But then again, the Spider was a specialist--he
specialised in small articles, particularly jewelry--no one in the Bad
Lands who knew his way about would ever have dreamed of going to the
Spider with anything else! Nor was the Spider without justification in
thus restricting his operations. The Spider had always managed to hide
his questionable wares, until he was able to dispose of them and they
passed again out of his possession, with an ingenuity that had baffled,
enraged, and mortified the police--and commanded the enthusiastic
confidence and admiration of the underworld! But this was, for the most
part, past history, and of the days gone by, for the Spider now had
grown old--had grown to be an old man--for it had begun of late to be
whispered that he talked more than he had been wont to talk in the days
of his prime, that he was not as _safe_ as he had been, and in
consequence his trade of late had begun to drift away from him.
And herein lay the secret of the old man's murder at the hands of the
Wolf. The Tocsin's note had not failed to lay stress on this. No one
probably, through a career of half a score of years, knew more about the
Wolf and the Wolf's doings than did the Spider.
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