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It was just here that the light of complete understanding dawned upon Blount; and with it came the disconcerting chill of a conviction overthrown. As a theorist he had always scoffed at the idea that a corporation, which is a creature of the law, could afford to be an open law-breaker. But here was a very striking refutation of the charitable assumption.
Depend upon envy, jealousy, spite, or plain venal disloyalty, if accident or inadvertence fail, to lay the law-breaker by the heels. But granting all this it was none the less true that the utmost diligence, spurred by the pique, ill-will, and ambition of the police of all Europe, had failed as yet to forge any link between the supercriminal of the age and the distinguished connoisseur of art.
It may be questioned whether either our desire to deter men from crime, or our benevolent interest in the criminal, would be quite sufficient to enforce law, if all sense of resentment against the law-breaker were lacking. Its usefulness as an instrument of the social will appears to give it a certain justification. But it also suggests that even public resentment should not be given free rein.
Was it possible for him to work with them under cover? If so, in what way? Clarendon Bromfield was not a criminal, but a conventional member of society. It was not in his mind or in his character to plot the murder or mayhem of his rival. What he wanted was a public disgrace, one that would blare his name out to the newspapers as a law-breaker.
"Something crooked about that," he had mumbled to himself. His first impulse had been to call the police. He did not act upon it. They might blunder. The thing might get out. This law-breaker might escape. Not five people in all the world knew of Curlie's detecting station. He would work out this problem alone.
"Oh, by the grape-vine telegraph. Those things always are known. Also have I heard the men at the party to-night talking about it." "Bud ain' no boy. Don' you think he's old enough to decide fo' himself fo' or ag'in' the life of a law-breaker, as you call hit." "No, I do not. Bud is several years younger than you in r-real age, and he is a child beside you in deter-rmination.
Again Tam was a witness and again, like a raging tempest, he swept down upon the law-breaker and again was foiled by the vigilant German scouts from executing his vengeance. Tam had recently received from home a goodly batch of that literature which was his peculiar joy.
Even the shrimp-like propensities of his small son. Even the flat, flat figure stretched out on the couch, up-stairs at home. The Creator did not do just the thing itself, in sheer and potent wantonness. He merely laid down the laws. One followed them implicitly; or else, like every law-breaker, got punished.
The people love thee, and yet thou art a law-breaker. Thou hast been set as a dam before the man of misery, take heed that he is not drowned. Verily, thou art like a lake to him, O thou who flowest quickly." Yet look round about thee! He who ought to make a division fairly is a robber. He who ought to make everyone to be satisfied hath been the cause of the trouble.
But that chance had not been one to wait for; now it was past, negligible, not to be regretted. At last he knew where Vidal Nuñez was and it was his business to make an arrest and not to wait upon further chance. The man who is not ready to go into a crowd to get his law-breaker is not the man to stand for sheriff in the southwest country. "Coming, Galloway!"
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