“I see,” said I.
“I was always reckoned a hard-working, conscientious man, and had talent, too; the very cleverest of them allowed that. I began as a blacksmith, and then did a little engineering and carpentering, and then I took to sleight-of-hand tricks, and then to picking pockets. I remember, when I was home on a visit, how my poor old father used to wonder why I was always hovering around him. He little knew that I used to clear everything out of his pockets a dozen times a day, and then replace them, just to keep my hand in. He believes to this day that I am in an office in the City. There are few of them could touch me in that particular line of business, though.”
“I suppose it is a matter of practice?” I remarked.
“To a great extent. Still, a man never quite loses it, if he has once been an adept—excuse me; you have dropped some cigar ash on your coat,” and he waved his hand politely in front of my breast, as if to brush it off. “There,” he said, handing me my gold scarf pin, “you see I have not forgot my old cunning yet.”
He had done it so quickly that I hardly saw the hand whisk over my bosom, nor did I feel his fingers touch me, and yet there was the pin glittering in his hand. “It is wonderful,” I said as I fixed it again in its place.
“Oh, that’s nothing! But I have been in some really smart jobs. I was in the gang that picked the new patent safe. You remember the case. It was guaranteed to resist anything; and we managed to open the first that was ever issued, within a week of its appearance. It was done with graduated wedges, sir, the first so small that you could hardly see it against the light, and the last strong enough to prize it open. It was a clever managed affair.”
“I remember it,” said I. “But surely some one was convicted for that?”
“Yes, one was nabbed. But he didn’t split, nor even let on how it was done. We’d have cut his soul out if—” He suddenly damped down the very ugly fires which were peeping from his eyes. “Perhaps I am boring you, talking about these old wicked days of mine?”
“On the contrary,” I said, “you interest me extremely.”
“I like to get a listener I can trust. It’s a sort of blow-off, you know, and I feel lighter after it. When I am among my brethren I dare hardly think of what has gone before. Now I’ll tell you about another job I was in. To this day, I cannot think about it without laughing.”