Respectfully mine

By RANDALL GARRETT
Illustrated by JOHN SCHOENHERR
Leland Hale was undoubtedly the cleverest crook in the universe. But how could even he crack that closely-guarded time capsule?
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property, that they may more perfectly respect it. —The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton.
Tracing the path of a human being over a million parsecs of space and a half century of time isn't easy, even when the subject makes no effort to conceal his route or confuse his contemporaries. The difficulty increases by a factor of at least ten when the subject is a wily, clever, and thoroughly ruthless scoundrel like Leland Hale. If it was difficult for the Interstellar Police to track down Hale a century ago, it is easy to see why it would be almost impossible today. The records are too sketchy.
But while it is virtually impossible to give any coherent chronological account of the life of Leland Hale, it is certainly possible to deduce what did happen during those periods of his life which are accurately documented. Modern psychometric analysis enables us to pinpoint his character down to the seventieth decimal place, and that, in turn, enables us to see what he must have done in a given circumstance, being the kind of man he was.
Folk legend has a tendency to make heroes of even the vilest of villains, provided they are colorful enough, and no amount of fact ever quite smothers the romantic legend. Such mythical or semi-mythical characters as Robin Hood, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, John Dillinger, Captain Hamling Fox III, and Hilary Boone were all rascals to the core, but even today they have their practicing cults. But the cultus peculiar to Leland Hale seems to outshine them all, and for the singularly perverse reason that he was worse than all the rest rolled together. Indeed, he has been touted throughout the galaxy as a sort of super Simon Templar, who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Rob from the rich he did, but the recipient was Leland Hale, who was rarely, if ever, in penurious circumstances.