Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/129

 pocketed." He wore a shirt of too obvious silk and overdecorated shoes; and he wore them as if he had been bred to aspire to them and to nothing else.

A look at him and I knew why the police, in all the time they had searched since the robbery of Dorothy Crewe, had never picked him up. They had been searching for an Astor Street resident in some such garments as Jerry had worn by the river; they had expected him, when casting off his accustomed clothes, to don rough, contrasting attire; no one would have expected him to outdo, in his garb, himself as he had appeared before. I, least of all.

Now I understood that this must be his costume when in daytime he had to risk the streets; and I believed that a dozen detectives might meet him, give another glance at his face, but after looking him over, they would laugh at themselves for suspecting him. "Here's a Halsted Street flash," they would say, "trying to make himself look like an Astor Street swell. Jerry Fanneal, of Astor Street, would never do that." An officer, bringing in such a man, would make himself the smile of his station.

You would think that I would have said to myself, "This is Keeban." But the fact was