There was not a little silent bitterness in his heart as, later, returning to the station-house, he thought upon these things. He remembered the days when he had been new upon the force. Those were the days when the popular tide had turned against gambling and, amid the raids that meant the breaking of steel doors, the pursuit of offenders through secret passages and across steep roofs, it was for a while possible for a policeman to retain his ideals. But he remembered also how, when the ruling powers had thus been forced to destroy the nests where once they had gathered golden eggs, the long arm of necessity swung slowly backward until it paused at the point where it had since remained and, because the eggs must be gathered somewhere, the police were expected to gather them from the aeries of the vultures that preyed upon women. Riley had not minded, every pay-day, handing over to the appointed heeler the five dollars wherefor he received a receipt for a dollar and a half as dues to the political club to which he was expected to belong. For quite some time he had been content with closing his eyes to saloons that were opened on Sundays by proprietors that were powerful, and with allowing others to profit by the rewards of his voluntary blindness. But at last there came the first baby in the Riley home, and then the second, and the wife's long illness; and then assessments were increased and, finally, after many a broad hint from the men higher up, he was given plainly to understand that he must either hand over a goodly portion of money, every week, from the offending women on his beat, or else lose his usefulness to the force. After that, he took what he must and kept what he could. He had no trade on which to fall back; his domestic and political expenses grew annually, and, as an evasion of the former meant financial ruin, so the shirking of the latter meant a charge lodged at headquarters, a speedy hearing, and an automatic dismissal. Even when a non-partisan man was put at the head of the department, that official's practical power was nullified by the fact that the mayor, a party-man, was behind him and could remove him at a moment's notice, and that behind the mayor was the organization that had made and could break the mayor. No individual, so far as Officer Riley could see, was personally to blame, was himself a free agent; but the whole collection of individuals were the irresponsible parts of a gigantic machine--from the inner council of Tammany to their spies in every municipal department--which, if ever broken by the recognized party of opposition, must be so thoroughly rebuilt and so precisely operated in accordance with mechanical lines that the change would signify only the casting out of the irresponsible parts and their replacement by parts equally irresponsible. Riley could look no farther, and, even could he have seen that the remedy must be a remedy of conditions, he could have done nothing to free himself.