were the same. Partly this was for
convenience--the name was so much easier to remember then--but partly it
was due to that instinct for ordered routine which in a reputable sphere
of endeavor would have made this man rather conventional and methodical
in his personal habits, however audacious and resourceful he might have
been on his public side and his professional. He especially was lucky in
that he never acquired any of those mouth-filling nicknames such as
Paper Collar Joe wore, and Grand Central Pete and Appetite Willie and
the Mitt-and-a-Half Kid and the late Soapy Smith--picturesque enough,
all of them, but giving to the wearers thereof an undesirable prominence
in newspapers and to that added extent curtailing their usefulness in
their own special areas of operation.

Nor had he ever smelled the chloride-of-lime-and-circus-cage smell of
the inside of a state's prison; no Bertillon sharp had on file his
measurements and thumb prints, nor did any central office or detective
bureau contain his rogues-gallery photograph. Times almost past counting
he had been taken up on suspicion; more than once had been arrested on
direct charges, and at least twice had been indicted. But because of
connections with crooked lawyers and approachable politicians and venal
police officials and because also of his own individual canniness, he
always had escaped conviction and imprisonment. There was no stink of
the stone hoosgow on his correctly tailored garments, and no barber
other than one of his own choosing had ever shingled Chappy Marr's hair.
Within reason, therefore, he was free to come and go, to bide and to
tarry; and come and go at will he did until that unfortuitous hour when
the affair of the wealthy Mrs. Propbridge and her husband came to pass.

When the period of post-wartime inflation came upon this country
specialized thievery marched abreast with legitimate enterprise; with it
as with the other, rewards became tremendously larger; small turnovers
were regarded as puny and contemptible, and operators thought in terms
of pyramiding thousands of dollars where before they had been glad to
strive for speculative returns of hundreds. By now Chappy Marr had won
his way to the forefront of his kind. The same intelligence invoked, the
same energies exercised, and in almost any proper field he would before
this have been a rich man and an honored one. By his twisted code of
ethics and unmorals, though, the dubious preeminenc