ers, the men with "pull," the lads who were to be "pounded"
and the lads who were to be let alone, the men in touch with the
"Senator," and the gangs with the fall money always at hand.

Blake, in those days, was a good "mixer." He was not an "office" man,
and was never dubbed high-brow. He was not above his work; no one
accused him of being too refined for his calling. Through a mind such
as his the Law could best view the criminal, just as a solar eclipse is
best viewed through smoked glass.

He could hobnob with bartenders and red-lighters, pass unnoticed
through a slum, join casually in a stuss game, or loaf unmarked about a
street corner. He was fond of pool and billiards, and many were the
unconsidered trifles he picked up with a cue in his hand. His face,
even in those early days, was heavy and inoffensive. Commonplace
seemed to be the word that fitted him. He could always mix with and
become one of the crowd. He would have laughed at any such foolish
phrase as "protective coloration." Yet seldom, he knew, men turned
back to look at him a second time. Small-eyed, beefy and well-fed, he
could have passed, under his slightly tilted black boulder, as a truck
driver with a day off.

What others might have denominated as "dirty work" he accepted with
heavy impassivity, consoling himself with the contention that its final
end was cleanness. And one of his most valuable assets, outside his
stolid heartlessness, was his speaking acquaintanceship with the women
of the underworld. He remained aloof from them even while he mixed
with them. He never grew into a "moll-buzzer." But in his rough way
he cultivated them. He even helped some of them out of their
troubles--in consideration for "tips" which were to be delivered when
the emergency arose. They accepted his gruffness as simple-mindedness,
as blunt honesty. One or two, with their morbid imaginations touched
by his seeming generosities, made wistful amatory advances which he
promptly repelled. He could afford to have none of them with anything
"on" him. He saw the need of keeping cool headed and clean handed,
with an eye always to the main issue.

And Blake really regarded himself as clean handed. Yet deep in his
nature was that obliquity, that adeptness at trickery, that facility in
deceit, which made him the success he was. He could always meet a
crook on his own ground. He had no extraneous sensibilities to
eliminate. He mastered a secret pr