Hulbert Footner

A Self-Made Thief

Warsaw 2022

Contents

I. THE WAGER

II. PREPARATIONS

III. HOW IT PANNED OUT

IV. THE WHARF-RAT

V. THE ALIBI

VI. DAY-DREAMS

VII. ACTION

VIII. 23 DEEPDENE ROAD

IX. SHOP TALK

X. ALCORNE

XI. THE FIRST SHOT

XII. THE GAMBLING- HOUSE

XIII. A PAST MASTER'S JOB

XIV. THE UNION CENTRAL HOLD- UP

XV. AT MADAME CORIOLI'S

XVI. HEBERDON PROPOSES

XVII. ALCORNE GETS SQUARE

XVIII. THE WEDDING PARTY

XIX. THE BARAGLIESI CUP

XX. HEBERDON GOES TO BALTIMORE

XXI. HEBERDON LEASES A HOUSE

XXII. AFTERMATH

XXIII. THE OTHER MAN

XXIV. THE PLOT

XXV. THE PLOT IS PUT INTO EFFECT

XXVI. BEGINNING OF THE END

I. THE WAGER

IN the little card-room upstairs at the staid old Chronos Club on Gramercy Park a heated argument was going on. It was late on a night something like two years ago, and a long succession of refreshments from the bar downstairs was, without doubt, contributing to the heat. Heberdon, Spurway, Hanwell and Nedham, excellent fellows all, and good friends, had become involved in a discussion which had nothing to do with the game of bridge, and the cards were now lying unheeded on the table, while the players scowled and shook their fingers at each other, and otherwise went through the absurd pantomime of gentlemen annoyed with each other.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh, I don’t, don’t I? Do you?”

“You talk as if you were the fount of all wisdom, and we were humble worshippers at the shrine.”

“Your metaphors are mixed.”

“Give us credit for some sense, Frank.”

“I will, when you show any.”

And so on. It appeared not to be a battle royal, but a case of three against one, Heberdon being the one. He was making certain asseverations on the subject of crime and criminals which the others violently and scornfully combated. Heberdon was a lawyer in his early thirties, a good-looking man of a pale, correct and regular cast of features, and of a demeanour exact and punctilious to match. He appeared to be the calmest of the quartet, but it was a calmness more apparent than real; he had his features under better control, that was all.

Like most men of his type, his cold and inscrutable exterior concealed an unbounded egoism and a mule like obstinacy. Opposition put him in a cold fury contradict him often enough, and he would go to any lengths to justify himself. This weakness of character was well known to his friends, and in the beginning they had had no object, save to amuse themselves by baiting him, but in doing so, as is not infrequently the case, they had lost their own tempers–all about nothing.

It had started innocently enough. Heberdon, shuffling the cards, had remarked in accents of scorn, “I see the police have got Corby.”

“Who’s Corby?” Spurway had asked. Spurway was a pink and portly stockbroker. His ideas were few, but he repeated them often. He was the noisiest of Heberdon’s opponents.

“The hold-up man who got six thousand from a customer of the Eastern Trust Company three days ago.”

Heberdon’s ideas on the subject of crime were a source of diversion to his friends. Spurway had winked at the others. “What do you care?” he asked.

“Nothing,” was the indifferent reply. “Only, one hates to see such a display of foolishness. Why, he got clean away with his six thousand without leaving a clue. Six thousand for, maybe, three minutes’ work! How long do we have to sweat for six thousand, working honestly?”

“Oh, well, I guess honest work’s easiest in the end,” Spurway had remarked virtuously.

“It is, if you’re a born fool,” said Heberdon tartly.

“If he left no clue, how did they land him?” asked Nedham idly. Nedham was also a lawyer, but of a very different type from Heberdon, a large, blond, slow and reliable sort of fellow, with eyes set wide apart in his head and a benignant cast in one of them; in short, a man cut out by nature to be the trusted repository of wills and family skeletons.

“The conceited fool wrote a letter to the newspapers, bragging of his crime.”

“Corby a friend of yours?” Hanwell had asked dryly. He was an advertising man, dark, slender and quick. He dealt mostly in personalities, and he knew best how to get under Heberdon’s thin skin.

“Don’t be an ass, Han.”

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