e he enjoyed was
ample reward. He stood forth from the ruck and run, a creator and a
leader who could afford to pass by the lesser, more precarious games,
with their prospect of uncertain takings, for the really big and
important things. He was like a specialist who having won a prominent
position may now say that he will accept only such patients as he
pleases and treat only such cases as appeal to him.

This being so, there were open to him two especially favored lines: he
might be a deep-sea fisherman, meaning by that a crooked card player
traveling on ocean steamers; or he might be the head of a swell mob of
blackmailers preying upon more or less polite society. For the first he
had not the digital facility which was necessary; his fingers lacked the
requisite deftness, however agile and flexible the brain which directed
the fingers might be. So Chappy Marr turned his talents to blackmailing.
Blackmailing plants had acquired a sudden vogue; nearly all the
wise-cracking kings and queens of Marr's world had gone or were going
into them. Moreover, blackmailing offered an opportunity for variety of
scope and ingenuity in the mechanics of its workings which appealed
mightily to a born originator. Finally there was a paramount
consideration. Of all the tricks and devices at the command of the
top-hole rogue it was the very safest to play. Ninety-nine times out of
a hundred the victim had his social position or his business reputation
to think of, else in the first place he would never have been picked on
as a fit subject for victimizing. Therefore he was all the more disposed
to pay and keep still, and pay again.

The bait in the trap of the average blackmailing plant is a woman--a
young woman, good-looking, well groomed and smart. It is with her that
the quarry is compromisingly entangled. But against women confederates
Chappy Marr had a strong prejudice. They were such uncertain quantities;
you never could depend upon them. They were emotional, temperamental;
they let their sentimental attachments run away with their judgment;
they fell in love, which was bad; they talked too much, which was worse;
they were fickle-minded and jealous; they were given to falling out with
male pals, and they had been known to carry a jealous grudge to the
point of turning informer. So he set his inventions to the task of
evolving a blackmailing snare which might be set and sprung, and
afterwards dismantled and hidden away without the int