CHAPTER I
UNDER COVER
Let me tell you, my friend, that when I started out on my stalk for Chu-Chu le Tondeur, or Chu-Chu the Shearer as his name would be in English, I was about the most discouraged man in France. To have to slip back into the underworld just when I had begun to make good at earning a clean, honest living was bad enough, but what took the heart clean out of me was the knowledge that the woman who had saved me from penal servitude and started in to make a man of me should think that I had broken my word to her and gone back to the old graft.
This was what really hurt, though I must say it was this that put an edge on me, too. I don't say that I should have felt any scruples at the idea of assassinating Chu-Chu after what had happened between us, but I doubt if I should have had the same savage impatience to do for him if it hadn't been for Edith. Although I had been a thief for thirty years I had never been a danger to society except where its pocketbook was concerned. I had always worked unarmed, and had never hurt anybody—except for a few bruises, perhaps, in a scuffle to getaway. In the same way I had always managed to keep clear of trouble with people in the underworld, and even when I escaped from Cayenne I had spared a couple of devilish guards that I had every reason
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