Chapter 3

“If I ever get out of this,” muttered Hagger, who habitually spoke his
more important thoughts aloud, “I’ll kill you!” He began to work
frantically through the crowd to the side, and he saw the uplifted
nightstick of a policeman, trying to drive in toward him.

Out of the mass, he began to run. He knew all about running through a
scattered mob, just as he knew how to work like quicksilver through a
denser one. Now he moved at such a rate that the most talented of
open-field runners would have gaped in amazement to see this prodigious
dodging.

He found a line of taxicabs, leaped over the hood of one, darted up the
line, vaulted back over the bonnet of a second, paced at full speed down
a lane, and presently sat swinging his legs from the tailboard of a
massive truck that rumbled toward the center of town.

“That’s all right for a breather,” said Hagger, “and a guy needs an
appetite, when he’s packing about eight grand.”

He pitched on a small restaurant and, with several newspapers, sat down
to his meal. He had not touched food since the previous morning, and
Hagger could eat not only for the past but for the future. He did now.

The waiter, bright with admiration, hung over the table. “What wouldn’t
I give for an appetite like that,” he said. “I suppose that you ain’t
had that long?”

Hagger, looking up curiously, observed that the waiter was pointing with
a soiled forefinger, and at the same time winking broadly.

What could be wrong? With the most childish asininity, Hagger had
allowed his coat to fall open, and from the inside pocket the wallet was
revealed, and the closely packed sheaf of bills!

He was far too wary to button it at once, and went on with his
breakfast. Yet, from the corner of his omniscient eye, he was keenly
aware of the tall waiter talking with the proprietor, whose gestures
seemed to say: “What business is it of ours?”

What a shame that there are not more men like that in the world, to make
life worth living?

He sank deeper into his papers over another cup of coffee. He preferred
the metropolitan journals, for by delving into them he picked
up—sometimes in scattered paragraphs, sometimes in mere allusions, but
sometimes in the rich mines and masses of police news spread over many
sheets—the information of the world in which he moved. So he observed,
for instance, that Slim Chaffer, the second-story man, had broken jail
in Topeka; and that Pie Winters was locked up for forgery in Denver; and
that Babe McGee had been released because of lack of evidence. At this
he fairly shook with delicious mirth. For what a guy the Babe
was—slippery, grinning, goodnatured, and crooked past belief! Lack of
evidence? Why, you never could get evidence on the Babe! Not even when
he was stacking the cards on you.

To think of such a man was an inspiration to Hagger. He finished his
coffee. Then he paid the bill and put down exactly ten percent for the
waiter. “For you, kid,” he said significantly.

Then Hagger stepped onto the pavement and walked slowly down the street,
turning his thoughts slowly, meditation slackened by the vastness of his
meal.

What loomed largest in his mind was:

The man was instantly identified by Friedman, from photographs,
who asserted that it could be no other than Hagger, better known
as “Hagger, the Yegg,” whose operations in cracking safes and
raiding jewelry stores are always carried out with consummate
neatness and precision. The simplicity of his work is the sign
of this master criminal. The police are now hard on his trail,
which is expected to lead out of town.

Every word of that article pleased Hagger. Especially he retasted and
relished much: “Consummate neatness,” “precision,” “master criminal.” A
wave of warmth spread through Hagger’s soul, and he felt a tender
fondness for the police who would describe him in such a fashion. They
were pretty good fellows, along their own lines. They were all right,
damn them!

He strolled on in imagination, wandering into the heaven of his highest
ambition, which was to stand before the world as a great international
crook, whose goings and comings would be watched for by the police of a
half a dozen nations. Already he had done something to expand his
horizon, and a trip to England and then as far as Holland had filled his
mind with the jargons of foreign tongues, but it also had filled his
pockets with the weight of foreign money. So, returning one day to
Europe, he would visit Italy and France, and perhaps learn a little
frog-talk, and come back and knock out the eyes of the boys by slinging
a little _parlez-vous_.

After all, it was going to be pretty hot, the life that Hagger led. When
he thought of the fortunes that must eventually sift through his
powerful hands, he raised his head a little and such a light came into
his eyes that even the passers-by along the street glanced sharply at
him and gave him room. For he looked half inspired and half devilish!

Something clanged down the street—a police patrol wagon—brakes
screamed—men leaped to the ground. By heaven, they actually were
hunting Hagger with police patrols; it seemed that he no longer was
worth the pursuit of brilliant plain-clothes men. Hagger lingered a
second to digest this idea and to take note of the long, eager face of
Friedman.

“I’ll kill that Yid!” declared Hagger, and bolted down an alley way.

Shots boomed down the lane, and the _zing_ of the bullets, as they
passed, made Hagger leap like a hunted rabbit. But as he darted down
onto the next main street, a taxi passed, and, although it was traveling
at nearly full speed, Hagger hooked onto it. For he knew every trick of
traffic. At the end of two blocks, the driver pulled up and began to
curse him, but Hagger departed with a laugh.

A whole block behind him were the police, and a block on a crowded city
was almost as good as a mile to Hagger. He gained the railroad yards,
and there slipped past three or four detectives who, he could have
sworn, had been posted there to stop him. Again the heart of Hagger
warmed with a singular gratitude, for the police of Albany certainly
were doing him proud.

“If I’d been a murderer . . . a poisoner or something, or a grand
counterfeiter, maybe . . . they couldn’t have done any more for me,”
said Hagger as he stretched himself on the rods of an express. “Nope!
Not even if I’d killed the President, say, they couldn’t have done any
more for me.”

He laughed cheerfully as the train shuddered, and then began to roll. He
would have to face freezing cold at high speed, clad only in a thin
suit; he would have to endure flying cinders, cutting gravel, and all
the misery of that way of travel. But he knew all about this beforehand,
and he knew that he could meet the pain and endure it.