fall." So he planted a barber's assistant with whom he was friendly,
descended on the pickpocket in the very act of going through that
bay-rum scented youth's pocket, and secured a conviction that brought a
letter of thanks from the club stewards and a word or two of approval
from his head office.

That head office, seeing that they had a man to be reckoned with,
transferred Blake to their Eastern division, with headquarters at New
York, where new men and new faces were at the moment badly needed.

They worked him hard, in that new division, but he never objected. He
was sober; he was dependable; and he was dogged with the doggedness of
the unimaginative. He wanted to get on, to make good, to be more than
a mere "operative." And if his initial assignments gave him little but
"rough-neck" work to do, he did it without audible complaint. He did
bodyguard service, he handled strike breakers, he rounded up
freight-car thieves, he was given occasionally "spot" and "tailing"
work to do. Once, after a week of upholstered hotel lounging on a
divorce case he was sent out on night detail to fight river pirates
stealing from the coal-road barges.

In the meantime, being eager and unsatisfied, he studied his city.
Laboriously and patiently he made himself acquainted with the ways of
the underworld. He saw that all his future depended upon
acquaintanceship with criminals, not only with their faces, but with
their ways and their women and their weaknesses. So he started a
gallery, a gallery of his own, a large and crowded gallery between
walls no wider than the bones of his own skull. To this jealously
guarded and ponderously sorted gallery he day by day added some new
face, some new scene, some new name. Crook by crook he stored them
away there, for future reference. He got to know the "habituals" and
the "timers," the "gangs" and their "hang outs" and "fences." He
acquired an array of confidence men and hotel beats and queer shovers
and bank sneaks and wire tappers and drum snuffers. He made a mental
record of dips and yeggs and till-tappers and keister-crackers, of
panhandlers and dummy chuckers, of sun gazers and schlaum workers. He
slowly became acquainted with their routes and their rendezvous, their
tricks and ways and records. But, what was more important, he also
grew into an acquaintanceship with ward politics, with the nameless
Power above him and its enigmatic traditions. He got to know the
Tammany heel