Never-Fail Blake | Page 8

office, seeing that they had a man to be reckoned with,
transferred Blake to their Eastern division, with headquarters at New
York, where new men and new faces were at the moment badly needed.
They worked him hard, in that new division, but he never objected. He
was sober; he was dependable; and he was dogged with the doggedness
of the unimaginative. He wanted to get on, to make good, to be more
than a mere "operative." And if his initial assignments gave him little
but "rough-neck" work to do, he did it without audible complaint. He

did bodyguard service, he handled strike breakers, he rounded up
freight-car thieves, he was given occasionally "spot" and "tailing" work
to do. Once, after a week of upholstered hotel lounging on a divorce
case he was sent out on night detail to fight river pirates stealing from
the coal-road barges.
In the meantime, being eager and unsatisfied, he studied his city.
Laboriously and patiently he made himself acquainted with the ways of
the underworld. He saw that all his future depended upon
acquaintanceship with criminals, not only with their faces, but with
their ways and their women and their weaknesses. So he started a
gallery, a gallery of his own, a large and crowded gallery between walls
no wider than the bones of his own skull. To this jealously guarded and
ponderously sorted gallery he day by day added some new face, some
new scene, some new name. Crook by crook he stored them away there,
for future reference. He got to know the "habituals" and the "timers,"
the "gangs" and their "hang outs" and "fences." He acquired an array of
confidence men and hotel beats and queer shovers and bank sneaks and
wire tappers and drum snuffers. He made a mental record of dips and
yeggs and till-tappers and keister-crackers, of panhandlers and dummy
chuckers, of sun gazers and schlaum workers. He slowly became
acquainted with their routes and their rendezvous, their tricks and ways
and records. But, what was more important, he also grew into an
acquaintanceship with ward politics, with the nameless Power above
him and its enigmatic traditions. He got to know the Tammany heelers,
the men with "pull," the lads who were to be "pounded" and the lads
who were to be let alone, the men in touch with the "Senator," and the
gangs with the fall money always at hand.
Blake, in those days, was a good "mixer." He was not an "office" man,
and was never dubbed high-brow. He was not above his work; no one
accused him of being too refined for his calling. Through a mind such
as his the Law could best view the criminal, just as a solar eclipse is
best viewed through smoked glass.
He could hobnob with bartenders and red-lighters, pass unnoticed
through a slum, join casually in a stuss game, or loaf unmarked about a

street corner. He was fond of pool and billiards, and many were the
unconsidered trifles he picked up with a cue in his hand. His face, even
in those early days, was heavy and inoffensive. Commonplace seemed
to be the word that fitted him. He could always mix with and become
one of the crowd. He would have laughed at any such foolish phrase as
"protective coloration." Yet seldom, he knew, men turned back to look
at him a second time. Small-eyed, beefy and well-fed, he could have
passed, under his slightly tilted black boulder, as a truck driver with a
day off.
What others might have denominated as "dirty work" he accepted with
heavy impassivity, consoling himself with the contention that its final
end was cleanness. And one of his most valuable assets, outside his
stolid heartlessness, was his speaking acquaintanceship with the
women of the underworld. He remained aloof from them even while he
mixed with them. He never grew into a "moll-buzzer." But in his rough
way he cultivated them. He even helped some of them out of their
troubles--in consideration for "tips" which were to be delivered when
the emergency arose. They accepted his gruffness as
simple-mindedness, as blunt honesty. One or two, with their morbid
imaginations touched by his seeming generosities, made wistful
amatory advances which he promptly repelled. He could afford to have
none of them with anything "on" him. He saw the need of keeping cool
headed and clean handed, with an eye always to the main issue.
And Blake really regarded himself as clean handed. Yet deep in his
nature was that obliquity, that adeptness at trickery, that facility in
deceit, which made him the success he was. He could always meet a
crook on his own ground. He had no extraneous sensibilities to
eliminate. He mastered a secret process of opening and reading letters
without detection. He