cities are laid out too much on the plan of a safe-deposit vault or a model chicken farm. Everything is squared and angled and numbered and tallied and patrolled, and when a burglar wants to do a job he doesn't go out and slip over a wall, with his little kit swung from his shoulder, he turns lobbyist and starts with the mayor, and works down until he finds somebody whom he can "fix." That's not sport—it's business. No wonder American crooks call burglary and pocket-picking and a bill through the legislature all by the same name—"graft"!
It's different in the Old World cities, however, where a man goes about his job as a hunter might—but, there, I'm forgetting that I'd chucked all that and was out for something even bigger than cracking a safe—my life and the right to live in the open. And I was handicapped now, as a hunter might be who had lost all his ammunition. I'd given Sœur Anne Marie my word not to strike except to save my life—and if I'd promised her to roam round unarmed I'd have felt more secure, but this promise was good only until I'd had my talk with Ivan. So you see I was in some hurry to have this over with.
If Ivan thought it would be worth his while to call off the feud between Chu-Chu and myself, there was the possibility that he might manage it through Chu-Chu's avarice. Chu-Chu loved money even more than he loved revenge, and he had found out that he couldn't do much without Ivan. The Shearer had wonderful cunning, ruthless methods of getting rid of obstacles, the cautious but desperate courage of a wolf and a dexterity that was equal
