“That’s because you don’t appreciate the kind of story I write,” Anthony Trent told him. “If I wrote the conventional story of love or matrimony I could work so many hours a day and begin at nine like any business man. But I don’t. I begin to write just when the world I write of begins to live. My men and women are waking into life now, just when the other folks are climbing into their suburban beds.”
“I understood you wrote detective stories,” Mr. Lund remarked. His grievances were vanishing. His opinion of the president of Trent’s magazine was a high one.
“Crook stories,” Anthony Trent confided. “Not the professional doings of thoughtless thugs. They don’t interest me a tinker’s curse. I like subtlety in crime. I could take you now into the great restaurants on Broadway or Fifth Avenue and point out to you some of the kings of crime—men who are clever enough to protect themselves from the police. Men who play the game as a good chess player does against a poorer one, with the certainty of being a move ahead.”
Mr. Lund conjured up a vision of such a restaurant peopled by such a festive crowd. He felt in that moment that an early manhood spent in Somerville had perhaps robbed him of a chance to live.
“They all get caught sooner or later,” asserted the little man in the morris chair.
“Because they get careless or because they trust another. If you want to be a successful crook, Mr. Lund, you’ll have to map out your plan of life as carefully as an athlete trains for a specific event. Now if you went in for crime you’d have to examine your weaknesses.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Lund a little huffily, “I am not going in for a life of crime. I am perfectly content with my own line.” This, with unconscious sarcasm for Mr. Lund, pursued what he always told the borders was “the advertising.”
“There are degrees in crime I admit,” said Anthony Trent, “but I am perfectly serious in what I say. The ordinary crook has a low mental capacity. He generally gets caught in the end as all such clumsy asses should. The really big man in crime often gets caught because he is not aware of his weaknesses. Drink often brings out an incautious boasting side of a man. If you are going in for crime, Mr. Lund, cut out drink I beg of you.”
“I do not need your advice,” Mr. Lund returned with some dignity. “I have tasted rum once only in my life.”
Trent looked at him interested.