A Self-Made Thief

In the little card-room upstairs at the staid old Chronos Club on
Gramercy Park a heated argument was going on. It was late on a night
something like two years ago, and a long succession of refreshments from
the bar downstairs was, without doubt, contributing to the heat.
Heberdon, Spurway, Hanwell and Nedham, excellent fellows all, and good
friends, had become involved in a discussion which had nothing to do with
the game of bridge, and the cards were now lying unheeded on the table,
while the players scowled and shook their fingers at each other, and
otherwise went through the absurd pantomime of gentlemen annoyed with
each other.

"You don't know what you're talking about!"

"Oh, I don't, don't I? Do you?"

"You talk as if you were the fount of all wisdom, and we were humble
worshippers at the shrine."

"Your metaphors are mixed."

"Give us credit for some sense, Frank."

"I will, when you show any."

And so on. It appeared not to be a battle royal, but a case of three
against one, Heberdon being the one. He was making certain asseverations
on the subject of crime and criminals which the others violently and
scornfully combated. Heberdon was a lawyer in his early thirties, a
good-looking man of a pale, correct and regular cast of features, and of
a demeanour exact and punctilious to match. He appeared to be the calmest
of the quartet, but it was a calmness more apparent than real; he had his
features under better control, that was all.

Like most men of his type, his cold and inscrutable exterior concealed an
unbounded egoism and a mule like obstinacy. Opposition put him in a cold
fury contradict him often enough, and he would go to any lengths to
justify himself. This weakness of character was well known to his
friends, and in the beginning they had had no object, save to amuse
themselves by baiting him, but in doing so, as is not infrequently the
case, they had lost their own tempers--all about nothing.

It had started innocently enough. Heberdon, shuffling the cards, had
remarked in accents of scorn, "I see the police have got Corby."

"Who's Corby?" Spurway had asked. Spurway was a pink and portly
stockbroker. His ideas were few, but he repeated them often. He was the
noisiest of Heberdon's opponents.

"The hold-up man who got six thousand from a customer of the Eastern
Trust Company three days ago."

Heberdon's ideas on the subject of crime were a source of diversion to
his friends. Spurway had winked at the others. "What do you care?" he
asked.

"Nothing," was the indifferent reply. "Only, one hates to see such a
display of foolishness. Why, he got clean away with his six thousand
without leaving a clue. Six thousand for, maybe, three minutes' work! How
long do we have to sweat for six thousand, working honestly?"

"Oh, well, I guess honest work's easiest in the end," Spurway had
remarked virtuously.

"It is, if you're a born fool," said Heberdon tartly.

"If he left no clue, how did they land him?" asked Nedham idly. Nedham
was also a lawyer, but of a very different type from Heberdon, a large,
blond, slow and reliable sort of fellow, with eyes set wide apart in his
head and a benignant cast in one of them; in short, a man cut out by
nature to be the trusted repository of wills and family skeletons.

"The conceited fool wrote a letter to the newspapers, bragging of his
crime."

"Corby a friend of yours?" Hanwell had asked dryly. He was an advertising
man, dark, slender and quick. He dealt mostly in personalities, and he
knew best how to get under Heberdon's thin skin.

"Don't be an ass, Han."

"Well, you seem to take it to heart, his getting pinched."

"It's nothing, of course, but one hates to see a neat bit of work spoiled
by stupid conceit."

"Why don't you set up a correspondence course in crime, Frank?" Hanwell
had asked at this juncture.

Heberdon ignored the flippant query. The laughter of the others annoyed
him excessively.