And let me tell you, my friend, that Ivan was a very different sort of type to tackle. It was within the range of human possibility that I could be afraid of Ivan. He was a man of cool thought, acted on impulsively. Ivan, I felt, could be swift and cruel and terrible; and his acts would not be governed by any principle, but purely by the emotion of the moment. Personally he could never have frightened me; but a braver man than I might easily dread that swift, cruel intelligence, directing such ferrets as you catch sight of slipping in and out of the shadows about the barrières. Ivan had a pack of these slinking, stealthy apaches at his disposal; and, though he had probably never so much as laid eyes on one of them to recognise him, they were nevertheless ready and waiting to do his will as transmitted through one of his sub-lieutenants. Once this cheerful horde was loosed on a victim, he might as well try to fight a swarm of mosquitoes, of which the sting of any might easily prove fatal. They represented a disease rather than an enemy.
So here, on one side, was the promise of freedom from the underworld and life in the open again, all for a few hours exercise of the skill that had taken me years and years to perfect. Just one theft added to the many which I had done and gloried in the doing of! It may seem strange to you that the odd chance of making a fluke of it and getting nabbed never entered into my head, except in a vague sort of way, just as the thought of being taken with cramp might occur to the strong, long-distance swimmer.
No, I had no fear of getting caught; in fact, I
