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For the greater part of his life, when not in durance vile, The Hopper had been in hiding, and the state or condition of being a fugitive, hunted by keen-eyed agents of justice, is not, from all accounts, an enviable one. His latest experience of involuntary servitude had been under the auspices of the State of Oregon, for a trifling indiscretion in the way of safe-blowing.
"You could brag some about a political safe-blowing, but we all have to turn to and hush up this sneak-thief work." Harlan, walking on, wondered whether the coup that was then in process of elaboration in State Committee headquarters would not be considered by Everett and his supporters as arising to the proper dignity of political crime. To his surprise Spinney's rooms were practically deserted.
"That's all very well," replied Mr. Watling. "But we're a respectable firm, you know. We haven't had to resort to safe-blowing, as yet." Mr. Scherer shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say it were a matter of indifference to him what methods were resorted to. Mr.
"Again and again he must have repeated and increased the charges. Perhaps he used two or three cups at a time. By this time the outer door must have been stretched so as to make it easy to introduce the explosive. No doubt he was able to use ten or twelve ounces of the stuff at a charge. It must have been more like target-practice than safe-blowing.
And, again beyond doubt, he made sure, it was his own boast made to his father which had been passed on to tell the sham burglar where to look and what to look for. In the evening of the day following the safe-blowing in Blount's office, a one-car train, running as second section of the Overland, slipped unostentatiously into the capital railroad yard.
His father was a bank cashier, and he became a defaulter of the easy-mark kind; the kind that is too good-natured to look too curiously at a friend's collateral. He would have gone over the road if your father hadn't pulled him out by main strength." "I see," said Blount cynically. "And the son has paid his father's debt to my father. But why the safe-blowing?"
In despair, the directors finally hit upon the scheme of subscribing one thousand dollars to the funds of the Athletics Committee. The catching of the bank robbers solved the nitroglycerine mystery. One of the safe-blowing quartette was recognized by the police as having been in Gridley at the time when that nitroglycerine package was received at the express office.
"Without admitting the safe-blowing, I may say that the letters were destroyed, and our friends were advised to be a little more conservative in their correspondence. That settles the 'reform measure' incident and brings us down to the present argument. If you are not here to get in line with us, what did you come for?"
The thought that he was again among the hunted would depress Mary and Humpy, and he knew that their harshness would be intensified because of his violation of the unwritten law of the underworld in resorting to purse-lifting, an infringement upon a branch of felony despicable and greatly inferior in dignity to safe-blowing.
Dorgan his name on the prison books was Michael Murphey, but we knew him only as "Number 3126" had "brought" ten years for safe-blowing, and he was known in the prison yard and shops as a dangerous man. Twice within my recollection of him he had been put in solitary confinement for fighting; and he was one of the few to whom the warden denied the small privileges accorded the "good conducts."
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