“Well, when you’re up against a real proposition and are fencing with a man who’s as smart as you are, or smarter, it’s some fun; but most of my cases lately have been too tame. The sport isn’t what it was when I started. All the crooks are catalogued and photographed and dictagraphed these days; and when you go after ’em you merely send in your card and call a motor to joy-ride ’em to jail. It’s been a long time since I was shot at--not since those bill-raisers down in the Orange County hills soaked me with buckshot. When they turn a man loose at Leavenworth we know just about where he will bring up and who’s at home to welcome him; and you can usually calculate pretty well just when he will begin manufacturing and floating the queer again.” “You hang on to the petrified idea that once a crook, always a crook--no patience with the eminent thinkers who believe that ‘while the lamp holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return?’” “Yep--return to jail! Well, I don’t say reform is impossible; and I’ve let a few get by who did keep straight. But it’s my business to watch and wait. My best catches have been through luck as much as good management--but don’t tell that on me; it would spoil my reputation.” He turned away, glanced across the room and swung round into his former position with his arm resting on the railing by Burgess’s desk. He continued talking as before, but the banker saw that something had interested him. “See that young woman at the paying-teller’s cage--halfway down the line--slight, trim, with a red feather in her hat? Take a look.” It was nearing the closing hour and long lines had formed at all the windows. Burgess marked the red feather without difficulty. As the women patrons of the bank were accommodated at a window on the farther side of the lobby he surmised that the young woman was an office clerk on an errand for her employer. She was neatly dressed; there was nothing in her appearance to set her apart from a hundred office girls who visited the bank daily and stood--just as this young woman was standing--in the line of bookkeepers and messengers. “Well,” said the banker, “what about her?” While looking at the girl the detective drew out a telegram which he scanned and thrust back into his pocket. “Her mother runs a boarding house, and her father, Julius Murdock, is a crook--an old yegg--a little crippled by rheumatism now and out of the running. But some of the naughty boys passing this way stop there to rest. The place is--let me see--787 Vevay Street.” Burgess thoughtfully brushed a speck from his coat-sleeve, then looked up indifferently. “So? Hardly a fashionable neighborhood! Is that what is called a fence?”