[CHAPTER XXV]
WITH THE POWERS THAT PREY
It has been my experience, and I suppose that of most men, that the attainment of a purpose is always accompanied by a touch of disappointment, weariness of spirit, even disgust, and such is in proportion to the amount of effort that has been put forth in order to attain. This, by the way, is but one of the penalties that Wanderlust imposes on those who listen to and obey its compelling call. I know whereof I speak, you must remember. Time and again when reaching the goal appointed by my vagabond instincts I have had a mauvais quatre d'heure of it when trying to overcome this reaction of thought and feeling that was sure to set in and last for a longer or shorter period, according to what lay ahead of, or around me. At such junctures, do what I would, there came the insistent queries: "Well, and what have you gotten in return for it all?" "Have your efforts brought you a single thing that is of real value to you?" "How about the time and strength that you have wasted in securing—what?" "What next and why?" "How is it all going to end?"—and many more disturbing suggestions of a similar sort. Of course, the spell of the "blues," as I was pleased to call these promptings of conscience or common-sense—I think the terms to be interchangeable—would be followed by my taking to the road again, literally or otherwise. But the inquisition of myself by myself was so certain to be waiting for me at the close of the tramp or exploit, that I often half-dreaded, rather than welcomed, the termination of the latter.
These things are said because I am reminded that, during all my wanderings, I never felt the "chill of achievement" strike me so sharply as it did on that April afternoon, when the liner on which I had returned to America left quarantine and began to steam slowly up the bay. Around and ahead were sights that I had been dreaming of and longing for many moons to again feast my eyes on. The Staten Island and Bay Ridge shores, flushed with tender green, slid by us; Liberty lifted a high beckoning hand of welcome, the Brooklyn warehouses, Governor's Island, New Jersey's fringe of masts and funnels, the fussy tugs, the blunt-nosed, business-like ferryboats, and Manhattan itself, with its line of sky-scrapers like unto jagged teeth, chewing the upper air, were all so familiar and had been so much desired! And yet came a sudden apathy regarding them and a dissatisfaction with them and myself that seemed to sicken and palsy. I actually began to wish that I need not get off the boat at all, but, instead, might stay on her until she turned her nose again toward the lands in which, a week or so before, I had been so utterly discontented. And why? Who can explain the hidden springs of the human mentality?
You would hardly believe it, if I were to tell you, that a like attitude or condition of mind is by no means uncommon in the case of a crook (commonly called a "gun") who has finished a long "bit" or term in prison. Naturally, the man puts most of his time in thinking and planning about what he will do when the day comes for him to shake hands with the governor and to take train to where he may be going. But the reaction sets in with the hour of release, and there comes a more or less marked distaste for, or dislike of, the very things to which the ex-prisoner has been looking forward for years perhaps. Sometimes the man has been working out a way by which he can "square it," or live an honest life in the future. I am sorry to say, however, that the "guns" who, having "done their spots," keep on the square thereafter, are few indeed. Usually the thoughts of the "lagged" criminal are directed toward perfecting means and methods of "nicking a swell swag and doing the get-away"—in other words, of stealing a considerable amount of money or valuables without being arrested. But, as with the rest of us, the "gun" seems to suffer from temporary brain-fag when he comes into physical contact with things and affairs that before had been known to him mentally. So, instead of his plans being put in action, a newspaper item like this not infrequently appears:
John Smith, no address, was arrested last evening at Broadway and Fortieth Street, charged with being drunk and disorderly and assaulting an officer. In court this morning, Policeman Jones said that the prisoner had insulted and annoyed a number of citizens, had kicked over the outside showcases of a tobacconist, and had struck Jones several times before he could be subdued. Smith was recognized in court as "Conkey," otherwise John Richardson, a crook, who was released from State Prison only a few days since at the termination of a four years' sentence for burglary. In view of his record, he was held in default of $2,000 bail for trial at Special Sessions.
It is well for us, who claim to belong to the respectable classes, that this pruning of intention in the presence of fact is the rule rather than the exception. The public would be in a pretty pickle if the Powers that Prey invariably gave practical expression to their prison-fed fancies; for these last, as I have reason to know, if they are put in operation, rarely fail to accomplish their purpose. Perhaps seventy-five per cent. of the really big "jobs" that are successfully "pulled off" have their inception in the "stir" or penitentiary, or in State prison, the details being worked out by the "mob" or gang with which the discharged "gun," the author of the "plant," is affiliated. As the crook who gets a term of years generally gets it on the score of his professional ability, and as there is little or nothing during his "bit" to interfere with his thinking of thoughts, it is no wonder that his schemes seldom miscarry if they ever reach the stage of actual test.