It
still seemed incredible that Clarie Archman was a thief, a safe-tapper,
even if but an amateur one. The boy must have travelled a pace of late
that was fast and furious. How had he ever become intimate enough with
Gentleman Laroque to be associated with the other in such a crime as
this? How had Laroque come to play a part in the miserable scheme of
trickery that was the Private Club Ring's last card.
Jimmie Dale shook his head helplessly at the first question--and shook
it again at the second. He knew Laroque--he knew him for one of the most
degraded, as well as one of the most dreaded, gang leaders in crimeland.
Laroque, in unvarnished language, was a devil, and, worse still, a most
callous devil. Laroque stood first and all the time for Laroque. If
murder would either further or safeguard Laroque's personal interests,
Laroque was the sort of man who would stop only to consider, not whether
the murder should be committed, but the method that might best be
employed in order to implicate as little as possible one Laroque! Also,
to those in the secrets of the underworld, Gentleman Laroque added to
his accomplishments, or had done so before he rose to the eminence of
gang leader, the profession of "box-worker"--not a very clever exponent
of the art, crude perhaps in his methods, but at the same time
efficacious, as a dozen breaks and looted safes in the years gone by
bore ample witness.
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