Silvertip's Roundup Read Online Free Page B

decided that Silver was on the “make.”
    Now that he had decided this, he was much more at ease, for there had been beating in on the verge of his mind the suspicion that, after all, there were men of another type in the world, men who would do something for nothing, men to whom words like loyalty, and kindness, and decency had a meaning far more concrete than anything else that could be named. If that were true, then it was also true that Taxi had spent the twenty-two complicated and crowded years of his life in a perfectly futile pursuit of goals which had no real value. For what did mere hard cash and underworld fame count against the possibilities of affection and a cleanliness of soul such as he had guessed at in Silver?
    Because it would have meant this denial of all value to his years of life, his years of prison and reform school, Taxi cast the thought over his shoulder. Finally, what he could remember best about Silver was the pale glimmer of his eyes and the soundless pressure of his step on the floor. This memory assured him that Silver was, like himself, a beast of prey. The memory comforted him.
    â€œA big smart mug putting something over on me, is all,” said Taxi to himself.
    He opened his suitcase and put some clothes into the bureau drawers. That suitcase was packed with exquisite precision and neatness. It was always put up the same way. In the dark, his hands could go instantly to anything in it.
    Now he opened a cunningly concealed false top and took out a small burglar’s kit. The tools were fragile to the eye, delicate, but they were of a surprising strength. Steel tubing has almost the strength of steel bars — that was one explanation of its power. And the metal itself was of the most exquisite temper.
    The manufacturer of those goods put them into the hands of only a few famous and expert criminals in various parts of the world. Each set cost a small fortune; and that manufacturer equipped his favored men with the means of taking several millions of dollars out of circulation every year. The bits of his drills cut through armor-plate steel as though it were butter, and his picklock set was as supple as sword blades and as strong as hope.
    All the larger tools were jointed so that they could be taken apart. Taxi was taking them apart, jointing them again, with absent movements of his supple hands, as he worked over the set. He loved every bit of it. It was like an extension of his own flesh. He had nerves in the tips of the picklocks. He had nerves in the heads of the drills. The little flashlight, hardly larger than a fountain pen but capable of throwing a sharply concentrated light for hours, was to Taxi as part of his thinking brain, its sword slash through the dark had opened for him the way through so many familiar dangers. It was his fourth set; the police had grabbed three others; and this fourth set was a little smaller, lighter, stronger than any other he had ever possessed.
    He began to put away the tools. They fitted into odd places. Small mouths opened in the seams of his clothes, and into them lengths were slipped. The heels of his shoes screwed off, revealing little hollows into which various bits were put. In a moment his set was out of sight, but when he shook himself, nothing jingled. There was hardly a thing to be felt by the touch of any but the most cunning hand and the forewarned brain. And yet there were few banks in the world that would have dared to turn him loose against their thickest sets of bars and locks for half an hour undisturbed.
    He felt better when he had the tools on his person. He always felt better when they were in his clothes. He was complete. Walls and locks could not hold him, now.
    The room was darkening as he finished. He went to the window and saw through the dusk the strange sight of Silver playing with the stallion a sort of wild game of hide and seek in the field behind the house, sloping off toward the brook. Silver was dodging