deal with their guards and fellow 
 penitents with as little friction as possible. Even 
 with the most careful there are moments when 
 they entirely forget their philosophy and do 
 129 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 things which in the open they would never have 
 been guilty of. Long confinement will disturb the 
 mental equilibrium of any man; but all must 
 struggle, and do struggle, to live as unobtrusive 
 lives as under the circumstances are possible. 
 
 Harvey Jeliffe, on arriving at the great 
 
 Penitentiary, knew with a certainty which would 
 have made some men commit suicide, that he was 
 innocent of the crime for which he had been con 
 victed ; but he knew also that it was no use to let 
 this fact govern his policy as a prisoner. It was 
 not for him to ask the prison world how or why 
 his conviction had come about ; it was for him to 
 be an exemplary convict. And so, wondering 
 all the while how things were going " on the out 
 side," and continually struggling with an impa 
 tience at the way the world is made, he worked 
 hard for two years and nine months to get a 
 " good-conduct " reduction of his sentence. There 
 remained but a few months more of confinement, 
 and they were to be the least irksome of all be 
 cause Harvey had climbed the heights which 
 lead to the eminence of a " trusty " ; he had be 
 come the errand boy of the prison doctor, and 
 was sent on commissions to all the different de 
 partments. One day, while on an errand to the 
 
 130 
 
The Prison Demon 
 
 glove department, he met an old acquaintance 
 who had recently been committed to the institu 
 tion, and he asked him for news of the " outside." 
 
 " How is the push comin up? " he queried, re 
 ferring to his old " pals." Some were " settled " 
 (in prisons like himself), he learned, others were 
 dead, and still others were operating in new 
 fields. 
 
 " What s the matter with Net? I ain t heard 
 anythin from her for two years." 
 
 " Ain t no one put you next? " the newcomer 
 counter-questioned him. 
 
 " Next to what? She ain t dead, is she? " 
 
 " No, she s live an kickin yet, but that fly cop 
 Ackeray has tied up with her. They re mar 
 ried." 
 
 " Where s the kid? " 
 
 " She s livin with Ackeray too. Calls him 
 papa." 
 
 A guard appeared just then, and the conversa 
 tion was broken off. It had been successful, 
 however; Harvey had wanted "news," and he 
 had got it. There were other trips to the glove 
 department to secure the details of the story by 
 word of mouth, but his own imagination had 
 patched them together for him after he had 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 learned the main fact, which was that Ackeray 
 " had done him dirt." The unmerited convic 
 tion and imprisonment became for him now part 
 of a general scheme to " ditch " him. The in 
 justice of the punishment had troubled him and 
 made it hard to obey the rules, but he had con 
 quered the temptation to be unruly. He had 
 been puzzled by Nettie s refusal to write, but he 
 had not connected Ackeray with her neglect of 
 him. In an indefinite way he had planned sdme 
 day to settle accounts with Ackeray for the part 
 he had played in his (Harvey s) misfortunes, but 
 the thought of ways and means had not captured 
 his mind ; that could be attended to after he had 
 secured his reduction of sentence. Had he been 
 " outside " even the news of Ackeray s theft of 
 his wife and child might possibly have been as 
 reasonably considered as had been the conviction 
 that he was unjustly a prisoner. Men of Har 
 vey s stamp are much calmer in the open than in 
 the Stir, and marriages and divorces take on no 
 such final proportions. It had taken all of Har 
 vey s good sense, however, to be a model peni 
 tent, and the complete revelation of Ackeray s 
 duplicity fired him with a desire for revenge. 
 Henceforth his one passion was to meet Ackeray. 
 132 
 
The Prison Demon 
 
 He still remained a " trusty " ; good behavior had 
 become automatic with him ; but his ambition was 
 no longer simply to be released. He spoke to 
 the warden and the guards of his wish to have a 
 talk with Ackeray. He said that there was a sus 
 pended sentence hanging over him in another 
 court and he wanted to know if Ackeray would 
 be willing " to fix things up for him." 
 
 " He s the only fellow that can straighten the 
 matter out," he explained to the warden, " and 
 I want to have a talk with him." 
 
 " You re afraid you ll be arrested on being 
 turned loose from here, is that it? " asked the 
 warden. 
 
 " That s exactly it," said Harvey, " and I think 
 if Ackeray 11 go to the front for me, I won t be 
 bothered." 
 
 " All right. Ackeray s goin to bring some 
 prisoners here in a day or so, an I ll let him 
 know." 
 
 Three days later Detective Ackeray arrived at 
 
 the great Penitentiary with a batch of 
 
 penitents, for whose bodies he was given a receipt 
 by the warden. He was informed of Harvey s 
 desire for a talk with him, and was immediately 
 impressed with Ihe importance to himself of such 
 133 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 a talk. Possibly he might find it to his advan 
 tage to arrange matters so that the alleged sus 
 pended sentence should be carried out. 
 
 " Sure, I ll see him," he said to the warden. 
 " Where is he? " 
 
 You ll probably find him over in the doc 
 tor s office. Take him into the garden if you 
 want to be private, and tell the doctor I said it 
 would be all right." 
 
 The meeting took place in the doctor s office. 
 The doctor was in another part of the prison, and 
 Harvey had been left in charge. No one heard 
 the conversation between the two men, and only 
 two of the guards knew anything about their be 
 ing together. Whether Harvey made use of 
 his " suspended sentence " story, or charged 
 Ackeray immediately with foul treatment of him, 
 has never been decided. The two men were in 
 conference, according to the testimony of the 
 guards, about half an hour, and it seems reason 
 able to suppose that Harvey could only have in 
 terested Ackeray this length of time by reference 
 to the suspended sentence; but in view of what 
 happened one is justified in wondering why he 
 should have wanted to interest him at all. Har 
 vey himself has persistently refused to make any 
 
The Prison Demon 
 
 statement one way or the other. When the doc 
 tor returned to his office Harvey was found sit 
 ting in a pool of blood on the floor, cutting into 
 small bits with a surgeon s knife the heart of De 
 tective Ackeray, who lay dead and mutilated in 
 a corner of the room. At the trial it was re 
 ported that Harvey had mumbled to himself as he 
 cut, " So much for so much ; for that and for 
 that " ; but no intelligible interpretation of these 
 expressions could be discovered, and they were 
 eventually accepted as contributory evidence of 
 his insanity. 
 
 10 135 
 
THE GREAT IDEA. 
 I. 
 
 It is not for an instant to be supposed that the 
 Great Idea was possessed in the beginning by 
 Ruderick in the grave magnitude and symmetry 
 in which it ultimately stood revealed. He con 
 ceived at first only the vague outline and worked 
 in the details afterward as occasion served. But 
 it is to him and not to Judge Barwood that the 
 credit of the Great Idea belongs. 
 
 Be it known that in the city of Cornville Judge 
 Barwood, before he went to Congress, was the 
 predecessor of Mayor Renshaw, who was the pre 
 decessor of Mayor Hochheimer, whose story has 
 been touched upon in the tale of the Four Celeb 
 rities ; and that in Mayor Barwood s day Ruderick 
 and his clan held carnival and Adolph Hoch 
 heimer became a personage. The populace in 
 dulged its taste, which is strong waters and late 
 hours, to the utmost. Every man did that which 
 seemed right in his own eyes, as the doctrine of 
 136 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 liberty, duly misconstrued, commends; and the 
 majority, which is the populace, ruled, as in the 
 mathematical theory of republicanism, which es 
 timates men not according to their value but ac 
 cording to their number, the majority should rule. 
 Therefore Herbert Renshaw, Esq., who believed 
 in his divine right to govern himself and all men 
 else according to the dictates of his conscience, 
 and Richard Englar, Esq., who believed in his 
 divine right to see himself and all men else gov 
 erned in the interests of his bank, and Edwin 
 Cowles, Esq., who had an ancestor (one only it 
 seemed), and who had been to college and 
 learned that it is every man s civic duty to take 
 an interest in the government of the Great 
 Democracy whether he is fitted to do so wisely or 
 not: these three, their associates and abettors, 
 constituted themselves a Power and a Party and 
 used the letter of the institutions of the country 
 to defeat, confound, exasperate, enrage, enfrenzy 
 the spirit of them. They drew up and caused to 
 be printed in the newspapers an insidious, decep 
 tive, Jesuitical declaration of principles, miscalled 
 a platform. The gist of which principles was 
 personal purity in public office, an honest count in 
 elections, an administration without fear or favor 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 of the existing law. What the men who drafted 
 that document meant really was that they were 
 not republicans at heart, and found the prefer 
 ences of the majority hateful and intended to take 
 advantage if possible of a momentary discontent 
 on their part with Mayor Barwood a mere pass 
 ing fit of the spleen and to make the majority 
 forego its preferences, in some respects at least, 
 until it got another chance to change the city of 
 ficers and city ordinances; whereas everybody 
 knows that the city ordinances and the State stat 
 utes and the letter of the law generally are pro 
 visions for extreme cases, are intended not so 
 much to be enforced as to strike would-be trans 
 gressors with the fear which begets moderation 
 and discretion, and that for any government to 
 take the people at its word is to defeat its will by 
 mere chicane. If we cannot say one thing and 
 mean another without being misunderstood, a 
 government of the people by the people for the 
 people must become impossible or cynically and 
 even degradingly veracious. Amongst the indis 
 pensable preliminaries to true delicacy of nature 
 is the proper lie stated, and not believed but ac 
 quiesced in, at the proper time. 
 
 Be it known also that the city of Cornville 
 138 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 lies in the midst of a great town and country 
 population who are immaculately good, except 
 when they go to Cornville on a visit. They think 
 it manners to do in Cornville as Cornville does. 
 Also they find manners in this case delightful. It 
 would not be polite to suggest that these things 
 are exemplified in any other spot the precise lo 
 cation of which is less doubtful than that of Corn 
 ville, and it is respectfully requested that no sug 
 gestion of the kind be discovered here ; what the 
 scribes wish to assert is no more than the unde 
 niable fact, which could be proved in a court of 
 law, or even in a very different place, at the bar 
 of heaven, that the inhabitants of the fields and 
 hamlets surrounding Cornville were fortunate in 
 their opportunities and even in their necessities. 
 They could despise their neighbors, they could 
 be respectable at home, they must indeed leave 
 home to receive any considerable aid from with 
 out to be direspectable. Therefore the Under 
 World was iniquitously encouraged to acquire 
 vested interests in the city of Cornville, and the 
 city of Cornville itself was iniquitously held re 
 sponsible for naughtiness that " pillared " tem 
 ples in the hamlets of virtue, and that held 
 the plow in the meadows of innocence. There- 
 139 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 fore there was honest indignation in the Under 
 World when Herbert Renshaw, Esq., became a 
 candidate for mayor, and the Powers That Rule 
 met as one man to oppose his election. There 
 was a moment when it seemed they might count 
 on the undivided assistance of the Powers That 
 Prey, but fate had decided otherwise. Fate was 
 Ruderick and the Great Idea. 
 
 Be it known that at the time Herbert Renshaw, 
 Esq., announced himself a candidate for the of 
 fice of mayor of Cornville there were three bad 
 men in the municipality who traveled and trans 
 acted business under the names of "Fritzie" Can 
 nes, " Soapy " Wadlow, and " Frenchy " La- 
 tane. In the class beneath Ruderick MeKlowd 
 they were the greatest and most envied Under- 
 World celebrities living in the community. 
 " Fritzie " was a gamester from London, Eng 
 land, who betted when he knew beforehand that 
 he could not lose because he had fixed things that 
 way. " Soapy " was a " tool " from Frisco, who 
 could " reef a leather " in a driving rain and gale 
 of wind, and " Frenchy " was a " stall " from 
 Quebec, who was a crowd in himself and could 
 create a push and squeeze on an open prairie, if 
 the victim marked for the dip should take refuge 
 140 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 there. He could arrange a " frame-up," and re 
 lieve " Soapy " of the stolen pocketbook, after 
 " Soapy " had lifted it from the victim s pocket, 
 with a rapidity that made his less practiced fellow 
 " stalls " proclaim him a Wunderkind. 
 
 Be it known also that the three bad men, with 
 the severe simplicity of taste that belongs to an 
 aristocracy, detested " pose." In the event of 
 Renshaw s election as mayor the three believed 
 that Cornville would assume a pose of rectitude, 
 which was the less agreeable to them because it 
 would hurt their business. Therefore, when 
 Renshaw s nomination was announced, they took 
 counsel with themselves and with Ruderick for 
 the defeat of Renshaw and the better government 
 of Cornville. It was Ruderick s distinction in 
 every community where he happened to settle for 
 any length of time to be asked for his view of all 
 matters of importance to the Under World. 
 Speaking generally, he did not give advice unless 
 he felt like it, and for the most part he did not 
 feel like it. He looked upon " chewing the 
 rag " as a vanity, useless before a man has done 
 his job and ruinous afterward. " More good 
 guns talk themselves into the Stir in a year," he 
 said, " than all the force could cop out in a cen- 
 141 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 tury." He was by temperament a " single- 
 handed " specialist : what he had to do profes 
 sionally he liked to do alone, and no questions 
 asked and no tales told. " A gun that works by 
 himself can never turn state s evidence, an there s 
 nobody to blame if the job turns bad and nobody 
 to share with if it don t," was a remark of his 
 which he invariably made by way of reply to all 
 suggestions that he join a push. There were 
 times, however, when Ruderick saw points for 
 his own hand in general discussion, and " Fritzie," 
 " Soapy " and " Frenchy " dropped in upon him 
 at a time when he was very seriously consider 
 ing what cards at the moment he held. He was 
 meditating the Great Idea. 
 
 " Fritzie " was tfie spokesman of the trio, and 
 he gave Ruderick, from the trio s point of view, 
 very conclusive arguments why Herbert Ren- 
 shaw, Esq., should not be elected mayor of Corn- 
 ville. " If he s elected," " Fritzie " explained, 
 " it ll be the same thing over again that we was 
 up against in York when that Reform Adminis 
 tration was in office. You know yourself that 
 all us blokes had to get out just cause we was 
 known, and the outside talent that the Front Of 
 fice wasn t next to railroaded to town and copped 
 142 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 out the coin. The Front Office couldn t do any- 
 thin with the outside gang cause it wasn t onto 
 their mugs. If Renshaw goes in we ll all have 
 to mooch, and the guns that ain t known here 11 
 come to town an rip it open an get all the 
 plunder. That happens every time a Reform 
 Administration tries to run the police of a town, 
 an I tell you straight, Ruderick, I m gettin sick 
 of it. I ve got my stake in Barwood, an I think 
 we ought to elect him. He s crooked, of course, 
 but blokes like us that are known can t do busi 
 ness where the mayor an police ain t crooked. 
 Renshaw 11 make some old Rube chief o police, 
 an we ll all get the chilly mit. Who you goin 
 to work for, Ruderick? Barwood or Renshaw? " 
 The Great Idea had already found lodgment in 
 Ruderick s mind previous to the visit of the trio. 
 It had required numberless trips up and down the 
 length of his apartment to grasp it in anything 
 like its fullness, but once understood and appre 
 ciated, he immediately labeled it " the biggest 
 graft " he had ever thought out. Had the trio 
 called on him a few days earlier they would in all 
 probability have found him amenable to their 
 suggestions, but they postponed their visit too 
 long. At the time of their call on him he had de- 
 US 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 cided to throw his influence on the side of the re 
 formers. 
 
 " There s Reform Administrations an there s 
 Reform Administrations," he remarked, in reply 
 to " Fritzie s " query, after a pause which was 
 rather irregular for such an intimate conclave. 
 " Them of us as was known o course got ditched 
 durin that Reform Administration over in York, 
 but you can t prove everythin by what happens 
 in York. York is York, an Cornville is Corn- 
 ville, an I don t do in York some o the things t 
 I do here, an visy versy, as they say in the col 
 leges. You say Barwood s crooked, an that s 
 jus what I got ag in him. He s too damn 
 crooked. He s squeezed us blokes right an left, 
 an put the dough in his own pocket. He won t 
 live an let live, that Barwood won t. He makes 
 you an me cough up half what we get, an yet 
 he s makin three times as much as we are him- 
 self. That kind o bloke I like to do, an I m 
 goin to do him this election. If I could see him 
 alone some night in a barn I d break his face in. 
 He s the meanest grafter in this berg, an you 
 know it an I know it. What you blokes don t 
 know is that the Renshaw push is goin to be easy 
 to work. I got a head-piece on me, I have. 
 144 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 Course they re goin to try to reform Cornville, 
 but you forget that Cornville s Cornville, and that 
 any reform police force they put in office s goin 
 to be dead dead, I tell you. Renshaw an his 
 gang don t know you an me from any other four 
 stiffs in town. He ll change the whole force, 
 thinkin they re all crooked, an them that s 
 turned out 11 keep us under cover out o spite. 
 Things are bound to go that way, an then we 
 get our graft in an there ain t no Barwood 
 around to squeeze the profits out of us. See? 
 You take my tip, an turn in an elect Renshaw." 
 
 These were his words and the first exposition 
 of the Great Idea, and what Ruderick MeKlowd 
 recommended with a " take my tip," whether it 
 was in " York," in " Chi," or in Cornville, usually 
 " went," so highly did the Under World appraise 
 him. And thus it came about that in Cornville 
 the Under World determined to turn down Bar- 
 wood and his following and help elect a Reform 
 Administration. 
 
 Wadlow, Cannes and Latane were simple- 
 minded men, who went about their business with 
 a Homeric directness when once they had decided 
 what was to be done. They had small faith in 
 eloquence, and neither read the public prints 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 which favored the candidacy of Herbert Renshaw 
 nor urged among their acquaintance such rea 
 sons as they themselves had thought of why it was 
 to the interest of the Under World that Mayor 
 Barwood should not be reflected. They simply 
 got themselves constituted the official guardians 
 of the ballot-box and judges of the election in a 
 single ward. As " Soapy " Wadlow, he who 
 was slick with his fingers, expressed it, the people 
 might vote as they liked, so long as they left him 
 to do the counting. They had been judges of 
 election the first time Mayor Barwood had been 
 a candidate for the office he held, and had found 
 the control of the nineteenth ward sufficient. 
 
 The election-day came and went ; employers of 
 labor gave a holiday that the workman might 
 dedicate his entire vitality to his sense of thirst, 
 and saloons ostentatiously closed their front doors 
 in order that their patrons might enter side doors 
 in the full delight of discovery. Mayor Barwood 
 counted on the nineteenth ward. The judges of 
 election sat about the stove in the polling-booth 
 behind locked doors and smoked Henry Clay 
 perfectos and drank whisky and club soda, 
 and received reports from time to time of how the 
 other wards had " gone." They sat a long time. 
 146 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 They made no effort to count the votes; they 
 took turns sleeping, the sentinels keeping them 
 selves and each other awake at an endless game 
 of twenty-five-cent ante, ten-dollar limit. There 
 was a dispute in the thirteenth ward in regard to 
 the admissibility of certain votes which lasted all 
 the night following the close of the polls and the 
 next day and the night after that. There was 
 understood to be a dispute in the nineteenth ward 
 also in regard to the admissibility of certain votes. 
 At seven o clock on the second morning of the 
 twenty-five-cent ante a message arrived that the 
 dispute in the thirteenth was settled: Barwood 
 needed a majority of five hundred in the nine 
 teenth to elect him, and as the count stood he had 
 a majority of but two hundred odd. The faces 
 of the four men about the card-table were gray 
 and sticky with fatigue, but a glance of under 
 standing passed round as each man turned his 
 hand forward to make his last bet. 
 
 " There s nothin like an honest count, blokes, 
 is there? " remarked Ruderick, with a yawn. " If 
 we hadn t been here to see that the thing was done 
 on the level, the majority ud a been cheated out 
 of its rights aindt it? as Dutchy used to say." 
 
 " That s what it would," commented Cannes 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 from London. " When a town wants a Reform 
 Administration as bad as Cornville does, it ought 
 to have it, an the town can thank us for countin 
 the votes. I ain t done so much figgerin in ten 
 years." 
 
 " Well, here s to the Reform Administration, as 
 you call it," said " Soapy," draining his glass. 
 " Ruderick, you re the father of the beast ; you 
 want to train him." 
 
 " I tell you those too," said " Frenchy." " If 
 he gets us on the run, Ruderick, we re gone." 
 
 " Trust me to keep a rope around him," re 
 plied Ruderick. " An it ll be a damn sight 
 easier than holdin that Barwood, an that ain t 
 no dream." 
 
 148 
 
II. 
 
 When Mayor Renshaw came into his kingdom 
 he governed it so as to save his own soul. In- 
 cidentally his course exasperated a great many 
 other people who, but for him, would have lost 
 their souls but once, or possibly not at all, into 
 losing them twice over; but every one bent on 
 saving his own soul is bound to think first of him 
 self and to regard other people and their souls 
 as details in the landscape or scheme of the world. 
 The inhabitants of Cornville and its neighbor 
 hood have never been eminent in a gift for amus 
 ing themselves delicately and elegantly: about 
 other cities in the United States it is not pertinent 
 to make a statement, and none is made. The law 
 of delight amongst the inhabitants of Cornville 
 and its neighborhood is that they will not accept 
 the first-rate at any price; the second-rate they 
 will tolerate if it be cheap ; but some amusement in 
 quality beneath the second-rate they simply will 
 have, no matter what the cost. Also the better 
 classes of those beneath the second-rate are the 
 149 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 only ones which it is humanly possible by law to 
 suppress ; and once suppressed, the demand that 
 found satisfaction in them is merely added to the 
 demand which found satisfaction in amusements 
 still less respectable. 
 
 These things Mayor Renshaw knew, but he 
 had sworn to execute the law, and it was no part 
 of his reading of the rules of duty that a man 
 should get himself damned out of a consideration 
 for other people. The scribes wish distinctly not 
 to recommend the entertainment for " the youth 
 of both sexes " offered in dance-halls ; but they 
 respectfully submit that the programme of the 
 dance-hall is in part, at least, addressed to the 
 eyes and the ears, and that the youth of both 
 sexes might conceivably go farther and fare 
 worse. Quite positively the scribes assert that 
 the youth of both sexes in Cornville and the con 
 tributory country did go farther and fare worse 
 when Mayor Renshaw closed the dance-halls. 
 He closed the gambling-hells also, which is to 
 say he scattered gambling broadcast throughout 
 the town. Before his accession to office there 
 had been a limited number of more or less recog 
 nized and responsible spots in the town where a 
 man who was determined to lose money might 
 150 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 do so without great risk of violence or fraud ; after 
 his accession to office a man never knew whether 
 he was " up against " mathematics or against the 
 game which, in contradistinction to mathematics, 
 is called " the sure thing " ; therefore, since the 
 charm of adventure was a new and strange one in 
 Cornville, every one who gambled at all gambled 
 more and oftener in Mayor Renshaw s reign than 
 before. Drinking-places he did not close, be 
 cause he could not, though he limited them strict 
 ly to the terms of their license ; wherefore willful 
 men drank by the bottle after hours instead of by 
 the glass. But his great achievement was the 
 creation of a police force that did not know how 
 to wink. He had no respect for a man who could 
 wink either literally or metaphorically; he held 
 the opinion, which is perhaps audacious, that the 
 man who can wink is not utterly indispensable. 
 The inability of Edwin Cowles, Esq., to wink 
 glorified all his remaining inabilities in Mayor 
 Renshaw s eyes, who begged him to sacrifice him 
 self on the altar of civic duty, which was Corn- 
 villese for accepting an appointment as chief of 
 police. Mayor Renshaw said that neither he nor 
 his subordinates should take tithes from the har 
 vest of sin and shame, and Edwin Cowles sacri- 
 ii 151 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 ficed himself. Both played their destined part in 
 the realization of the Great Idea. 
 
 Then was the city of Cornville delivered into 
 the hands of the three bad men, who opened it as 
 their oyster, and that was their destined part in 
 the realization of the Great Idea. " Fritzie " 
 Cannes, with his " sure-thing" enterprises, reaped 
 a harvest which he had never supposed Corn 
 ville could produce. He had thought that the 
 town had done its utmost as a " sporty " com 
 munity under Mayor Barwood s " open " ad 
 ministration ; but he learned that a town is never 
 so gullible as when Reform attempts to tell 
 it that it "shan t." "Soapy" Wadlow and 
 " Frenchy " Latane made similar agreeable dis 
 coveries. Pocketbooks were, perhaps, no more 
 numerous than in Mayor Barwood s day, but they 
 " came up easier," as " Soapy " put it. The new 
 police force could no more tell when a pocket was 
 being picked; they couldn t even tell when one 
 had been picked, unless they found the " weeded 
 leather " on the ground ; and " Soapy " and 
 " Frenchy " " dipped " deep with impunity. It 
 is also to be remarked that they were not called 
 on to pay a percentage of their winnings to the 
 " wise." Indeed, the three were so pleased with 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 their success, and so confident of the innocence 
 and ignorance of their constituents, that they de 
 termined to combine interests, and make a " run " 
 on Richard Englar s bank. It was decided that 
 the easiest way to achieve the " run " was to ap 
 proach the building through a subterranean pas 
 sage, and the three started to dig a tunnel. 
 
 When affairs were in this posture and the tun 
 nel nearly complete, Ruderick MeKlowd stepped 
 one day off a train which had brought him out of 
 the beyond. The Great Idea had taken him away 
 from Cornville soon after Herbert Renshaw was 
 elected mayor, and it was the Great Idea that 
 brought him back. With the letters of intro 
 duction and recommendation that he had in his 
 pocket when he stepped off the train he was of 
 ficially a much more respectable personage than 
 when he left Cornville, but in essentials he was 
 still Ruderick MeKlowd, " the Slick Chi Gun." 
 He went straight from the train to the Front Of 
 fice. 
 
 " I should like to see the chief," he said to the 
 lieutenant on duty, and his name was taken in to 
 the Reform Administration chiefs sanctum. The 
 chief granted the desired interview. 
 
 " Mr. Cowles," Ruderick began, " I have been 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 given to understand that you are looking for a 
 new man for your detective force. I have had 
 considerable experience in the detective business, 
 and I should like to be your new man, if you re 
 satisfied with my credentials. Do you care to 
 look at them?" 
 
 The Reform Administration "allowed" that 
 it would like to see Ruderick s credentials. 
 
 " I see that you are certified to as being a very 
 wise man," remarked Mr. Cowles, after a hasty 
 perusal of Ruderick s papers. " I suppose that 
 word wise is merely a technical term in police 
 parlance." 
 
 " That s what it is, Mr. Cowles. A wise man 
 in the police business is just wise, that s all." 
 
 You have some acquaintance, have you, with 
 the criminal classes? We very much need a man 
 who understands the ways of thieves." 
 
 " Of course, I don t set myself up as anything 
 extraordinary, Mr. Cowles, but you ve got my 
 record in those papers. I certainly ought to 
 know something about the criminal classes." 
 
 " Well, Mr. MeKlowd, I ll take your name into 
 consideration, and notify the authorities that you 
 have made application for the position. I will 
 send you their decision to-morrow. Good after 
 noon, sir." 
 
The Great Idea 
 " Good afternoon, Mr. Cowles." 
 
 Three days later there was astonishment, be 
 wilderment and profanity in the Under World. 
 Ruderick MeKlowd had been appointed chief of 
 detectives in the town of Cornville, and the Under 
 World wondered what the appointment meant. 
 When inquisitive the Under World is like a 
 child it walks up and asks questions and 
 Ruderick MeKlowd s office was besieged by guns 
 who desired to know what was what and what was 
 " doing." Among the besiegers were three who 
 had come by special summons. So far the Great 
 Idea had progressed exactly as Ruderick had 
 hoped it would. The financial value of the idea 
 was still to be demonstrated. The three bad 
 men were invited into Ruderick s private office, 
 where, by judicious questioning, they were made 
 to declare that they had nothing whatever " on " 
 and had not done any business in the town since 
 the Reform Administration went into power, and 
 that they had been " ditched " by Ruderick s 
 idea, and were sick of the place and ready to quit 
 it. 
 
 To all of this Ruderick listened with a polite 
 ness which was exemplary in a public officer and 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 an old friend. When they had finished, his re 
 ply too was exemplary and significant. 
 
 " Blokes," he said, " I ain t much on chewin 
 the rag, but I m more n a little glad o what 
 you ve told me, n that you re sick o the town. 
 I m particular glad you re not mixed up in that 
 tunnel business under Englar s bank. The fel 
 lers that s done that has got to choke it off see? 
 I can t stand for it. Anythin else ts been done 
 fore I got here ain t any o my business. For 
 yourselves my tip as an old pal, since you re sick 
 of this town, is to get shut of it by the next 
 rattler. I m responsible for what s done here 
 from this on, an I ll have to make a pinch if you 
 hang around, so you d better try a mooch. I 
 guess you ve made your pile here anyhow, an 
 it s time t you get your graft in elsewhere. I 
 ain t makin no passes at you nor nothin , but if 
 you sprint, you can catch that seven-thirty this 
 evenin . It ud give me a pain to see you here 
 after eight o clock to-night. So-long, blokes; 
 take care o yourselves ! " 
 
 156 
 
III. 
 
 Judge Barwood was not only a great ad 
 ministrator wise to discern the spirit of his coun 
 try beneath the letter of its laws; he was also a 
 great attorney wise to remember the letter of the 
 law and of his oath when a client s interest could 
 be served. He was a master of technicalities 
 both in his profession and in the art of life, and 
 had the name of being able to go with impunity 
 the breadth of a hair closer than any other man 
 in Cornville to the line that it would have im 
 periled his own and his client s liberty to cross. 
 There were a score of tales, some of which, per 
 haps, went the length of being true, of legal and 
 extra-legal stratagems put in practice by him to 
 his own advancement in fortune and repute, 
 and to the encouragement of a spirit of circum 
 spection in and about Cornville; and it was said 
 of him that he made it a point of honor never to 
 turn away and never to fail to help, and to profit 
 by, a client. 
 
 J 57 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 One evening six days and a fraction, to be 
 accurate, after Ruderick s historic warning to the 
 three bad men Judge Barwood was summoned 
 from his bed by an importunate visitor who made 
 himself agreeable by opening his business with 
 the tender of a retaining-fee. The fee was a 
 bundle of fifty-dollar notes; the man was, in ap 
 pearance, perhaps sixty years of age, powerful, 
 deformed, inordinately slouch-hatted, great- 
 coated, long-haired, and whiskered. 
 
 " The bills to the best of my belief are gen-u- 
 ine ; your beard, to the best of my belief, is not," 
 said the lawyer ; " this looks to me like a fishy 
 business." 
 
 " I do not offer you the beard as a retainer, I 
 offer you the bills." 
 
 " And the voice in which you offer them is so 
 far from being your own that you make me doubt 
 whether the bills, however gen-u-ine, are gen-u- 
 inely yours. I say again this looks like a fishy 
 business." 
 
 " You seem to be a person of some penetra 
 tion," said the visitor. 
 
 " If you had not thought so before you came 
 you would not be here," said the lawyer. 
 
 " So long as you do not know my real beard 
 158 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 and real voice I don t care how well you know my 
 false beard and false voice. As for the money, 
 you may take it or leave it ! " 
 
 "And that s soon said/ replied the lawyer, 
 laying the bills on the table between him and his 
 client with a gesture that neither took them nor 
 left them. " Try a seat," he said, standing be 
 fore an open fire and toasting a costume which 
 was ostentatiously provisional. " Take off your 
 coat and hat and make yourself at home." 
 
 Judge Barwood had a good gray eye with a 
 twinkle in it, and the accent of his invitation was 
 jocular. 
 
 " I am much more comfortable with them on ; 
 the room is cold," said the visitor. 
 
 The thermometer on the jamb of the door reg 
 istered in the full gaslight seventy-three degrees. 
 
 " Just so," said Barwood appreciatively ; " and 
 now about the business." 
 
 " The business is the height of simplicity ; I 
 have stolen fifty thousand dollars; for personal 
 reasons I object to any one s attempting to pur 
 sue me and to take away the money." 
 
 The visitor also had a good gray eye. Also 
 the accent of his announcement was the least in 
 the world jocose. 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " And that s a very natural objection too," 
 said the man of law. " The plainest way to 
 avoid it is to send the money back." 
 
 " If I had been looking for the plainest way I 
 should not have had to come to your honor for 
 advice. I could have found the plainest way my 
 self." 
 
 The two pairs of good, gray eyes looked into 
 one another with appreciation. 
 
 " I repeat," said the judge, " that this looks 
 like a fishy business. And what is very much to 
 the point in an affair of this magnitude, that 
 bundle of notes on the table is too small to be 
 looked at without discomfort." 
 
 " That bundle of notes is not a small fee for 
 listening to me tell you that I have stolen fifty 
 thousand dollars. That is all I have asked for it. 
 When you have told me how to keep the fifty 
 thousand the bundle on the table will be bigger." 
 
 " It would have to be a great deal bigger." 
 
 " Would it set a limit to its bigness if the man 
 out of whom the fifty thousand comes has done 
 you dirt? " 
 
 There were not a great many men in Cornville 
 from whom fifty thousand could be lifted. Bar- 
 wood s face took on a look of intense interest. 
 160 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 "Not Englar?" 
 
 " Englar." 
 
 Barwood s face broadened into a grim smile. 
 
 " You are quite resolved not to be advised to 
 put the money back? " 
 
 "Quite." 
 
 " It is really my duty to urge the point." 
 
 " You have urged it." 
 
 Barwood with the grim smile still lingering on 
 his face strode for a time up and down the room, 
 an incarnation of practical intelligence in labor, 
 in a dressing-gown. He came at last to a halt 
 in his former station before the fire. 
 
 " Could you steal any more? " he asked 
 gravely. 
 
 " How much more, for example? " 
 
 " Well ! say a second fifty thousand. You 
 could hardly make a deal with less." 
 
 " I have stolen a second fifty thousand," said 
 the visitor, drawing a considerable parcel from 
 under his cloak and laying it on the table. " I 
 calculated myself that it would take just about a 
 second fifty to protect the first." 
 
 " You seem to be a client of great fore 
 thought," said the lawyer. 
 
 " It needs a client of great forethought to em- 
 161 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 ploy an attorney of great penetration," said the 
 visitor. 
 
 " It is only left to settle where and when I 
 am to let you know what I have done ; I suppose 
 you can trust yourself not to get caught," said 
 Barwood. 
 
 This was unkind : the Powers That Rule were 
 become a joke in Cornville, and Renshaw, who 
 had been Barwood s rival, was the point of the 
 joke. 
 
 " I can trust myself a good deal better not to 
 get caught if I don t trust any one else with my 
 address. When I want to know what you have 
 done I will come and ask you. Good night, Mr. 
 Attorney." 
 
 " Good night, Mr. Scamp." 
 
 The two men parted with mutual respect and 
 good-will. 
 
 Barwood had made it a point of conscience in 
 the conduct of his life, when he had a thing to 
 do which was agreeable to himself and disagree 
 able to some one else, never to procrastinate. 
 There was besides another reason in the present 
 case for dispatch. It did not enter into his views 
 for his client that Richard Englar should not have 
 a chance to keep his loss unknown. 
 162 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 " Mr. Englar," he said, with the regret which 
 a man throws into his voice when he speaks of 
 the misfortune of a personal enemy, " I am in 
 formed that you have just been robbed of a 
 hundred thousand; I don t know whether it is 
 true or not. A man so bundled up that I could 
 make nothing of him visited me at my house just 
 now and told me so ; he added that you could not 
 find him, and that if you did find him the money 
 would be either dissipated or spent in conducting 
 his defense. If you guarantee to make no effort 
 to find him and to keep the affair out of the hands 
 of the state, he offers you twenty-five thousand; 
 twenty-five thousand to take or to leave. I don t 
 know whether this offer is real either, nor how he 
 expects you to get the money; certainly he gave 
 me no name or address. He told me nothing 
 but what I state and then took his leave. I made 
 no attempt to lay hands on him," concluded the 
 lawyer dryly ; " I didn t want to deprive you of 
 your chance of recovering twenty-five thousand, 
 nor our new police force of its chance of distin 
 guishing itself." . . . 
 
 There is singularly little more to tell. Englar 
 and his board of directors had a meeting before 
 daylight that morning, ascertained the truth and 
 163 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 moved motions and passed resolutions. They 
 resolved to get the thief if they could; they re 
 solved that they could not afford to let twenty- 
 five thousand slip through their fingers; they re 
 solved for the present to keep the loss concealed 
 from the public press and from the state. They 
 consulted with Judge Barwood and instructed 
 him to notify his client, if his client should again 
 enter into communication with him, that they 
 had taken his offer under advisement; secretly 
 they employed one Ruderick MeKlowd to find 
 out what he could about the robbery. Judge 
 Barwood s client did not at this time again enter 
 into communication, with him; and Ruderick 
 found only that the tunnel by means of which the 
 bank had been entered had been made by one 
 Cannes with the assistance of two companions, 
 named Wadlow and Latane respectively; but he 
 soon obtained word that they were in Philadel 
 phia, actually in detention at the time the bank 
 was broken into ; there had been a national con 
 vention at Philadelphia and the police had put 
 the three bad men where they would do most 
 good. Of their whereabouts since their release 
 nothing could be learned. Englar said that 
 Ruderick was as big an ass as the rest of the 
 164 
 
The Great Idea 
 
 Front Office, and must have turned fly cop be 
 cause he could not make a living as a thief; an 
 opinion which was possibly premature. The di 
 rectors of the bank once more consulted with 
 Judge Barwood and instructed him to notify his 
 client, if his client should again enter into com 
 munication with him, that they accepted his offer. 
 Some days afterward they bound themselves, 
 their heirs and assigns in a manner and form 
 which Barwood thought worth twenty-five thou 
 sand to himself and his night visitor, and in re 
 turn for the document he paid that amount. 
 
 Two nights later he was going home from his 
 office in the dusk when a quavering voice de 
 manded an alms. The speaker was a patched 
 and battered figure; a decrepit old man, wild- 
 eyed, and wild-haired. 
 
 " It s only a drink I want," repeated the beg 
 gar, as he shuffled along at Barwood s side. 
 " You see t I m no liar I don t want nothin to 
 eat. I want a drink. It only costs a dime, boss." 
 
 They had reached a stretch of field through 
 which Barwood was wont to make a short cut to 
 his home, and as he left the sidewalk and turned 
 into the field-path, the beggar suddenly straight 
 ened himself, dropped the whine in his voice, and 
 165 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 tapping Barwood familiarly on the shoulder, 
 said : " I say, Mr. Attorney, hand over that 
 agreement that you made for me with Englar." 
 
 A fortnight later Ruderick was discharged 
 from the Cornville force for drunkenness and in 
 competence. The expectations he had raised 
 when Chief Cowles engaged him he had not ful 
 filled. Upon his discharge he paid a visit to Chi 
 cago, where he kept a safe-deposit vault, in which 
 he placed among other things the agreement 
 which Judge Barwood had obtained for his un 
 known client. This was the finishing touch in 
 the realization of the Great Idea. 
 
 166 
 
FOUND GUILTY. 
 I. 
 
 Among the graver misfortunes in the Under 
 World is that of being in the right in a contest 
 with the Powers That Rule. When a man adds 
 to this misfortune the sheer folly of pressing his 
 rights offensively, the gods have abandoned him. 
 The gods had abandoned Howard Slifer even in 
 the hour of his triumph ; from the first his humil 
 iation was a certainty ; the precise time and man 
 ner of it only were left in doubt. 
 
 Howard Slifer was a gentleman of the Under 
 World who allowed it to be generally known that 
 any one who asked him for a fight would get it. 
 A sensitive recognition of the claims of other 
 people and an austere respect for them does not 
 belong to the point of honor in the Under 
 World; the point of honor in the Under World 
 is for the most part concerned with a man s sen 
 sitive recognition of his own claims and his deter 
 mination to have other people austerely respect 
 12 167 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 them ; and Howard Slifer was punctiliously hon 
 orable. He was possessed of considerable sums 
 of ready money, kept, with some trifling excep 
 tions, in strong-boxes, the formula for opening 
 which invariably included a drill and a bit of 
 dynamite. The trifling exceptions were small 
 matters of loose coin and broken rolls of bank 
 notes which people of fortune, who had had no 
 previous acquaintance with Mr. Slifer, stood and 
 delivered to him " at sight " and " on demand," 
 and by a solecism in their business habits asked 
 no quittance or receipt. His physique was a 
 patent of nobility in which all who stood might 
 read a power to levy taxes and to assume pos 
 session of his personal estate wherever he might 
 find it. He was of the build that led men to fol 
 low him with their eyes and to speculate upon 
 the amount of " punishment " he could take and 
 could inflict, and while they speculated they re 
 spected him greatly him and his man servant, 
 and his maid servant, his ox and his ass, and 
 everything that was his. 
 
 Captain Brigstock, of the Precinct, was 
 
 not a man; he was a deputy divinity, and re 
 spected nothing except the arch-deputies, his of 
 ficial superiors. Technically there were sharp 
 168 
 
Found Guilty 
 
 limitations to his constitutional powers over mere 
 mortals, but in practice technical distinctions so 
 seldom obtruded themselves upon his notice that 
 his sense of them was apt to become quite vague. 
 What the precise occasion was of his entering 
 Mr. Slifer s domicile, nobody in the outer world 
 ever plucked up courage to ask him. When Sli- 
 fer was asked, he said that the captain had 
 dropped in unofficially, on " private business," 
 and added no comment beyond a malign grin. 
 There was an impression in the outer world that 
 the captain had made his visit expressly at a time 
 when he knew Mr. Slifer was not at home, and 
 that Mr. Slifer had returned unexpectedly ; what 
 was certain is that the captain made his exit from 
 the Slifer domicile in unconventional haste, and 
 that no mention of the incident was ever made in 
 the public prints. He had reached the street 
 from a second-story window through which he 
 had backed with such violence as to bring away 
 the sash. This was the hour of the haughty Sli 
 fer s triumph, and the hour when the gods aban 
 doned him. 
 
 Three weeks afterward there occurred a man 
 ifestation of esprit de corps among the Powers 
 That Rule which it was not pleasant to contem- 
 169 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 plate. Patrolman Hooper, of Captain Brigstock s 
 precinct, had been murdered overnight while 
 on duty; and not only in Brigstock s precinct 
 but throughout the city the force was of one 
 mind. It was not only that if an officer on duty 
 is not safe, not a man of them was safe; there 
 was an element of insult and effrontery in an at 
 tack upon a patrolman that stirred something 
 more in his associates than personal fear; it 
 touched their corporate pride. 
 
 " Somebody s got to croak for this," Detective 
 Swinton declared sententiously to a group of his 
 brother " sleuths." " I don t care if Hooper was 
 only a flatty. He was a copper, and we fly cops 
 have got to send some bloke to the chair for 
 bastin him. There s a push o guns in this town 
 that thinks flatties don t count, that there won t 
 be much of a kick when one of em s keeled over, 
 an they 11 croak some of us fly cops before long 
 if we don t learn em a lesson. It was a great 
 bull somebody wasn t croaked for the killin o 
 Patrolman Stimson two years ago. Stimson 
 was a fool right enough to go up against the 
 gang that did him, but if one of em had croaked 
 for bastin him, Hooper ud be alive now. I tell 
 you guns are just like kids when it comes to learn- 
 170 
 
Found Guilty 
 
 in em anything. If they see t ye mean busi 
 ness they 11 crawl, but if ye monkey with em, 
 they 11 t row ye down. There s some that thinks 
 that guns 11 act on the level with coppers whether 
 they got to or not. That s damn rot. Course 
 there s some squarer than others, but I ve known 
 all kinds for twenty-five years, an I give it to ye 
 straight, they ain t built to like us. They got 
 the same class feelin t we have, an if we don t 
 croak one of em for doin Hooper they 11 get so 
 nervy that coppers 11 be droppin in their tracks 
 every month. They got to be called down." 
 
 The law for the Powers That Prey is that it is 
 better ninety-nine guilty men should escape than 
 that one innocent man should suffer; the law for 
 the Powers That Rule is that an example must 
 be made. The Powers That Prey must suffer as 
 a clan for an offense against the Powers That 
 Rule. The clan must give up its offending mem 
 ber or must stand in terror and uncertainty of 
 where precisely the hand of the force will strike. 
 That it will strike somewhere there must not be 
 the slightest doubt. 
 
 The orders of Captain Brigstock were laconic 
 and smacked of his divine authority. He recog 
 nized no impossibility in the case ; he spoke with 
 171 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 the accent of omnipotence; he said simply: 
 " Find him ; I don t want to hear a word about 
 difficulties; damn the difficulties; I want him 
 found." There were for the moment but the 
 slightest indications to go upon. Hooper must 
 have been struck from behind, must have turned 
 upon his assailant and in the scuffle lost his hel 
 met. At least he had been stabbed twice in the 
 back and had received a heavy downward blow 
 in the temple, from which his helmet would have 
 saved him. The mainspring of his watch had 
 been broken and the hands marked five minutes 
 past four thus determining almost with exact 
 ness the moment when he was assaulted. His 
 assailant had been hurt and could be traced by 
 blood-stains to a sheltered doorway half a block 
 distant, where he had seemingly bound up his 
 wounds and changed his clothes. A hundred 
 other details were reported, but for three days 
 these remained, in spite of the command of de 
 puted omnipotence, the only ones that were sig 
 nificant. Then came a statement that a short 
 time before his death Patrolman Hooper had had 
 a difficulty with Howard Slifer, and that high 
 
 words had been exchanged 
 
 It is said that Slifer attempted to break away 
 172 
 
Found Guilty 
 
 when he found himself safe within the walls of 
 
 the station-house in the Precinct ; he was, at 
 
 all events, soundly clubbed before he was locked 
 in his cell. The blows given were accurately 
 measured according to his power for taking pun 
 ishment. It may be doubted whether Captain 
 Brigstock had been more thoroughly bruised 
 when he measured his length in the street. It 
 is, perhaps, a chance coincidence that the captain 
 was present while Slifer was being taught the 
 power of the law. 
 
 The evidence against the prisoner was worked 
 up with systematic vigor. The negative evi 
 dence especially was significant: it could not be 
 discovered that at the time Patrolman Hooper 
 was struck down the prisoner was not near at 
 hand. Patrolman Gundy, in a misguided mo 
 ment, opined that almost at the precise time of 
 the murder he had seen the prisoner enter a house 
 a dozen blocks distant from the scene of the af 
 fair. The outburst of disapproval with which 
 this statement was received made Patrolman 
 Gundy uncertain first about the precise time, then 
 about the precise man, and finally about whether 
 or not he had seen any one. Patrolman Conard 
 opined that at a quarter to five he had passed a 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 man, who might be the prisoner, within a block 
 of the scene of the affair. The captain asked 
 him what in the name of things unprintable " his 
 glims were for," and told him pointblank that any 
 one not an ass could say whether a man that he 
 had passed was the prisoner or not; and Patrol 
 man Conard became certain that he was not an 
 ass, and certain that he had passed the prisoner, 
 and not at all certain that the hour was a quarter 
 to five or a quarter to four or to three. A safe 
 had been blown open in the building immediate 
 ly in front of which Patrolman Hooper s body 
 was found, and the prisoner s method of collect 
 ing the living that the world owed him was well 
 known. There were a number of other people 
 who employed the same method, but that is a de 
 tail. The abandoned clothes were much too 
 short in the arms and legs for the prisoner, and 
 much too small to have been drawn on over a sec 
 ond suit; but clad in his underclothing only it 
 was just possible he could squeeze into them ; and 
 the less perfectly they fitted him, the better the 
 disguise. And at the time he was stripped and 
 examined in his cell he had so many recent 
 wounds that the only difficulty was to decide 
 which of them his captors had not given him. 
 
Found Guilty 
 
 The indictment before the grand jury was se 
 cured by evidence which, as the newspapers said, 
 was so " overwhelmingly convincing " that mur 
 der in the first degree was the only charge permis 
 sible. The district attorney publicly compli 
 mented the police on their handling of the case, 
 and declared that never before during his activ 
 ity as public prosecutor had he known of a mur 
 derer who was not actually seen committing the 
 crime being brought to the bar of justice with 
 proof of guilt so thoroughly established and ably 
 presented. In an interview with a representa 
 tive of the press, he said : " Captain Brigstock s 
 men have not only avenged the murder of their 
 brother officer, they have demonstrated afresh the 
 remarkable ability of the city s police force. It 
 is no light matter to protect a city as large as 
 ours, which in the very nature of things becomes 
 a Mecca and Medina for criminals, and it is grati 
 fying to know that our safety is looked after by 
 so conscientious a band of officers." 
 
 The patrolmen ordered before the grand jury 
 not only distinctly remembered seeing Slifer in the 
 near neighborhood of the scene of the crime soon 
 after it was committed, but they produced the 
 weapon with which Hooper had been struck 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 down, and showed the jury several rolls of bills, 
 taken from Slifer s pockets, which there was no 
 doubt were part of the plunder he had secured in 
 the safe robbery. Free to indulge his imagina 
 tion as to how the struggle between Hooper and 
 Slifer took place, the prosecuting attorney por 
 trayed the villain discovered by the virtuous 
 Hooper in the act of blowing open the safe, or in 
 the act of endeavoring to escape, no matter 
 which. The intellectual and wholly impatient 
 jury, who had business of their own, which they 
 were not attending to, saw in their mind s eye 
 the prosecuting attorney s vivid picture, saw the 
 villain Slifer blow open the safe, saw him make 
 his escape, saw the devoted Hooper attempt to 
 arrest him, saw the struggle, the blows, the gleam 
 of the knife. Finally they saw in private, with 
 eyes not of the mind, Slifer s mishandled body. To 
 add force to these specific arguments, Slifer s rec 
 ord, both as " peter-man " and convict, was 
 produced, and he was declared to be one of the 
 most desperate offenders in the country. There 
 was nothing for the intellectual and wholly im 
 patient jury to do but indict him, and he was 
 bound over till the next term of court. 
 
 176 
 
II. 
 
 Francis Pirie and James Schell were two trav 
 elers of the Under World who had just returned 
 from Europe to secure fresh letters of credit. 
 They had made the fashionable grand tour of the 
 Continent, had " blown themselves " at the Monte 
 Carlo " crib," had seen wonderful things in for 
 bidden Paris, and had come back to " God s 
 country " to attend to business until their bank 
 accounts should permit of another trip abroad. 
 Schell had suggested while they were in Paris 
 that they recoup their fortunes on the spot and 
 avoid the seasickness and miscellaneous locomo 
 tion, but Pirie s counsel had prevailed, and they 
 arrived in " God s country " about three weeks 
 previous to the murder of Patrolman Hooper. 
 
 " There s dough on this side all right,* Pirie 
 admitted in reply to Schell s suggestion that they 
 establish themselves in the French capital, " but 
 it ain t our kind o dough. I been rubberin 
 round pretty strong since I been on this side, an 
 I m next to how the money market stands over 
 177 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 here. You remember that fellow from Vienna 
 t I borrowed a hundred from in Rome, an how 
 he kept tellin me to be sure an return it by the 
 time I said I would? Well, he shows up the 
 whole business. He was a nice enough bloke, 
 an had the rocks an all that, but he ain t the kind 
 o bloke that lets you an me live an take trips 
 abroad. When he figures up his accounts at the 
 end o the year, everything must balance. He ll 
 have a whole string o items jus called man 
 ain t made o wood/ but he knows where them 
 contributions went. See? Well, it s the same 
 all over Europe ; they all got to know where and 
 how their dough went, who got it, and what they 
 got for it. It ud kill em to figure up one o the 
 columns in their account books, and have to write 
 after it: Gone, an damn me if I know where. 
 They ve got dough, but they ain t got no dough 
 to lose without makin a hell of a beef about it. 
 See what they did with Bidwell when he made 
 that Bank o England touch in the early seven 
 ties. Gave him life ! W y, them Englishmen 
 thinks money is somethin sacred, holy, religious 
 like. I gamble a thousand that old bank could be 
 touched up again for a million or two, but they d 
 hang the bloke that done it. It s not like that 
 178 
 
Found Guilty 
 
 on the other side : ev ry year there s just so much 
 dough lyin around loose to be swiped, an if it 
 ain t swiped it s put down in the profit column. 
 It s the same kind o dough that s lookin for cir 
 culation in poker games. It wants to keep mov- 
 in an changin hands, an guns is there to give 
 it rope. See? It s a kind o Providence ! " 
 
 " An the coppers is there to make the guns 
 trouble," retorted Schell. " It s all right about 
 the loose dough, but how about the loose fly cops? 
 I d rather take my chanst with ten o these Rube 
 coppers here in Paris n with one o the fly elbows 
 in York." 
 
 " Aw, everybody s a copper on this side," 
 urged Pirie. " You remember that gun in Ber 
 lin tryin to make a get-away after he d picked 
 the Moll s pocket, an how the whole street 
 sprinted after him? That s the way they do 
 things on this side the crowd is in sympathy 
 with the copper an not with the gun. In the 
 States they give a gun a runnin chance, an let 
 the copper do the chasin . That s what s what 
 an the way it ought to be." 
 
 The morning of the day following the murder 
 of Patrolman Hooper, two men were in earnest 
 179 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 conversation in a gaudily furnished room in an 
 up-town hotel. One lay on the bed with a band 
 age around his head; and from the blood-stains 
 on the clothes it was evident that he was nursing 
 a wound ; the other sat at the bedside. The two 
 were registered on the hotel s books as coming 
 from Sydney, Australia, and had signed the 
 names, Richard Wamperson and Jackson Mather. 
 
 " You put his light out all right," the man at 
 the bedside remarked. " They picked him up 
 croaked." 
 
 " Serves the duffer right," mumbled the inva 
 lid. " Anybody been copped out yet? " 
 
 " The pipers say jes listen to my furrin 
 eddication! that the police have pinched that 
 Michigan bloke, Slifer. We done a bit with him 
 in Cherry Hill eight years back remember? the 
 bloke at made old Brigstock take that quick 
 sneak out of his flat one day. They re goin to 
 railroad him for fair. The World says the police 
 found the weapon on him, an the Journal claims 
 t he had some o the bank s dough in his 
 pockets." 
 
 " Them newspapers is gettin real wise. What 
 a lot they do know. Seems like a gun can t do 
 nothin any more thout bein pinched for some- 
 thin else ! " 
 
 1 80 
 
Found Guilty 
 
 This comment was certainly ungrateful, the in 
 valid not having been pinched of late for any 
 thing. More than that, it was unintelligent : the 
 invalid did not understand the arrangement of 
 things which makes imaginative " news " col 
 umns indispensable. 
 
 " I d sooner be pinched for what I didn t do n 
 what I done ; it riles a bloke s sense o justice to 
 be accused false an helps him put up a front," de 
 clared the other. " But you kicked in Payree 
 about everybody bein a copper in Europe an a 
 gun havin no chance ; what do you call the news 
 papers in this country but coppers? " 
 
 " Fly ones, ain t they ! They ain t copped out 
 you an me; they re as dead as the stiffs in the 
 Front Office!" 
 
 " They say Slifer got away with the full fifty 
 thousand cause they only found a few rolls on 
 him. They re smart, they are ! They think he s 
 made a plant somewheres." 
 
 " Shows you how dead they are. They know 
 about s much who copped that coin as Slifer does. 
 Course the police a got to put up a bluff an V 
 glad to pinch anybody ; but you d think them pa 
 pers might take a tumble to themselves once in a 
 while," 
 
 181 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Good job for us t we wasn t mugged that 
 time that old Freckleton got is glims on us. 
 Three years ago, ain t it? " 
 
 " Longer n that ; an besides old Freck s 
 croaked. He s the only man on the force t knew 
 us." 
 
 " Oh, I ain t leary, I ain t; but it s pie to take 
 your constitutional without everybody rubberin . 
 Say, I guess I ll take a bit of a leg-loosener an 
 see bout bankin that dough in London. That s 
 where we need it in our business, an the sooner 
 we get it there the quicker. We want to mooch 
 soon as you can stand for the ante ! " 
 
 " A right, but don t be long I m dead to the 
 world up here alone. So-long! " 
 
 " So-long." 
 
 The night of the beginning of the eighth week 
 after the murder of Patrolman Hooper, Francis 
 Pirie and James Schell were sitting " at whisky " 
 in a fashionable midnight resort on Sixth avenue. 
 Pirie should have been at home and in bed ; almost 
 any layman could have told him that he was grave 
 ly ill. He was a dime-novel specter, and the flesh 
 had drawn back on his bones till they began to 
 stand out in sharp angles. The inference of an 
 182 
 
Found Guilty 
 
 outsider would have been that he was another 
 of the victims which the life in fashionable mid 
 night resorts sometimes demands, but inferences 
 made by outsiders show their wit and not their 
 knowledge. The only person present who real 
 ly knew what was what was James Schell, but he 
 would not have admitted this even to Pirie. There 
 was a look of disgust in his face while he watched 
 the sick man reach feebly for his glass. 
 
 " It s a wonder you wouldn t take a bracer. 
 You ve been belly-aching around these joints for 
 the last two months, an I m gettin tired o look- 
 in at you; I want to mooch to the other side. 
 Any one ud think that that copper had hit you 
 with a baseball bat the way you play the baby act. 
 He jus gave you a love tap with his mace, that s 
 all." 
 
 " A couple o love taps like that ud a put out 
 my light then and there," Pirie answered wearily. 
 " I m a sick man, Schell." 
 
 " Sick nothin . Why the devil don t you stay 
 to home if you re sick? You been folio win me 
 about for the last eight weeks like a cur purp. I 
 never asked you to. Stay to home an nurse 
 yourself if you re so knocked up ; I m agreeable ; 
 I m gettin bally tired o hearin you whine. You 
 13 83 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 don t need to be afraid o me; I ain t goin to 
 knock against you ; nobody 11 ever find out from 
 me t you an that flatty couldn t hit it off to 
 gether ; I can keep as dead about that as you can. 
 An I ain t goin to do you out o the dough 
 either. You ll get all that s comin to you when 
 we get to London. It s banked there, an half 
 of it is yourn. But I give it to you straight, I m 
 goin to give you the chilly mit if you don t stop 
 doggin me round to all these joints." 
 
 " You give me the chilly mit? " 
 
 Pirie sat upright in his chair with an obvious 
 effort. The hand of death was upon the man 
 really, but he had his grit with him. 
 
 " That s what I said. You re all right when 
 you want to be, but I won t stand for any more 
 o this shade win me about see? What I think 
 is, you re bughouse." 
 
 Merely to acknowledge that he was sick was a 
 confession which, in the circumstances, it had 
 cost Pirie more than Schell realized to make ; to 
 sit at a table with a man whom he had looked 
 upon as his pal and hear that he was " bug 
 house " was a challenge which even his weakened 
 state could not keep him from accepting. 
 
 " Take that, you duffer ! " he hissed between 
 184 
 
Found Guilty 
 
 his teeth, and threw his beer-glass with all his 
 might at Schell s head. 
 
 The fight was over before the attendants could 
 interfere. Schell tried to throw Pirie to the 
 floor, and Pirie sent a bullet through his heart. 
 His light went out without a flicker. 
 
 85 
 
III. 
 
 A man lay dying in the hospital ward of 
 
 Prison. Captain Brigstock of Precinct 
 
 sat beside his couch. 
 
 " Scheduled to croak all right ain t I? Raise 
 me up a bit, Cap. Thanks." 
 
 " That s what they call it, Pirie." 
 
 " Well, Cap, I might as well tell you now as 
 later. You got the wrong bloke in that Hooper 
 business. Slifer didn t do Hooper. Give me 
 some more o that dope there quick I I am 
 dyin . Lord but it s a dirty job to die : an me 
 too I die bad. That s why I m tellin you." 
 
 The stimulant revived him for a moment. 
 
 "Say, Cap me an Schell you listenin ? 
 put it on paper, blokey ; I m gettin kind o weak 
 in me tubes ; got the pencil there? Me an Schell, 
 we croaked gettin it down? we croaked 
 Hooper ; me in front with a billy when his helmet 
 dropped off, an him behind with a knife. That 
 stuff in the papers was rot. An Schell, I put 
 his light out, damn him : he tried to do me out o 
 the dough. That s why I m here. See?" 
 
 186 
 
Found Guilty 
 
 His mind was wandering. 
 
 Brigstock s pencil paused and Brigstock him 
 self took it for a sign of some special care of 
 Providence for him that Pirie s confession had 
 been made to no one else. What kind of Provi 
 dence would naturally choose him out to care for, 
 and whether in highest heaven or deepest the 
 other place, he had not leisure at the moment to 
 inquire. 
 
 " Where s the dough planted? " he asked. 
 
 The sick man s eyelids fluttered open, but with 
 no recognition of Captain Brigstock or of his 
 question; there was a great light of anger and 
 pain in the eyes, and the lips drew back from the 
 strong discolored teeth. 
 
 " You give me the chilly mit ! " he almost 
 shouted, half rising in bed : " Take that, you 
 duffer ! " and he flung himself bodily on Captain 
 Brigstock. 
 
 It was quite true Pirie died bad. . . 
 
 That evening Brigstock in his lodgings medi 
 tated afresh on the special care of Providence. 
 At the end of his meditations, which he had as 
 sisted by striding up and down the room, he knelt 
 by the open fire and tore out and burned certain 
 leaves from his notebook. 
 
 187 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 The night of New Year s day, some ten months 
 after the murder of Patrolman Hooper, Howard 
 
 Slifer sat in his cell in Prison, and talked 
 
 through the bars of the cell door with his " death- 
 watch." The evidence given at the time of his 
 indictment had been repeated with additions at 
 the time of his trial, and among those additions 
 the confession of Francis Pirie was not found. 
 
 " You hear what I m tellin you, Jackson," 
 Slifer said that night ; " I ain t turnin soft an 
 kickin bout goin to the chair: not me! It s 
 up to me to sit in it, that s straight. An I ve done 
 enough to deserve croakin ten times over; but, 
 Jackson, it ain t up to me to stand for the killin 
 o Hooper. I didn t do it. Course the evidence 
 don t look that way, an they think that they ve 
 got me dead to rights; but that jus shows how 
 bughouse some o the things in this world are. 
 Jackson, if Hooper could get up out of his grave 
 now, he d say, Slifer didn t do it. I don t mind 
 croakin for anythin I done, but I hate like hell 
 to croak for somethin I didn t." 
 
 188 
 
ON SENTENCE DAY. 
 
 Some had waited nearly a year, others for sev 
 eral months, others for but a few weeks. The 
 jail was old, and inside and outside looked much 
 as it did in 1840, when it was built. Tramps 
 liked it on account of the roomy corridor where 
 they were permitted to lounge in the daytime, 
 and because the prisoners cooked their own food. 
 The raw materials for the meals were passed into 
 the jail through a little window in an iron door, 
 and the men took turns in cooking. The cells 
 were placed above the corridor, and at night the 
 sheriff came and locked us in until morning. We 
 numbered, all told, nineteen men and boys, six 
 teen of whom were court prisoners who had stood 
 their trials and were waiting for their sentences. 
 The remaining three, including Ruderick Me- 
 Klowd and myself, had had their punishment 
 meted out to them by the wisdom of a local mag 
 istrate, and were serving it out then and there. 
 
 Ruderick and I had been unfortunate enough 
 189 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 to fall asleep in a box car in the local railway 
 yards, and the magistrate before whom we were 
 brought had been inspired to make an example 
 of us. " I want you men to learn to sleep where 
 civilized people sleep," he explained; "it is pos 
 sible that you need a little training to get into 
 the habit again, and I shall send you over to the 
 sheriff for a month. If you behave yourselves, 
 you will find him an agreeable host." We be 
 haved ourselves, and found the sheriff an agree 
 able host, but he took the most interest in what 
 he called the " transients " the men whom Jus 
 tice had weighed in her balance and found want 
 ing to a degree which she had not yet taken 
 off her bandage accurately to ascertain. They 
 presented a subject of speculation and mystery 
 which we did not, and in return for the interest 
 they gave him the sheriff offered them gruff lit 
 tle courtesies which he hoped would help some 
 what to keep their minds off their coming ordeal. 
 Some of them were culprits of long standing, 
 men who had taken their " stretchers," as they 
 called their terms in prison, regularly and with 
 out flinching, but none of them knew what his 
 next " stretcher " was to be. Some of them were 
 lads sure to go to the reform school ; and all of 
 190 
 
On Sentence Day 
 
 them, men and lads, were to retire from the world 
 for a certain period but how long? The limit 
 that each of them could get was well known, but 
 no one believed that he deserved or would get 
 the limit. 
 
 Prisoners the world over feel that the fact that 
 they have been caught at all is a punishment, and 
 justifies them in expecting a compromise with 
 the judge who is to sentence them. If detection 
 itself is a punishment, any further discipline 
 ought to be measured according to the disap 
 pointment and chagrin which the detection has 
 caused. This is irrational, but all men are irra 
 tional according to their opportunities. It was 
 the uncertainty as to how far Justice, in the per 
 son of " the old man," would be willing to com 
 promise on this basis that kept the men on a 
 strain. Morning, noon and night the constant 
 word was : What will " the old man " do? The 
 first thing we heard even before the sheriff had 
 let us out for the day was the call from cell to 
 cell of the men to be sentenced that they were 
 twelve hours nearer the appointed time. Even 
 during the night mutterings reached Ruderick 
 and me from the men who had been waiting 
 longest. One night we heard an old man of sev- 
 191 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 enty, who might have been the grandfather of 
 nearly all of us, cry out in his sleep : " Make it a 
 year, Judge, just an even year " ; and he threw 
 into the words all the pleading and pathos that 
 he could have commanded had he been awake. 
 
 At last the morning came when Justice was to 
 take off her bandage, and the sheriff told his 
 wards that they must hold themselves ready to 
 go to the court-room at any moment. He was 
 not sure himself of the exact time when his honor 
 would call for them, but he cautioned them to 
 be quick in responding to the call when it came. 
 Every one rushed to his cell to get his clothes in 
 order. " Want the old man to see me in my best/ 
 one said, and the others followed him up to the 
 cell gallery and began to overhaul their scant sup 
 ply of " togs." They discussed the merits of a 
 patched waistcoat or a frayed necktie as women 
 do the most delicate finery. " How d you think 
 th old man 11 like this? " a man called " Bony " 
 said, holding up a coat. 
 
 " Get it sterilized, Bony ; it s full o graybacks ; 
 th old man 11 give you de limit if they get to 
 paradin around the court-room," another re 
 marked, not untruthfully. 
 
 " How d you se think this white rag 11 take? " 
 192 
 
On Sentence Day| UNIVERSIT 
 
 V^ OF 
 
 queried still another, dubbed " Jet Eyes," exMb- 
 iting a " boiled " shirt which he had kept under 
 his pillow for weeks for fear it would be " swiped." 
 
 " Keep it to swing in, Sammy, "advised his cell 
 mate. " It s too good jus to get two years in. 
 Put it in a safety vault till croakin time comes." 
 
 In an hour they had all put on their best, and a 
 dress rehearsal in the corridor was in order. One 
 of the oldest prisoners was appointed judge, and 
 the men lined up in front of him. This was play, 
 and in a measure comedy, but not wholly so : the 
 culprits expected to catch from the mock judge 
 and the mock sentence some omen of what their 
 fate was to be. The judge carried off his part 
 with impressive dignity and severe eyebrow. He 
 had borrowed a clean collar and a sky-blue neck 
 tie for the occasion; he had absolutely refused 
 to officiate except in costume. The men prac 
 tised attitudes and gestures which they expected 
 to use with effect later in the day. 
 
 " Hungry," he said, in a voice which was 
 proper to the majesty of the law, to the man at 
 the head of the line, " you was caught in de act, 
 wasn t you? Now, that means bunglin . Blokes 
 what knows their business don t get pinched in 
 de act. But you se gettin old, Hungry. We all 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 knows that. You must be nearly fifty. De law 
 says that for what you done I ough to give you 
 fifteen years, but I don t b lieve you ll last that 
 long. You se got so many diseases you se goin 
 to croak before a great while. Now, it ain t right 
 to give a man life for bunglin , an that s what it 
 ud be if I gave you what de law says. I m goin 
 to be square with you; I m goin to give you a 
 chanst to die outside. You se good for about 
 two years yet, f you take care o yourself, so I 
 sentence you, Hungry, to eighteen months to de 
 penitentiary." 
 
 " Thank y , yer honor," said Hungry, bow 
 ing awkwardly. 
 
 A faint murmur of approval and applause arose 
 in the audience. 
 
 " Silence in de court," cried Rhadamanthus, 
 with truculent majesty ; " bring up de next pris 
 
 oner." 
 
 He was a boy of eighteen, called " Eddie," 
 who had been convicted, in company with an 
 older companion, of burglary. 
 
 " Kid," the mock judge went on, " you se 
 
 started out too fast. You se too young to do 
 
 climbin . If I sent you to de penitentiary you d 
 
 learn a good deal, but you d get your head 
 
 194 
 
On Sentence Day 
 
 turned taikin with de men, an you d tackle too 
 big jobs for your years an experience when you 
 got outside again. If you se goin to be an 
 A Number One gun, Kid, you wan to go t rough 
 your apprenticeship ; you wan to begin at the be- 
 ginnin , and a good place to do that is in de Ref 
 all fly crooks has been trained in de Ref so 
 I sentence you to de Ref till you re twenty-one. 
 But I ll be square with you, too. I won t con 
 sider it any reflekshun on my connection with 
 de case/ as de old man ud say, if you run away 
 fore your time s up." 
 
 " Don send me to the Ref, yer honor ; I bin 
 to the Ref, an it s nothin but a kids joint; / 
 can t learn nothin there." 
 
 He went through the line of men and boys; 
 sometimes the scene being comical, and some 
 times pathetic. The rehearsal finished, the crowd 
 broke up into little groups. Some of them gath 
 ered around the table, others took their stand 
 near the iron door, impatient for the sheriff to 
 call them. Ruderick and I took seats on a bench 
 in one of the corners, and the boy " Eddie " and 
 his pal strolled up and down the corridor. His 
 pal urged him to take advantage of his boyish 
 appearance and try to get a reform-school sen- 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 tence. " You can run away after you se been 
 there awhile," the man said, " an then you se free. 
 See?" 
 
 " Damn the Ref," the lad replied. " I m goin 
 to the Pen." 
 
 "Know that kind o kid?" Ruderick asked, 
 nodding in the direction of the two when they 
 had passed out of ear-shot. " I can read his fu 
 ture for you. Did I ever tell you bout the 
 Michigan Kid? It began way back in 77, when 
 I was doin a bit for the state, havin done an 
 bungled a bit for myself. The jail was over in 
 Pennsylvania, an one day the sheriff brought in 
 a young fellow who d been bound over for bitin 
 off more n he could chew, which is grand larceny. 
 They caught him red-handed. He was a nice, 
 plucky-lookin little chap, an I saw right away 
 t he was new to the business. He didn t have 
 much of a story to tell at the time; p r aps that 
 was why he wouldn t tell it. I found out later, 
 however, that his father was a swell lawyer over 
 in Michigan, an his people had sent him to a 
 boarding-school, an he d mooched. His money 
 gave out, an he done the touch, or tried to do it, 
 to get some dough. He was not quite seventeen 
 196 
 
On Sentence Day 
 
 then a tenderfoot as far as you could see him. 
 He d been with the hoboes a little before he got 
 pinched, an knew some o their lingo; but jus* 
 the way he shaped up an asked us all when he 
 first come in what we was l shut up for, was 
 enough to put us next. 
 
 " Well, I liked him just cause he was a tender 
 foot. Wise kids is interestin an all that, but 
 you don t always like em, just as you don t al 
 ways like wise blokes. It takes all kinds o peo 
 ple to make the crooks world, same as to make 
 the good people s world, an there s been tender- 
 feet t I ve liked better n anybody else. I forgot 
 what the Kid told me his name was prob ly 
 didn t remember to give me the right one, any 
 how but I jus called im the Kid. I call him 
 that still, but I guess I m the only one that does 
 it. He s a pretty big stiff to-day, an everybody 
 can t slap im on the back. I sort o brought im 
 up, you know, an he ain t one o them that for 
 gets things except his name. 
 
 " Course I m proud t he s turned out a fly 
 bloke, but things was different when I first got to 
 chewin th rag with him in that jail ; I tried to 
 persuade him to go home. I told him to write to 
 his gov nor an get the thing fixed up. I can t 
 197 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 tell you exactly why I done it, but it s God s truth 
 that even now an I ain t no chicken passed 
 my forty-eighth birthday last month yes, sir, 
 even now I hate to see a kid who s been brought 
 up decent hit the road. With me t was differ 
 ent. Both my old folks was crooks, an I never 
 had a home anyhow. Stealin came natural to 
 me, an* Chicago, where I was born, made me 
 wise. If a man s got a bent for swipin , Chicago 
 11 tell him how to get his graft in. You know 
 that as well as I do. New York ain t no saint, 
 neither some mighty good thieves have come 
 out o that town but if a kid is lookin for a place 
 to get dead wise, let him railroad for dear old Chi. 
 I like the place, God knows, but it s crooked 
 crooked as a fish-hook. 
 
 " Well, this kid t I m tellin you about, he lis 
 tened to me all right, but he wouldn t write to his 
 gov nor. He was stuck on himself see? an 
 right, too. I wouldn t have the gov nor find 
 me here, he says, f I had to take ten years in the 
 Pen. Well, I didn t know anythin better n to 
 tell him to ask the judge to send him to the Ref. 
 I know what the Ref is as well as the next bloke ; 
 I know that it s where a lot o kids gets wise. 
 Old Fraxy, when he was makin believe sen- 
 198 
 
On Sentence Day 
 
 tencin Eddie a few minutes ago he told the 
 truth. The Ref s the place where a thief goes 
 through his prenticeship. Jus the same, I d 
 rather see a kid o mine take his chances in the 
 Ref than in the Pen, an I gave it to that kid 
 straight. I told him what he d find at the Ref 
 an what he wanted to steer clear of, an then I 
 explained to him how he could get a mooch on 
 an give the shop the slip. He was a nervy kid, 
 an there s mighty few Refs t a nervy kid need 
 stop in if he s got a hankerin for the open. W y, 
 they had me in a Ref when I was twelve years 
 old, an I didn t stay there a week. They got me 
 back after a while, but I mooched again, an* 
 they re lookin for me yet. 
 
 " Well, the judge, he gave the Kid what I told 
 him to ask for. I d explained to the Kid how he 
 wanted to put in his plea when the judge asked 
 him if he had anythin to say why the court 
 shouldn t pronounce sentence on him, an he got 
 off his song an dance all right. I can hear the Kid 
 now when he came back to the jail. He came 
 up to me an said : Ruderick, if I can beat that 
 school, I m goin home to the gov nor. You ve 
 done me a good turn, do you know it? Course 
 I jollied him along a little an told him not to get 
 14 199 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 too Sunday-schooly all of a sudden when he got 
 home, an the next day the sheriff took him away. 
 An for the next three years Ruderick MeKlowd 
 used to pat himself on the back every now an 
 then when he thought o the Kid. I pictured 
 him at home, you know, livin with his gov nor, 
 goin to school, fallin in love with nice girls, an* 
 gettin to be one o the town s promisin young 
 men. I had to do a bit in the Pen about eighteen 
 months after the Kid was sent to the Ref, an 
 whenever I d get real down in the mouth like 
 about the latter end o things an what s what, I 
 used to say to myself : * Well, Ruderick, you 
 did that kid a good turn anyhow, an I d brace 
 up. I remember once wakin up in the middle o 
 the night out of a dream. I d been up in heaven, 
 an Peter he wouldn t let me pass the gates. 
 1 You re a bad lot, Ruderick, he says ; I couldn t 
 let you in f you was me own son. I remember 
 t I said to him, as well as if I d said the words 
 out loud: Peter, I says, ain t. you forgettin 
 that good mark t I got for bein square with that 
 kid, an then I woke up. I m just tellin you 
 this, you know, so s you can understand how 
 things was." 
 
 There was a pause in Ruderick s narrative, and 
 
 200 
 
On Sentence Day 
 
 the bolts of the iron door of a place quite other 
 than heaven were shot back to remind us how 
 far from heaven we were. Every one thought 
 that the judge had sent for the men to be sen 
 tenced, but it was a false alarm. The turnkey 
 had a letter to deliver to one of the court prison 
 ers, and we separated into groups again; and 
 Ruderick knotted the broken thread of his rem 
 iniscences. 
 
 " Are you listenin ? " he asked. 
 
 " Sure," I replied. A man cooped up is in 
 terested in everything; if he wasn t, he d go off 
 his head. 
 
 He continued: 
 
 " About three years after meetin the Kid, I 
 got settled in the Pen across the river from this 
 town where we are now. The same judge had 
 hold o me once before, an he was hostile an 
 gave me five years; I guess I d earned it. The 
 place began to get crowded after I d been there 
 about a year, an we had to double up, an who 
 do you think they gave me for a cell companion? 
 That kid! There he was with his hair cropped 
 an the stripes on im; I knew him the minute 
 they shoved him into the cell. 
 
 " Kid/ I says, this ain t reg lar ; how d this 
 happen? Did the gov nor cut up rough? 
 
 201 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Ruderick, he says, I never went back to 
 the gov nor. I done as you tole me an mooched 
 from the Ref mooched the second week. But 
 they got me again. A farmer t I went to for 
 breakfast the mornin after, he sent for the cop 
 per at the Ref, an they took me back. The 
 super gave me a lickin for fair, an told me f I 
 give him the slip again he d stick me in the dun 
 geon. Well, I seen kids bigger n me come out 
 o the dungeon; I ain t a baby, but I couldn t 
 stand for it I ain t goin to lie about it. I stayed 
 there a year, an got to be one o the boss kids 
 o the shop. An you know what that means, 
 Ruderick, he says; the kids that ain t bosses 
 look up to you an think you re a dead fly bloke. 
 They keep crackin you up as a perfessional, an 
 after a while you begin to think yourself that 
 you re hot stuff. That s the way it went with me, 
 anyhow, and at the end o the year I didn t think 
 any more bout goin back to the gov nor. I d 
 made up my mind t I would be hot stuff an a 
 perfessional ; an one night another boss kid an 
 me, we jumped out one o the windows an got 
 away. He knew of a place where there was 
 semoleons lyin loose, an we went an got em, 
 an I been hittin it up that way ever since. He s 
 
 202 
 
On Sentence Day 
 
 in here too. We got pinched for goin on the 
 dip, an the judge gave us both three years. I 
 thought they d put us together, but they didn t. 
 He s in the cigar factory, an I m over in the 
 foundry. Gosh, it s hard work in that foundry, 
 Ruderick. The guard s got it in for me too. 
 He does me every time he gets a chance. I ve 
 been in the dungeon twice already. 
 
 " Well, I don t need to tell you how I felt- 
 that kid t I d been bankin on! I suppose I 
 ought to a braced him up again an talked to 
 the warden about him an got his gov nor on his 
 track, but a fellow like me ain t good for two 
 stabs at reformin , an I done just the opposite. 
 A man s skill aches in him till he gets it out, jus* 
 like the right words for a thing, an I trained him 
 to be a perfessional. I didn t do it right away. 
 For nearly six months I kept squeezin my brains 
 to figure out what I ought to do, but it s a temp 
 tation to a fellow like me to have a chance to 
 make a good thief out of a smart kid. I don t 
 know if you ve ever been in the same fix yourself, 
 but to me sometimes the temptation to hand on 
 what you know s worse n whisky. You see, I ve 
 always been a crook, an I can t help figurin out 
 what I can make of a nervy kid if I get my blink- 
 203 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 ers on him. Course after what I d told him three 
 years before in the jail bout goin back to his 
 gov nor an bracin up, it seemed eatin my words 
 to give him the steer I did ; but I was square with 
 him. One night I told him what I would or 
 wouldn t do, just as he wanted. Kid, I says 
 to him, I can put you next, if you like, an make 
 you a first-class grafter; but you want to make 
 up your mind for keeps whether you want to be 
 one or not. You can t play with the business. 
 You got to forget all about the gov nor. Once 
 a grafter, you got to stick to it if you re goin to 
 succeed. 
 
 " Ruderick, my gov nor 11 never see me 
 again. I m a thief, an he ll feel better thinkin 
 I ve croaked. 
 
 " He meant it, an* for the next twelve months 
 he celled with me a year I done my best to 
 make him a wise one. I don t know if you ever 
 trained a kid or not, but let me tell you that there 
 ain t anythin nicer in this world than fashionin 
 a youngster with brains. It s jus like trainin a 
 kid o* your own. You watch him gettin next, 
 day after day, an you keep sayin to yourself: 
 1 I m doin this. They got to give me credit for 
 him. It s discouragin as the devil when the kid 
 
 204 
 
On Sentence Day 
 
 ain t smart, but that kid t I had was smart as 
 they make em. He d catch on to what I was de- 
 scribin to him fore I d even finished what I was 
 sayin . I see, I see, he d say ; an I could go on 
 to somethin else. 
 
 " What surprised im most was the priv leges 
 a bloke can get in the Pen if he knows how. I 
 had im out o the foundry an in the feather- 
 pickin department the softest snap in the place 
 a week after I took hold of him. There was a 
 detective t had the run o the place, an he an 
 the warden grafted together. The fly cop ud 
 find out which pris ners could raise the stuff to 
 make it interestin for him to go to the warden an 
 ask favors for em, an then he an the warden ud 
 divvy. I knew the fly cop from way back, an 
 I worked him without money. He knew t I was 
 pretty wise, an he came to me one day an gave 
 me a straight steer. Says he : MeKlowd, if 
 you ll put me next to any thin that -you know s 
 goin on outside, I ll stand for somethin soft here 
 in the Pen. He knew t I knew the blokes out 
 side, an was likely to be able to tell him what 
 they was doin , an he wanted to get wise off me. 
 I pretended to take the tip, an he began showin 
 me favors. I ain t done such tall lyin in a ten- 
 205 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 ner as I did to that copper; but he never got 
 on to me. I d say to him : l There s goin to 
 be a safe blown open out in Chicago next month, 
 an you want to get next. He d thank me an 
 tell the warden to do somethin for me t I want 
 ed, and then go gallivantin all over the shop. 
 Course the safe was never blown, but all I had 
 to say was that the crooks had prob ly got scared 
 off, an he took it all in. 
 
 " I even think that T could a got the Kid out 
 o the Pen through that copper. I might a had 
 to put up a little cash to grease things, but the 
 fellow had an all-fired big pull. He knew bout 
 the warden s bein crooked, an the warden knew 
 bout him, an both had to square each other. 
 See? But I didn t try to spring the Kid; jus* 
 kept on trainin him. You know what he is to 
 day. We old uns call him The Michigan Kid, 
 but the coppers all know him as the fly De 
 troit crook. He ain t been in prison in the last 
 ten years, an yet he s doin stunts right along. 
 He s got a block o houses out in Frisco, an 
 owns a big gamblin joint in Chi an I guess 
 he grafts ten thousand every year besides. He s 
 so slick they can t touch him. He shows up in 
 Detroit every now an then, an they lock him 
 206 
 
On Sentence Day 
 
 up as a suspicious character if it s circus day, or 
 there s some big convention on; but they have 
 to let him go in a few days. There s blokes that 
 call him a freak ; they say t he had luck. That s 
 rot. If all the crooks in this country had that 
 kid s brains, they d be just as successful. I tell 
 you brains count for as much in this business as 
 they do in bankin . If you ain t got em, you 
 can t be A Number One. 
 
 " I saw the Kid bout a year ago over in 
 York, an he told me t his gov nor still had a 
 reward out for any one t ud give him news of 
 his son. He read bout it, he said, in a Western 
 paper. He asked me if I thought he ought to 
 write to the old man. I told im no. Kid, I 
 says, you decided bout that way back when 
 you an me was in the Pen together. You 
 couldn t stay home if you went there, so why 
 make a bull an show up at all? " 
 
 " I hate to make the gov nor feel bad/ he 
 says. 
 
 " That may be, Kid, I says, but you ought 
 to V thought that out years back. It s too late 
 now. He agreed with me." 
 
 Once again the bolts of the door not of 
 heaven were shot back, and this time there was 
 no letter to be delivered. 
 207 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 "All ready, boys," the sheriff called; "his 
 honor s waiting on you." 
 
 The men and boys were handcuffed together 
 in couples. 
 
 " Good luck, fellows ! " we cried after them. 
 
 And in solemn procession, with the sheriff at 
 the head, they went to their fate. Some of them 
 are still " doing time," others are again waiting 
 for Sentence Day, and a few have passed on to 
 that final court from which there is no appeal, 
 and which they dread least of all. 
 
 208 
 
PEGGIE NIVEN. 
 
 I. 
 
 Every human being would perhaps question 
 the statement, but the fact is that every human 
 being lives on a theory and acts nine times out 
 of ten as the servant and interpreter of an idea. 
 Fate intervenes the tenth time and converts the 
 servant of an idea into a hero or a poltroon ac 
 cording as God or the devil has created him, but 
 these interventions are episodes. 
 
 The idea which Peggie Niven served and inter 
 preted was that the world is a " graft." She did not 
 go the length of claiming originality for this idea. 
 It does not differ at all from that held by many 
 eminent persons in all ages that everything any 
 one possesses belongs to any one else who is strong 
 enough or cunning enough to take it and keep 
 it, and that honesty is, strictly speaking, one of the 
 luxuries of personal pride, taxed heavily as are 
 all luxuries of pride. She was exceptional only 
 in the frankness with which she acknowledged her 
 209 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 idea to herself. It seemed to her simply the 
 self-evident maxim on which all the people she 
 had ever known from her earliest childhood had 
 consistently acted in moments when they had 
 their wits about them ; and her wits she intended 
 to keep about her always. She needed them in 
 her business. Lisle Prankerd and Edwin Parl- 
 by had also their ideas, but neither they nor their 
 ideas are of any consequence whatever, except 
 incidentally. 
 
 Late one evening, when the persons of this 
 story were many years younger than at present, 
 Lisle Prankerd was making his way to his lodg 
 ings along one of the ill-lit streets in the out 
 skirts of Omaha. He did not lodge in the out 
 skirts of Omaha because he regarded them as an 
 ideal place of residence, but because since his col 
 lege days he had been looking for his fortune and 
 had not found it. That afternoon, indeed, it had 
 occurred to him that he might never find it; 
 which notion being to him so unnatural as to be 
 morbid, he had taken counsel with his wisdom 
 and invited certain of his acquaintance to try 
 whether it is possible to dine in Omaha. When 
 the bill for that experiment was paid, he carried 
 in his waistcoat pocket his last bank-note, and 
 
 210 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 hadn t an idea in his head where the next bank 
 note was to come from. As his uncertainty on 
 this point, however, did not trouble him, he re 
 garded the wisdom of having dined as unques 
 tionable. He stepped lightly and briskly and 
 hummed a bit of a street-song much in vogue in 
 those remote days, and when at an obscure corner 
 he was summoned to " t row up " his hands he 
 laughed aloud. But he " t rew up " his hands. 
 
 " Keep em up now, young man, keep em up," 
 commanded the knight of the road. " I got 
 some more dates to-night, an I can t linger with 
 you long." 
 
 " Hope they ll bring you in more than this 
 one," answered Prankerd, while the stranger 
 rifled his pockets, taking from him his lone bank 
 note and gold watch. 
 
 " You might be fatter," the robber admitted, 
 stepping back with the plunder in his left hand. 
 " Beggars can t be choosers though, can they? 
 So-long, blokey ! " 
 
 " Don t you want to give me back that watch? 
 My best girl gave me that." 
 
 " I d like to accommodate you, pard, but I 
 need it in my business. Besides, you d prob ly 
 hock it to-morrow, you re so hard up. So-long, 
 
 211 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 blokey ; glad I met you ; take care o yourself ! " 
 
 " I guess that won t be hard now that you ve 
 got all I had that was worth taking care of. If 
 it s just the same to you I won t mind if -we don t 
 meet again." 
 
 " Don t be impolite, young man. If you ain t 
 got no respect for yourself, at least think o the 
 repitation o the city. Take care o yourself." 
 And the stranger disappeared in the darkness. 
 
 What measures the following day Lisle Prank- 
 erd took to fill his pockets need not be told. The 
 point is that for the time being they were wholly 
 unfruitful, and that that evening also he stepped 
 lightly and briskly homeward humming a bit of 
 a tune. He had not a cent in his pocket, but he 
 had dined by invitation and he had tele 
 graphed " collect " for money, which would be 
 delivered him in the morning. Having at the 
 moment nothing to lose, he had nothing to worry 
 about; and when at the same obscure corner he 
 was once more summoned to " t row up " his 
 hands he laughed even louder than before. 
 
 You re a merry one too," said the robber, ad 
 vancing to inspect Prankerd s pockets. " Keep 
 yer ban s up : I can go t rough you without help." 
 
 " Seems to me that I have heard that voice be 
 fore," returned Prankerd. 
 
 212 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 " P r aps you have ; let s swap looks at each 
 other under this glim here." And the robber 
 drew Prankerd toward the street-lamp. " W y, 
 you re the bloke t I touched last night," the 
 stranger exclaimed on verifying his suspicions. 
 " Y oughtn t to keep such late hours." 
 
 " You oughtn t either, pard," said Prankerd, 
 " if you don t get any more for your pains than 
 you ll get from me to-night." 
 
 " Can t tell, my boy, till I ve looked you over. 
 Ain t sewed everythin up in the linin* of your 
 coat? " Again the robber rifled Prankerd s 
 pockets, but this time without getting even a cent 
 of plunder. " You are dry," the robber ex 
 claimed, still covering Prankerd with the revolver. 
 " I almost feel sorry for you. Come nearer the 
 lamp, an lemme get a good squint at you. Say, 
 you ain t such a bad sort. Ain t you got no one 
 you can touch? " 
 
 Prankerd laughed. " No, I m up against it 
 all right. Suppose you let me put my hands 
 down." 
 
 " Not on your life : you re more comfortable 
 with em where they are ! You re young too, 
 ain t you? " 
 
 " Not so young as you." 
 213 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Pard, don t get passin them remarks about, 
 or I might get generous. Say, on the level, are 
 you really busted? " 
 
 " If I hadn t had an invite to-night, I couldn t 
 V dined." 
 
 " Is that straight? " 
 
 " Straight as I can make it." 
 
 The robber lowered the revolver, and drew a 
 five-dollar bill from an inside coat-pocket. " Dine 
 on me to-morrow, pard," he remarked, handing 
 Prankerd the bank-note. " The watch I needed 
 in my business as I told you, but I ain t goin to 
 have you runnin around hungry on my account. 
 When you re in luck, p r aps I ll touch you up 
 again. Take care o yourself." 
 
 " Same to you," said Prankerd, and the two 
 separated again. 
 
 It is the supreme distinction of business in the 
 United States that it possesses the interest of rou 
 lette, and that a man never knows what is going 
 to happen next. A year after Lisle Prankerd con 
 sulted with his wisdom, and dined accordingly, 
 he had found his fortune ; he was at least at the 
 moment hard in pursuit of it as fast as the New 
 York-Chicago express could bear him. It was 
 a momentary check to his satisfaction that he 
 214 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 found as the train was drawing toward Columbus 
 that he had lost his purse. Columbus is no place 
 for a man who has found his fortune and lost his 
 purse, and Prankerd knew it, and he told the con 
 ductor that he knew it. He told him also that 
 he knew the general superintendent, and that this 
 gentleman would not be pleased to hear that pas 
 sengers on his train were deprived of their purses. 
 He indicated further that it would be politic for 
 the conductor to make an effort to recover the 
 purse before Columbus was reached. Fortu 
 nately for the conductor, the detective of the di 
 vision was on the train, and he was immediately 
 advised of the theft. 
 
 There are railway detectives and railway de 
 tectives. Some are " dead " and can do nothing 
 more profitable than ride on their passes; others 
 are half " dead " and are equal to but little more 
 than arresting tramps and train-jumpers; and 
 others are very much "alive." Franklin Izod,the 
 detective on the train drawing into Columbus, be 
 longed to the last category. 
 
 " How much dough was in that purse? " he 
 asked Prankerd. 
 
 " What has that to do with you? " Prankerd 
 counter-questioned. " All you need to know is 
 
 15 215 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 that I have been touched/ and that I want my 
 purse back." 
 
 " Think you d know your leather again if you 
 saw it? " Izod queried with justifiable sarcasm. 
 
 " Find it, and see," said Prankerd. 
 
 Prankerd s alleged acquaintance with the gen 
 eral superintendent impelled Izod to make a 
 search, but he was tempted to tell Prankerd to go 
 well, to Europe ! " Wise " railway detec 
 tives should be taken gravely, but, of course, 
 Prankerd had not been let into the mysteries by 
 which " fly cops " are rated " dead " and " wise." 
 The first thing that a " wise copper " on a train 
 does on learning that a passenger has been 
 " touched " is to go through the train and see 
 whether he recognizes among the passengers any 
 known thieves. Izod began in the smoking car 
 and went through the train to the last Pullman. 
 In the last seat of the last Pullman, he saw and 
 recognized his old acquaintance Peggie Niven. 
 He bowed, shook hands, and sat down beside her, 
 not at her invitation. " Wise " detectives get 
 on without invitations. 
 
 " Suppose you ve thrown the leather out o the 
 window, haven t you, Peg? " 
 
 "What leather?" demanded Peg, foolishly 
 216 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 giving away her knowledge of the world by re 
 peating the word. 
 
 " That leather t you pulled up in the next 
 car." 
 
 In polite society it is bad form to make a 
 woman formulate a " bluff " without giving her 
 time to make a guess or two, but they do things 
 differently in the Under World, and Peggie had 
 to indicate her " bluff " in the next sentence she 
 spoke, and she had to speak quick. 
 
 " Sir," she said, " if you do not leave me in 
 stantly I ll call the conductor. I ll call him any 
 how. Conductor ! " she called. He came. " This 
 man is insulting me, and I wish you would order 
 him away." 
 
 It was a poor " front," but the woman was at 
 bay, and she had to take big chances. The con 
 ductor was soon advised by Izod how matters 
 stood, and was told to ask " the gent that had 
 been touched " to come and " size up the slick 
 Moll." The " slick Moll " had attracted the at 
 tention of the other passengers, and by the time 
 Prankerd appeared there was a willingness on the 
 part of some of the men present to interfere in 
 her behalf. It was just as well for the men that 
 they did not act upon their willingness. 
 217 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Did you see this woman in your car? " asked 
 Izod of Prankerd. 
 
 Prankerd admitted that he had. " She sat 
 for a while in the seat behind me, and later she 
 asked me to rise from my seat while she looked 
 for her gloves." 
 
 " That s all for the present, sir/ said Izod. " If 
 you will kindly take a seat at the other end of the 
 car, I ll join you in a few minutes." Prankerd 
 took the seat. 
 
 " Now, Peg," continued Izod, " you better 
 cough up an have no rows, cause I ve got you 
 dead to rights. You just dive down in that 
 stockin o yours an haul out the roll. If I can, 
 I ll fix it up an let you mooch." 
 
 Peggie knew of nothing better than to keep up 
 her " bluff," and she kept it up with vigor and 
 force. 
 
 " You dirty louse, you," she was moved to say, 
 " I wouldn t dive down in my stockin for you or 
 any other slob like you. You leave me alone." 
 
 " Want me to pinch you? " 
 
 " Oh, pinch your old clapper-tongue, will you, 
 an shut up." 
 
 Peggie saw fit to make these remarks at the 
 top of her voice, and her ordinary manner of 
 speaking was not quiet. 
 
 218 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 " All right, then," said Izod, " put up your 
 dukes while I put the cuffs on em. If you can t 
 appreciate kindness, I m not goin to fool with 
 you. Put em up ! " And Izod drew out his 
 handcuffs. It was an unpleasant scene for a 
 Pullman car, but Prankerd knew the general su 
 perintendent. Peggie had no more than seen 
 the handcuffs when she changed her " bluff " ; 
 she screamed and wept like a woman in a fit of 
 hysterics. Prankerd and other men in the car 
 rushed to the rescue. " Couldn t they, per 
 haps, do something for the woman? " they asked, 
 and crowded about Izod and Peggie. Prankerd 
 pushed his way through the gathering, and he 
 and the woman looked each other full in the face. 
 Suddenly, the woman again changed " front." 
 
 " Aw ! git away, it s my pal," she said, laugh 
 ing, and grabbed Prankerd s hand. 
 
 You ve got me, my good woman." 
 
 " That s what I had in Omaha; don t you re 
 member Omaha? " 
 
 Yes, I remember Omaha, but what s that got 
 to do with pal?" 
 
 " Don t you remember the two nights you 
 were held up out there? I m sure you re the 
 bloke. Ain t forgotten, have you, how the fel- 
 219 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 low that held you up divvied with you? He had 
 on a brown coat, don t you recollect, an talked 
 with you bout dinin ? You wouldn t send a fel 
 low like that over the road, would you? " 
 
 The detective saw things coming his way and 
 released the hand he held. Prankerd scrutinized 
 the face before him and did not ask it how it came 
 to belong to a woman; he only expressed an 
 opinion in regard to the judgment to be passed 
 upon him after death. The spectators tittered. 
 
 " Sure. We re pals. Shake," said the woman, 
 not meaning to assent to Prankerd s expressed 
 opinion, but to his unexpressed recognition. 
 
 " Seems to me you ve changed since Omaha 
 days," said Prankerd, accepting the invitation to 
 " shake " and laughing. Prankerd was not a 
 snob, and the titter of the spectators had brought 
 the humor of his case home to him. 
 
 " Changed my duds but not myself; I m just 
 as square as I was then, an you ain t goin to see 
 me railroaded just for makin a little touch. I 
 didn t know you when I saw you in the other car; 
 you can gamble on it. Fix the thing up, will 
 you?" 
 
 Prankerd meditated ; he liked Peggie. " Divvy 
 and divvy, turn about s fair play. Hand out the 
 roll and I ll split it with you, I ll give you half." 
 
 220 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 Peggie produced the roll from her stocking, 
 and handed it to Prankerd. He counted it, and 
 handed her back half. 
 
 " You se a man," she said. 
 
 " So are you sometimes ! " 
 
 The detective viewed the exchange with greedy 
 eyes, but said nothing ; there was nothing for him 
 to say. By rights, as rights go in such circum 
 stances, there was nothing for any one to say, 
 but one Edwin Parlby, also a passenger, thought 
 otherwise. Edwin Parlby had a Calvinist some 
 where among his forbears; he did not know 
 just where, but no matter for that ; he spelled gov 
 ernment and justice in " large caps " and had 
 ideas of public spirit. He had watched the 
 transaction between Prankerd and Peggie with 
 a mixture of astonishment and indignation ; and 
 when people did in his presence what he thought 
 wrong, it was his habit to tell them so. He knew 
 the habit was unpleasant, but he said it was a 
 duty. He stepped forward and addressed Prank 
 erd. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, do I understand that you 
 mean to allow this woman to go free? " 
 
 Prankerd looked at the speaker with exasperat 
 ing good humor. " I m sure I don t know what 
 concern that is of yours," he said. 
 
 221 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Although you know absolutely that she has 
 picked your pocket? " 
 
 " Although I know absolutely that she has 
 picked my pocket. I repeat, I don t know what 
 concern it is of yours. The pocket was not your 
 pocket. The lady happens to be a friend of 
 mine; she is at liberty to pick my pocket when 
 ever she likes ; indeed she has exercised that privi 
 lege from the first time she met me ! " 
 
 " Get a mooch on, you snipe-nosed galoot," in 
 terrupted Peggie. " Mind you own business if 
 you got any." Edwin Parlby s nose did bear a 
 striking likeness to the bill of a snipe, and one of 
 the bystanders hummed the chorus of a popular 
 song " Why don t you git a lady of your own? 
 Oh I do know! 9 
 
 "I ll soon make it some concern of mine!" 
 said the virtuous Parlby. " Detective, I call on 
 you to arrest that woman as a thief, and the man 
 as a witness, or worse, leaving the State. If you 
 don t, I ll do it myself; and I ll make it damned 
 hot for you." . 
 
 222 
 
II. 
 
 Fate, which makes history, and is much con 
 cerned to make it worth reading, ordained that 
 ten years after Edwin Parlby s exhibition of pub 
 lic spirit the three actors in the little scene in the 
 railway carnage should find themselves settled in 
 the same municipality. The place was in the 
 far West, and need not be designated otherwise 
 than as the city of Blank. People in the far 
 West are sensitive and prone to show their appre 
 ciation of scribes who report ill of them with a 
 vivacity which the present historians are anxious 
 to avoid. 
 
 The three had prospered greatly in the interval. 
 Edwin Parlby s concern for the welfare of the 
 public was quite compatible with a concern for 
 himself. He had recently got the leading bank 
 of the city of Blank where he could squeeze it 
 and had squeezed. The intelligence of the board 
 of directors was so stimulated by the pressure 
 that they discovered he was just the man they 
 223 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 had long wanted for president. Lisle Prankerd 
 was one of the directors; it had been in the city 
 of Blank that he had found his fortune. He re 
 signed from the board and parted with his inter 
 ests in the bank when Parlby was elected : he said 
 he did not like the union of so much public spirit 
 and so much private enterprise in the same man. 
 Peggie Niven was the local queen, in the city of 
 Blank, of the Under World. 
 
 In the Under as in the Upper World there are 
 some women born queens ; they take supreme po 
 sitions, and command and exact obedience as 
 their natural right. Such women are amusing 
 and entertaining, and at times very powerful, but 
 are often more easily overthrown and deprived of 
 power than the woman who has made her power 
 secure by first being unobtrusive. Peggie Niven 
 was such a woman. It may, indeed, be said of 
 her that in the early part of her career she had 
 never so much as dreamed of queenship. She 
 never possessed the gift of allurement ; from the 
 first she was obliged to win her way without the 
 woman s strength which is beauty ^and without 
 the man s which is muscle. She had to make up 
 for both by pluck and audacity, but the latter 
 quality was a comparatively late development. 
 224 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 Pluck she had as a child. She was born in 
 one of the slums of New York, and from the very 
 beginning of things had to suffer privation and 
 brutality. At seven she was one of a crowd of 
 children who fed themselves from the grocer s 
 sidewalk display. At ten she was selling news 
 papers and sleeping in cellars, in spite of The So 
 ciety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. 
 She knew about this society; all "wise" slum 
 children have to know about it; but the society 
 did not know about her. At the age of fifteen 
 she was an expert pickpocket, and " buzzed " 
 around " Molls " at funerals, and relieved them of 
 their " leathers." She had seen how this trick 
 was done while vending papers, and her gift for 
 mathematics made it clear that " Moll-buzzing " 
 was much more remunerative than sleeping in 
 cellars and peddling Park Row literature. Some 
 girls come to this conclusion earlier than did Peg 
 gie. It must be admitted that it is not founded 
 wholly on mathematical proofs ; but Peggie even 
 as a child required that things be definitely dem 
 onstrated to her before being satisfied that she 
 was not being " stuffed." Later she was not so 
 exacting in this particular; her audacity had de 
 veloped and she had learned to trust " her nerve." 
 225 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 She was twenty-two years of age when she first 
 introduced herself to Prankerd. She had shifted 
 from New York to the West out of motives of per 
 sonal shyness : the " Metropolis " wished to show 
 her public courtesies which she would have found 
 embarrassing. The police had made her ac 
 quaintance, had demanded and secured a photo 
 graph of her none too attractive countenance, had 
 given her a number in their gallery of celebrities, 
 and were eager upon the first opportunity to 
 show her still other marks of their esteem. 
 
 Her career in the West for the first few years 
 of her residence there is remarkable mainly for 
 her ability to assume a man s responsibilities and 
 to take a man s chances. She drifted soon into 
 a " mob of grafters," and did anything which 
 came to hand and promised to be profitable. 
 Eventually she became leader of the " mob," but 
 before long she decided that her talents and self- 
 reliance were suited better to " going it alone." 
 Sentimental attachments, and interest in men 
 merely as men, are not reported in connection 
 with this period of her life. 
 
 Her reappearance in the East, if it be no of 
 fense to Columbus to classify this " berg " with 
 Eastern communities, was intentional and in pur- 
 
 226 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 suance of a carefully planned tour, but it cha 
 grined her very much to be told in Columbus by 
 the judge before whom Stockholder Parlby suc 
 ceeded in bringing her, that it was the will of the 
 commonwealth that she settle in its penitentiary 
 for five years. " It s my last trip East," was her 
 resolution on receiving the sentence, which was 
 shortened by good conduct to three years and 
 nine months time enough, however, for her to 
 come to some conclusions, the most important of 
 which was that " graftin doesn t pay " and that 
 she was " goin to chuck it." As a rule, it takes 
 women longer to come to this conclusion than it 
 takes men; they allow instinct to regulate their 
 crimes as well as their affections; men appeal to 
 their reason, and reason is never so long-suffer 
 ing as instinct at least so say criminals. By 
 this it must not be construed that Peggie was pre 
 pared to join the ranks of the discouraged. Not 
 she ! When Lisle Prankerd offered what was to 
 her and at an earlier time would have been to him 
 a great sum of " regret money " for his unwilling 
 participation in her compulsory residence in Co 
 lumbus, to make " a stab at something else," she 
 immediately went West and cast about for a new 
 business. 
 
 227 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 The possibilities in the West for a woman of 
 resources are infinite. Ruderick MeKlowd is 
 authority for the statement that " a woman with 
 a good mug and some dough in her stocking is 
 the best investment in the West a man can go in 
 for," and he is reported to have expressed a re 
 gret that he wasn t born a woman. Peggie at 
 different times in her life sincerely regretted that 
 she had not been born a man. Whether as a 
 man she would ever have amounted to what with 
 Prankerd s aid she did as a woman may be 
 doubted. On her return to the West she " took 
 a fresh deal in the game," and her name appeared 
 
 in the tax-collector s books in the city of 
 
 as that of the owner of certain temples where 
 men sacrificed to Fortune and to other heathen 
 deities whose worship is not extinct. Beyond 
 the limits of her own clique she was neither queen 
 nor priestess ; she was " that coarse woman that 
 you always see at the races " ; within the limits 
 of her clique, and it was not small, she was the 
 " swiftest rag on the Coast." No one ventured 
 to name her title to her face ; she was Mrs. Peg 
 gie Niven ; but the " push," her world, claimed 
 the right to speak of her in the vernacular. They 
 took a proprietary interest in her success, and ac- 
 228 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 cepted her as their exponent and benefactor in 
 matters of Under- World importance. If a crook 
 of prominence died it was naturally expected that 
 Peggie should help to bury him, if he had forgot 
 ten to invest in a burial association. If a gambler 
 " went broke " he betook himself to Peggie for a 
 fresh " stake " ; and if a friend got " pinched " 
 Peggie was the one to bail him out. It is even 
 reported that the Upper World levied upon her 
 for contributions to charity, and got them. It is 
 not reported, however, that she was ever seen in 
 an Upper-World drawing-room. In the words 
 of the Under- World song, she " wouldn t be a 
 lady if she could." Her horses often raced with 
 those of Upper- World celebrities, and her money 
 was deposited at the same bank which held the 
 " securities " of all the virtues, but personal con 
 tact with her was essentially an Under-World 
 privilege. She had not even found it convenient 
 to get " square " with the officious Mr. Parlby, 
 the old acquaintance of Columbus days, and a 
 
 near neighbor in the city of , but it must 
 
 be confessed that she was a woman who seldom 
 did anything that was not convenient. 
 
 At the time when the directors of the Bank of 
 the Occident discovered that they had long 
 229 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 wanted Edwin Parlby for president, the citizens 
 of the municipality of were universally oc 
 cupied in a game of beggar-my-neighbor, which 
 cannot have been gambling because there was 
 and is an ordinance against gambling in public 
 places duly passed and made a part of the effect 
 ive law of the city. It makes all the difference 
 that town-lots are played for instead of chips, and 
 that the expanse of heaven itself serves as walls 
 and ceiling of the gambling-hell. The last great 
 game of beggar-my-neighbor had been played 
 to a finish about ten years before, and with a 
 handful of exceptions every one s neighbor had 
 been beggared with such completeness that there 
 had been neither money nor pluck in the posses 
 sion of citizens sufficient in number for play 
 ing the game since; but of late every one had 
 begun to assure every one else that the cards were 
 cut and shuffled for a new deal. Every one had 
 begun to assure every one else that " good times " 
 were coming, when every one would say in 
 chorus that he believes the price of real estate is 
 going up, and (the voice of the people being the 
 voice of God) by a fiat of lies would increase its 
 value and make something out of nothing : all of 
 
 which means, that in the city of , where 
 
 230 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 any man might become a millionaire or President 
 of the United States, every man felt it no more 
 than respectful to Lady Fortune to give her a 
 chance to do something handsome by him. There 
 had been ten years of labor and saving which 
 made no one happy because it was not the 
 custom for any one to consent to be happy 
 on what one man may make by the work 
 of his brain and hands ; it was but common sense 
 seemingly for them to pool their savings from 
 time to time with the understanding, that every 
 one should cheat and be cheated until the luckiest 
 or most skillful half-dozen gamesters got posses 
 sion of the pool. By this arrangement, some 
 few at least were made happy. 
 
 Lisle Prankerd was one of those whom the last 
 division of savings had made happy. In the con 
 viction that history repeats itself, it is perhaps not 
 unnatural, that he was also among the first to 
 encourage another division of savings and should 
 expect to be made happy again. His fellow citi 
 zens did not hold him either hateful or infamous 
 for this. On the contrary, inasmuch as he had 
 cheated them in all honor and had dedicated some 
 portion of his winnings to public improvements, 
 they held him a shrewd fellow and were humbly 
 16 231 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 grateful to him. When he said that " good 
 times " were coming his words were bandied from 
 mouth to mouth, and every one who heard them, 
 instead of being rationally sorry and tightening 
 his purse-strings, was irrationally glad. This 
 cheerful unreason in a community is called a 
 spirit of business enterprise. When it was known 
 that he had bet " good times " were coming and 
 had staked almost all he had realized on his in 
 terests in the Bank of the Occident that he had 
 quietly bought options on bits of town and sub 
 urban property for which there had hitherto 
 been no market the cheerful unreason became 
 more cheerful and there was an instant disposition 
 to back his bet. 
 
 What checked their cheerfulness for a moment 
 at least was not that they perceived its unwisdom 
 and that backing Prankerd s bet was precisely the 
 way to make him win it and win it from them 
 selves ; it was that Parlby had made a bet on the 
 other side. He had for a long time bought 
 in whatever realty was offered at forced sale 
 in and about the city, and was become the 
 largest holder in the county. When the " spirit 
 of business enterprise " stood erect because of 
 Prankerd s investments, Parlby reduced it at a 
 stroke to a state of limp dubiety and surmise ; he 
 232 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 began to offer his holdings for sale at any price, 
 at whatever he could get. Prankerd was admit 
 ted to be shrewd, but it was just possible he was 
 " losing his grip " ; it was quite certain Parlby 
 had " done " him in the matter of the Bank of 
 the Occident ; it was obvious to any one that if a 
 man is bent on gambling at all on a rising market 
 the ideal course for him is to hold off until he 
 cannot win much and may lose everything. This 
 cheerless unreason is called a spirit of business 
 caution. 
 
 Lisle Prankerd did not want the property 
 which Parlby offered ; that was why he bid it in. 
 It was also why Parlby offered more and yet 
 more for sale, and why Prankerd continued to bid 
 it in ; until it became plain that if the " good 
 times " really did not come, and that suddenly, 
 the last man that any one need wish to become 
 would be Lisle Prankerd. 
 
 When matters were in this posture a card was 
 brought one morning to Prankerd at his office. 
 
 " Yes, it s me," said Peggie entering; " always 
 on hand when I m wanted, and sometimes when 
 I m not. I come to talk business and you can 
 send away that young man if you don t want him 
 yourself as a protection or a witness; I want to 
 place some dough ; I want to know on the level 
 233 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 what all this shindy means between you and Parl- 
 by. The town s a good town an I believe in it ; 
 I want to buy some lots." 
 
 " And you come to me for advice? I advise 
 you to hold off. The boom s coming all right ; 
 but it won t come till Parlby wants it to : Parlby s 
 got me treed." 
 
 " You mean it s just a case of freeze-out? " 
 
 Prankerd laughed. 
 
 " You speak as if a case of freeze-out were easy. 
 Yes, it s just a case of freeze-out." 
 
 " Damn Parlby," said Peggie. 
 
 " Just my sentiments, only much more ele 
 gantly expressed," said Prankerd. 
 
 " All right ; I guess I know all I want to," said 
 Peggie. 
 
 " So do I," said Prankerd. 
 
 " Yes, I guess you do ; but I give you a point 
 er. I don t know whether I m going to take a 
 hand in this game or not ; I don t mostly tell what 
 I m going to do beforehand, it mightn t be con 
 venient ; but just you don t cash in your chips be 
 fore you have to." 
 
 And with this oracular metaphor she started to 
 take her leave. She paused at the door. 
 
 " I owe that Parlby one from way back : it s 
 about time his luck took a tumble." 
 234 
 
III. 
 
 The precise logical connection of the matters 
 still to be narrated with each other and with the 
 matters already detailed must be left in some 
 measure in an obscurity which the intelligence of 
 the reader no doubt will penetrate. The plain 
 facts are, that immediately after Peggie s inter 
 view with Prankerd there was a second fund in 
 the market to oppose Parlby ; Peggie had strained 
 her credit, which was considerable, to the utmost 
 and became a reckless buyer of options. 
 
 A few days later a rumor ran like mad through 
 the town, in especial through the Under World, 
 that the Bank of the Occident was not safe, and 
 depositors in a passion of haste to withdraw their 
 accounts fought on the bank floor for priority. 
 The story ran that the bank had been robbed in 
 open day : the story was scoffed at in the streets 
 and in the clubs ; the deliberate opinion was that 
 Parlby had overreached himself, and that the rob 
 bery was a " fake " ; and the deliberate opinion 
 
 235 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 was confirmed when it came to be understood 
 that after a hasty meeting of the directors Parlby 
 was held to have overdrawn his personal balance 
 and was in the opinion of his associates discred 
 ited. Parlby, the deliberate opinion was, had 
 been sacrificed, justly enough because of his pri 
 vate ventures, to save the bank. After a day or 
 two a definite account was made public, but the 
 account was too " sensational " to obtain imme 
 diate belief. The bank was solvent, but it was 
 indubitably weakened : the sporting world needs 
 its capital where it can lay its hands on it at a 
 minute s warning. The sporting world s capita) 
 is considerable, the sporting world is not trustful, 
 and it had been long in the habit of banking with 
 the Occident. What had happened in the Occi 
 dent was this. 
 
 On the morning of the day when the panic 
 had occurred, a low, thick-set man with shaggy 
 whiskers and a hand-bag had entered the Occi 
 dent as if it belonged to him and demanded to 
 see the president. The president s sanctum in 
 those days was a space apart walled off by slabs 
 of plate glass a quarter of an inch thick and 
 screened from vulgar gaze by silk curtains in baby 
 blue. The visitor announced that he had busi- 
 
 236 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 ness of importance to both of them and requested 
 Mr. Parlby as they entered the sanctum to give 
 orders that they might be uninterrupted. When 
 this order had been given and the door of the 
 sanctum was closed, the visitor dropped his hand 
 bag in front of his chair and with one hand cov 
 ered Parlby with a revolver in excellent condition 
 and with the other produced a pint flask. , 
 
 " I guess I got the drop on you, pard, all right : 
 don t move cause I m kind o nervous in m rin 
 gers and this here gun s got a blamed easy pull. 
 Besides, this flask s full o nitro-glyceri-i-ine an* I 
 might drop it, an you an me an the bank ud 
 all make our bow in hell together. Sit down care 
 ful like, so s not to set off no electric buttons nor 
 alarms; there s no knowin how little ud make 
 me lose my hold on the bottle. There now, that s 
 real homelike and comfortable reminds me o 
 mother. Suppose we talks." 
 
 Parlby was not a coward : he said so afterward : 
 but he remembered that he was president of the 
 bank and a citizen of value in the community, 
 to say nothing of his being engaged at the mo 
 ment to marry Miss Ansted of the San Francisco 
 Ansteds. It was Parlby s steady practice in life 
 to say nothing of private motives when public 
 
 237 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 motives could honestly be put forward; and the 
 man certainly did look as if he meant business, 
 and nitro-glyceri-i-ine is not to be despised. 
 
 " It s up to you to do the talking," said Parl- 
 by, putting up a creditable " front." " As far as 
 I see, you ve made an ass of yourself, whoever 
 you are. All I ve got to do is just to sit quiet; 
 you can t get out of the bank; you couldn t win 
 clear in the street if you did get out of the bank ; 
 you ll go to the Pen for this morning s joke. If 
 there s anything to be said, it s you can say it." 
 
 " Sure ! I ll say it fast enough. But you can 
 come off your perch just the same. If I was 
 leary of the Pen I shouldn t be here, an you 
 know it. I ll talk business with you if that s what 
 you want; I m on my uppers see? Either I 
 get the dough I want, or I croak ; an if you don t 
 give me what I want we croak together. You re 
 my last card, an I ll play you, by God! What 
 you say o just sittin still s tommyrot ; you make 
 out a check payable to yourself for the sum I 
 name, an have the stuff brought in here an 
 stowed away in that bag, or you ve seen your 
 luck an we ll both of us know what s what." 
 
 Parlby s visitor had been speaking with a 
 fierce intentness that was convincing; Parlby 
 238 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 thought him mad. Perhaps that was why he at 
 tempted to reason with him. 
 
 " Even if I got you the stuff and stowed it 
 away in that bag, you couldn t get away with it. 
 You d better talk sense, if you ve got any. I m 
 not to be bullied in my own office, with forty 
 clerks in call, armed as well as you. That s the 
 last word I have to say, and be damned to you." 
 
 There was a battle of looks for a moment be 
 tween the visitor and the president. It was the 
 visitor who spoke with extreme coolness. 
 
 " Mr. Parlby, you will take up that pen and 
 write what I tell you. I take my chances of get 
 ting away, once the stuff is in my hands. You 
 won t give an alarm till I ve got clear of the 
 bank; I can throw a flask on the floor outside 
 as well as here, an you re much too careful of 
 your skin to take any risks. You put up a bluff 
 that I m bughouse; well! I m not so bughouse 
 but I can see you re so scared of me you can t sit 
 in that chair without holdin on. You take up 
 that pen an write what I tell you; an be quick 
 about it; I m kind o nervous, as I said, an this 
 gun s got a blamed easy pull an the outside o 
 this flask s kind o slippery." 
 
 There was another battle of looks between the 
 
 239 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 two, at the end of which Parlby shrugged his 
 shoulders and dropped his eyes and searched 
 for a pen. 
 
 It is said that the special officer of the bank 
 and half a dozen clerks started in pursuit before 
 the man with the hand-bag had fairly reached the 
 pavement. There must have been two men with 
 hand-bags; such coincidences happen. Possibly 
 the coincidence was not accidental. At all 
 events, they assailed a man with a hand-bag, and 
 so quickly did the police patrol respond to the 
 private alarm from Parlby s office that the man 
 was not yet overpowered when the wagon ar 
 rived. When he was taken into custody he 
 proved to be the wrong man, and the hand-bag 
 proved to be the wrong hand-bag. It is possible 
 that this mistake might not have been made if 
 Parlby had personally superintended the chase, 
 but he remained in his office: he was accurately 
 acquainted with the properties of nitro-glyceri- 
 i-ine, which is quite as effective in a paved street 
 as in a marble-floored building, and though he 
 may have had no regard for his own life, he had 
 other things than himself to think of. He 
 thought of them. 
 
 240 
 
Peggie Niven 
 
 The next day there was found in an alleyway 
 at the rear of the bank a suit of clothes, a re 
 volver, and a flask, all identified by Parlby as be 
 longing to the robber. The flask was found to 
 contain sweet-oil. In the minds of some of Parl- 
 by s fellow citizens this discovery confirmed the 
 notion that he had himself contrived the robbery ; 
 in the minds of others it served simply to make 
 him ridiculous ; in the minds of all it still further 
 discredited him. The directors began to suspect 
 they had been mistaken in their idea that Parlby 
 was just the man they had long wanted for presi 
 dent. Certainly, as it afterward turned out, he 
 had made a great blunder in parting with his real 
 estate. 
 
 Peggie was never again "heard to say that she 
 would get even with Parlby. In the city of Blank 
 there was little of anything that she was again 
 heard to say: she soon closed out her interests 
 there at a great profit and left the place, disap 
 pearing into the beyond where she still remains. 
 It is just possible that she feels she has got even 
 with Parlby, though it is questionable whether 
 she would hold her hand if the chance should 
 offer itself to get even with him again. All 
 things considered, it is doubtful whether Peggie s 
 ruling trait is gentleness. 
 241 
 
A DEAD ONE. 
 I. 
 
 At tramp camps in the United States a favorite 
 topic for discussion is the whereabouts of Bar 
 nard Carr. He has become for the hoboes a mys 
 terious celebrity whose disappearance from the 
 " road " they spend hours in trying to explain. 
 Some think he is again " doing time " and will 
 appear among them once more when released; 
 others hold fast to the opinion that he has 
 " croaked." 
 
 He was never a great celebrity in the sense that 
 he had become noted for a mastery in some one 
 branch of Under- World skill ; but he was consid 
 ered by the " perfesh " and the Powers That Rule 
 a remarkably clever " all-round " man: Hoboes 
 liked him because, as they put it, he was not 
 " stuck on himself." It was his custom when in 
 luck and for ten years he seemed to be always 
 in luck to visit them at their hang-outs, and 
 hoboes have always admired a crook who was 
 242 
 
A Dead One 
 
 sufficiently independent not to fear loss of caste 
 on being seen in their company. They like such 
 a man in about the same way that certain middle- 
 class people like a titled aristocrat who receives 
 them and visits them as equals. In the Under 
 World tramps are men who have tried to earn 
 titles and failed, or having earned them, have lost 
 them ; the successful criminal in the Under World 
 is given a title irrespective of his wishes. 
 
 One of the present scribes met Carr, while he 
 was at the top of his reputation, at a tramp camp 
 in the minutely tramped state of Pennsylvania. 
 It was at night, and a circle of men and boys were 
 lounging about a great fire, with the dome of the 
 stars for a tent and selected railway ties for camp- 
 chairs and cots. On a tie apart, a tie of state, sat 
 a well-dressed stranger, who was obviously the 
 guest of the evening. Even a tenderfoot would 
 have picked him out for a distinguished foreigner 
 in Hoboland. His stylish garb, white hands, 
 and polite manner were evidence enough that he 
 was no ordinary traveler of the " road." 
 
 Newcomers at the camp were not left long in 
 ignorance of the man s identity. The scribe had 
 hardly taken a seat on one of the ties when a lad 
 at his side nudged him, and said in an awestruck 
 
 243 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 whisper : " That s Carr, the great perfesh nul." 
 A heathen could not have directed attention to 
 one of his deities with more reverence. The man 
 seemed to be oblivious of the regard in which he 
 was held by the camp. His eyes were fixed on 
 the fire, and he spoke only occasionally. " How s 
 Slim comin up? " he asked once, turning to a 
 man on his right, referring evidently to some ab 
 sent roadster, and he commented on the weather 
 and the like, but he had little to say about himself, 
 and answered questions in monosyllables. When 
 he got up to leave he dropped a ten-dollar bill on 
 the tie, saying: " Wet er up on me, boys," and 
 disappeared up the track. 
 
 The tramps commented on his career and per 
 sonality after he had gone. 
 
 " How that bloke holds out ! " one exclaimed. 
 " If he s done a day in the Pen, he s done fifteen 
 years. He s got the nerve; you can t see a sign 
 o weakenin in him. Behanged f I can explain 
 it." 
 
 " He ll go to pieces all of a sudden, some day," 
 another declared. " You see f he don t. 
 There s men like that : they don t crack nor bend, 
 they bust. We ll see him here on the turf yet. 
 I tell you, the bloke don t live that can take 
 244 
 
A Dead One 
 
 stretchers in the Pen the way Carr has, an* not 
 bust. T ain t in human nature. Course he s 
 holdin out longer n some; he s nervy, an s got 
 good health; but I gamble coin he ll be hittin 
 the road after a while. He s a nice bloke right 
 nough, but what I m tellin you s the truth. A 
 crook s built like other folks, an can t live on 
 nerve forever." 
 
 " They say t he s salted down a big pile for old 
 age all the same," a westerner remarked. 
 " Frisco Blackie told me the other day that Carr 
 was one o the richest crooks in the country." 
 
 " Rich in your eye," sneered an old man from 
 Chicago. " I ll bet Carr don t salt down any- 
 thin from one year s end to the other. Crooks 
 ain t bankers; what the devil s the matter with 
 you? They blow their dough as fast as they get 
 it; and right too; some lawyer or Front-Office 
 stiff J ud cop it out if they saved it up. I ll bet 
 Carr ain t got over ten thousand put past, an 
 he ll spend all o that prob ly the next time he s 
 pinched. I tell you it s the fly cops an lawyers 
 that get the crooks coin. I ain t heard of a 
 chief in a big city that didn t retire, as they call 
 it, with his pockets full o dough. Them s the 
 blokes that does the savin . T ain t the crook." 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " What about Detroit Fraxy an his blocks o 
 houses? " asked a kid. 
 
 " Detroit Fraxy you make me tired ! He ll 
 lose em. He ll get in a hole some day, an have 
 to cough em up them houses. Look at Carr. 
 He had one o the best payin gamblin joints in 
 Frisco four years ago : he had to deed it over to 
 his lawyer fer chewin the rag fer im in that mur 
 der scrape. It s all right bout crooks makin 
 dough, but it s holdin of it that counts. God 
 never yet made a crook that has stuck to the 
 graft long, takin chances an stretchers, an come 
 out rich." 
 
 The hang-out broke up soon after this state 
 ment, and the men took trains in different direc 
 tions. 
 
 During the following five years the scribe^ saw 
 Carr twice, and heard of him once. On both oc 
 casions when he saw Carr, the man was apparent 
 ly still in luck. He was dressed well, had money 
 " to burn," was courted by his companions, and 
 had no complaint to make beyond the statement 
 that he felt that he was getting old. 
 
 " Had a year to do in Alabama not long ago," 
 he explained at the second meeting, " and the Stir 
 was so damp that my bones got wet. I don t 
 246 
 
A Dead One 
 
 mind when they S"ive me steam-heat in my cell, 
 but it rather uses me up otherwise. A fellow 
 gets cranky, you know, after he s been shut up a 
 good deal. As a kid, I didn t give a damn where 
 they put me, but the guards get all my money 
 now for things t I think I got to have. That s 
 about the only thing t I keep a bank account 
 for to get priv leges when the pinch comes. 
 And do you know t I don t feel comf table any 
 more in a large room. I ain t done such a hell 
 of a lot o time compared with some blokes, but 
 I been livin in cells off an on for the las sixteen 
 years, an I ve got so used to em t I always ask 
 for a small room now when I go to a hotel. I 
 have enough dough sometimes to pay for a whole 
 suite, as they call it, but I wouldn t feel right in 
 one. Give me a chair, a washstand, an six feet 
 to stretch out in, an old Carr s happy as the rest 
 of em. You see crooks sometimes t ain t con 
 tent till they got a whole house to themselves, but 
 I guess they ain t done as much time as me. I 
 tell you, pard, on the level the Pen does change 
 you. I m sure t I d been a bigger man f I 
 hadn t been cooped up so much. Didn t no 
 more n begin to grow than I got pinched, an I 
 ain t had a fightin chance to grow since." 
 17 247 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 " Your nerve s all right, isn t it? " the scribe 
 asked. 
 
 " It s all right so far, but you never know when 
 it ll go back on you. I m goin to try an put 
 past a stake before long for old age. I m bound 
 to weaken after a while, an I ought to have a 
 bank account to live on. Bout five years more 
 11 see me settled down, I guess. I ought to 
 plant a good swag by that time. Course it ll be 
 hard to chuck the business, but you got to cool 
 down a little when you re gettin shaky on your 
 pins, an I d rather like to die easy. God knows, 
 I ve lived hard!" 
 
 About two years after this conversation there 
 appeared in a Western newspaper an account of 
 Carr s arrest for an offense committed on the 
 Coast. It read thus : " Barnard Carr, alias 
 Cincie Shorty, was arrested by the local police 
 last night. The details of his crime have not yet 
 come in, but there is no doubt in the minds of 
 the police that Carr is the man wanted. The 
 
 dispatch from said that one of the local 
 
 banks had been taken in by a forged check call 
 ing for $15,000, and the description of the al 
 leged forger fits Carr exactly. The man has one 
 of the longest police blotter records in this coun 
 try. He has operated with one graft and an- 
 248 
 
A Dead One 
 
 other in practically every State of the Union, and 
 is not unknown in Mexico. On account of his 
 neat appearance and unobtrusive manner, he is 
 sometimes called The Gentleman Crook/ but 
 he fraternizes with tramps as well as professional 
 criminals. He is reported to take crime as seri 
 ously as an artist takes his art, and the neat jobs 
 that he has planned and done bear out the report. 
 The sheriff states that he was welcomed by the 
 other prisoners in the jail as a most distinguished 
 personage. They gathered about him on his ar 
 rival, shook his hand, and offered him the best cell 
 in the little prison. He is said to be very popu 
 lar among criminals of all classes. If guilty of 
 the crime for which he has been arrested, the 
 probability is that he will be given a severe sen 
 tence. Carr has employed the best counsel in 
 the city, and a telegram has been sent to the 
 famous criminal lawyer Ames, in Frisco, so a 
 
 hard fight may be expected, but county 
 
 has a poor opinion of forgers, and will probably 
 back up its opinion with a very pugnacious prose 
 cution. We will report the trial in detail; it 
 will probably come up during the present term of 
 court." 
 
 Six months later the Under World was noti 
 fied that Barnard Carr had received eight years. 
 249 
 
II. 
 
 A short time ago the two scribes were taking a 
 stroll in Lime Street, Liverpool. At night it is 
 one of the most instructive promenades in Eng 
 land for a man who wishes to know things; and 
 one can complete investigations that have been 
 begun in " the main stem " of towns thousands 
 of miles away. The four continents contribute 
 to the life on the pavement as well as in the places 
 of entertainment,, and the passers-by and perform 
 ers jabber in many tongues and dialects. 
 
 The scribes drifted into a " Free and Easy," 
 where men and women sing songs, and then pass 
 their hats and bonnets around for pennies and 
 ha pennies. It was a sordid little place with a 
 smell in it that was composed of all smells of neg 
 lect, tobacco, and alcohol. Any one in the audi 
 ence who had a voice and a song, or thought he 
 had, might take the floor and put his opinion to 
 the test of popularity. When volunteers are few, 
 or backward about exposing their talent to gibes 
 that are none too delicate, a master of cere- 
 250 
 
A Dead One 
 
 monies jumps up and says : " Who ll sing? 
 Come on now, be sharp! Somebody give us a 
 wheezer or a clog " ; and the piano-player strikes 
 the ivories, and some one bursts forth into song. 
 
 On the evening in question there had been a 
 lull in the proceedings, and to break it the master 
 of ceremonies turned to a shabbily dressed little 
 man sitting alone near the piano-player. 
 
 " Barnie, you little tramp, are you sober 
 enough to give us a song? " he asked. " There s 
 a good ouse to-night, an you ll get a swag if you 
 let er run right." 
 
 Barnie gave the " ouse " the old jail song of 
 the Boston burglar, which runs : 
 
 " I was brought up in Boston, 
 
 a place you all know well; 
 Brought up by honest parents, 
 
 and now I ve gone to hell; 
 But my character was taken, 
 
 I had to hit the trail; 
 And his honor he shoved me into jail ! " 
 
 The song was none of the best, and the man s 
 voice was cracked, and the piano-player knew but 
 little of the tune, but the audience cried " ear, 
 ear ! " and clapped, and Barnie s hat was well 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 lined with copper. The collection finished, he 
 took a seat near the scribes. 
 
 " I ain t much on the melojous howl," he said, 
 with a significant grin, " but I can toss off a glass 
 o somethin hot. I guess you fellows is Yanks, 
 ain t you?" 
 
 He was told that he had guessed right. 
 
 "Thought so. What ll you take? on me! 
 Can t give you sham, but I m good for anythin 
 
 in reason." 
 
 ;< You re a Yank yourself, aren t you? " one of 
 the scribes queried, when the drinks had been 
 brought. 
 
 " Well, that s as may be." 
 
 " Name s Carr, isn t it? " 
 
 The little vagrant gave both scribes a search 
 ing look. 
 
 " Who are you, blokes? D I know you? " 
 
 One of the scribes reminded him of previous 
 meetings in the " States." 
 
 " Well, I ll be hanged ! Say, come down to 
 my hang-out, will you? You ve paid for this 
 stuff; I ll get some booze an a candle, an we ll 
 chew the rag. There s a lot I want to know 
 about old times; too public here." 
 
 We left the " Free and Easy " and the smell, 
 252 
 
A Dead One 
 
 and Barnie led the way toward the docks. He 
 insisted on purchasing some beer and a candle 
 in a shop in the last street before turning into a 
 maze of murky alleyways, and then guided us to 
 a great barrel or hogshead, hidden away among 
 broken boxes, discarded ship-timbers and as 
 sorted debris. 
 
 " T ain t no parlor-car, pals," he explained, 
 lighting the candle and setting it in a tin socket 
 in the barrel, " but it fits me, an that s all I want. 
 Will you sit outside or come in? Can t all get 
 in, that s sure." 
 
 The air was stagnant and warm to the touch, 
 and even in the open the lungs labored. We de 
 clined the hospitality of the barrel and sat on 
 some planks outside. It was some time before 
 Barnie s talk turned naturally upon himself; he 
 kept asking about this pal and that pal, how 
 things were " coming up over home," who were 
 still holding out in the " perfesh," who had 
 gone under, which " coppers " were in power, 
 which " stirs " were easy or hard, what good 
 " touches " had been made lately, who were " set 
 tled " and who free, and about various other 
 things connected with the life in which his imag 
 ination still dwelt with a certain pride. At last, 
 
 253 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 however, when the scribes had answered his 
 queries as best they could, he said suddenly : 
 
 " I s pose you want to hear my rag-chewer 
 now? " 
 
 The scribes smiled and nodded. The little 
 man s shoulders twitched, he took a fresh piece of 
 " snipe " from his pocket, bowed his head for a 
 moment as if ashamed, looked up again, and be 
 gan: 
 
 " It s none too nice to tell ; but you blokes has 
 known me when I was top of the heap and you 
 will understand. Course I could a croaked 
 myself, an the whole thing ud a been off, but 
 the fact is I didn t have even nerve enough for 
 that. That last stretcher on the Coast dreened 
 me out. They used me hard, that s where it Is, 
 an I didn t make any good time either. I basted 
 a guard for callin me a liar, an the warden didn t 
 remember to forgit it. They tucked me away 
 in the dungeon ten times just for luck like. I 
 had a few thousand when they turned me loose, 
 but I spent em travelin . I thought t I d brace 
 up, p r aps, f I got a change, so I came over here, 
 an for a while I drifted all over the shop. If my 
 dough ud a held out I d be on the mooch yet, 
 I guess. I only had twenty pounds when I got 
 254 
 
A Dead One 
 
 back to London, but my nerve was no good, an 
 I tried for a job on the level, but t wasn t no 
 use. A bloke that s used up for swipin ain t 
 up to no kind o work, good or bad. Course I 
 could a turned fly cop. A Yank copper in Lon 
 don offered me good money f I d work for him, 
 but I didn t want to be a mouthpiece, an that s 
 what I d a been f I d taken the job. A fellow 
 that the push has treated square is a dirty sucker 
 to go an live on what he knows after he gets used 
 up. If I had my way, I d shoot every son of a 
 cur of a mouthpiece. Well, I tried gamblin for 
 a bit, but I couldn t win nothin ; a man that s 
 down on is luck, shouldn t touch the bones ; luck 
 brings luck, an bad luck brings bad: you take 
 my tip. I came here to Liverpool with some 
 London gamblers, but I was out of it here too 
 an got flat on my uppers. I could a raised 
 some dough, I guess, f I d telegraphed home; 
 my rep was good for a thousand or two, an the 
 boys ud a sent it over prob ly ; but a bloke don t 
 like to go home after he knows t his nerve s gone. 
 Crooks is a charitable lot right enough, an stand 
 by a fellow when e s just hard hit, but they re 
 queer s the devil when they run up against a dead 
 one. I know how t is, cause dead ones have 
 
 255 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 tackled me when I was on my legs, an I hated to 
 look at em. You feel the way you do when 
 you re in an insane asylum. Course a dead one 
 ain t bughouse or anythin like that, but when 
 you look at him you keep thinkin that p r aps 
 it ll be your turn next, an you get shivery like. 
 T ain t nice in any push, respectable or other 
 wise, to rubber at a bloke that s gone to pieces, 
 an I was too proud to let any push rubber at me. 
 I knew t I couldn t steal worth a damn f I went 
 back any dead one knows that when he s really 
 lost his grip an I wasn t goin to have the push 
 an the coppers over there belly-achin around 
 about Carr bein laid on the shelf. The coppers 
 in the States are the very devil on a dead one. 
 They keep tryin to make him cough up what he 
 knows, an if he don t cough, they re liable as not. 
 to pinch him for a vag. W y, I ve seen em act 
 ually railroad a dead one to the Pen on a fake 
 charge jus cause he wouldn t help em get wise. 
 I ain t stuck on England or the coppers here, but 
 the coppers can t cut up with a bloke here the 
 way they do in the States. Course they ham 
 mer me every now an then when they take me 
 to the station-house, but that s just a habit they ve 
 got into. You see the people over here won t 
 256 
 
A Dead One 
 
 let em do any hammerin in the streets, an as 
 they ve got to get exercise somehow, they do the 
 hammerin in the station-house. They ain t so 
 wise as our coppers, but they ain t so crooked 
 either. I d a been dead long before I was f 
 I d been an English crook. A bloke s got to 
 take his med cine over here if they catch him, an 
 it s the med cine that kills. Course some holds 
 out longer n I did, but twenty-four years inside 
 ain t a bad record, an that s the time I spent in 
 the Pen. They ve had me shut up nearly half 
 my life. 
 
 " If I d stayed in the States I s pose I d be 
 livin with the hoboes now. They ain t bad 
 blokes to pal with, but t ud hurt to have to drop 
 down into their push. Course that s what the 
 dead ones do over there go trampin but I 
 ain t sorry t I m not with em ; I don t know how 
 to beg as much as a piece o bread. After I ve 
 sung a song or done a bit of a double-shuffle, I 
 don t mind passin my hat around in the pub, but 
 I get ashamed when I ask for somethin outright. 
 You wouldn t think that a bloke that s been 
 mixed up in as much crooked work as I have 
 ud be that way, but I m givin it to you straight. 
 If I should go to a back door to-morrow mornin 
 
 257 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 an ask for a poke-out, I d blush an stutter like a 
 bashful kid. 
 
 " I tried polishin shoes for a while, but the 
 shines guyed me so t I quit. I wasn t no 
 good at it anyhow. All I can do is to float 
 around, sing a song when people 11 listen to me, 
 an hold down this old barrel. This place s been 
 my hang-out for nearly a year now. I use to 
 sleep in an old cellar, but I had to mooch last 
 flittin day, as they call it. When they move 
 over here they say they flit. 
 
 " Sometimes I think I d like to go back home, 
 but course I ll never get there. When I m sober 
 I try to make out t I m English, but I guess the 
 blokes is next. The other day I got pretty 
 jagged, an forgot all about bein English. Some 
 jays over in a pub t I go to was runnin down the 
 States, an I called em down; I told em t we 
 could stick their bloody little island in one corner 
 of our country and t ud take Stanley twenty 
 years to find it. Course they basted me I al 
 ways get it in the neck when I m jagged but I 
 didn t mind. After you re dead, a big quiet like 
 comes on you an you don t care what happens. 
 
 " It ud be nice to see some o the boys again, 
 an I d rather like to croak on the other side, but 
 
 258 
 
A Dead One 
 
 I don t think about such things much. They 
 got to bury me wherever I croak. Some o the 
 girls up in Lime Street took up a collection for 
 a pal t I had that croaked, an buried him in 
 style, but I told em they d better a given a big 
 feed to his friends. I used to be a great bloke 
 for style, but style don t cut no ice with me any 
 more. Course t ain t nice to wind up in a bar 
 rel the way I have, but you can t keep on top 
 forever, an I m glad enough sometimes t I don t 
 have to worry bout my reputation any more. 
 You get just as tired out tryin to hold your 
 posish in the crook world as you do with the mil 
 lionaires. There ain t a fly crook livin that don t 
 worry bout droppin down into a low class. I 
 don t have them worries, an it s a bigger relief 
 n you d think. There ain t no place for me to 
 drop to I ve reached de limit. 
 
 " If the blokes over here knew me an pointed 
 me out to strangers, course I d feel my tumble 
 worse n I do, but nobody bothers me. You re 
 the first blokes I ve talked to this way since I 
 struck Liverpool. I don t mind f you tell the 
 blokes at home about me. It ud a hurt a little 
 couple o years ago cause I had some hope then, 
 but it don t matter now; nothing matters see? 
 
 259 
 
The Powers That Prey 
 
 No one can do anythin for me. A city mis 
 sionary got me round to his shop a few months 
 ago an tried to brace me up, but I was square. 
 You re all right, boss, I said to him, but you 
 can t help me cause I m a dead one/ He didn t 
 understand what dead one meant, an I tried to 
 explain, but he couldn t catch on, an kep talkin 
 away bout religion. I give it to him straight. 
 Religion, boss, I told him, is for them that 
 cares. I don t care. I m dreened out. You 
 can lock me up, or do what you please t won t 
 change me a bit. My clock s run down. 
 Course there s them that laughs bout a bloke 
 losin his grip an don t believe in it, but they re 
 foolish. The time was when I wasn t leary of 
 holdin up an express train single-handed ; it s all 
 I can do now to scrape up nerve enough to kill 
 the fleas in this barrel. Some people calls the 
 disease the shivers, an others calls it the blind 
 eye. I calls it the staggers. You stagger in 
 front of everythin that it needs grit to do. Some 
 day I ll stagger into a hole, an the barkeeps 
 won t have any more Barnie to baste, an the 
 girls won t have to chip in an help pay for my 
 song. But, I ve had my fling in my day, men, 
 an don t you forgit it," and for an instant his eyes 
 snapped, and he held his head high. 
 
 THE END 
 
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