Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/134

 "Gerver?"

"Safe-blower, Steve. My friend seems to have made his start as a 'peterman' and then branched out. He'll blow a peter yet, they say, to keep his hand in; and he packs with him, when he thinks he'll find trouble, the peterman's tube of his trade—a little, corked bottle of soup for emergencies, Steve. Nitro-glycerine, that's all. Interesting idea, what?"

"The nitro?"

"No, that the difference between us is the direction we wandered when we got loose—or were turned loose—twenty-five years ago in Lincoln Park. I walked straight into the bean business and he into blowing safes. Was that all there was to it—the angle our feet took across the grass in the park? What do you think, Steve?"

I shook my head.

"A man likes to think with Shakespeare that he is master of his fate," Jerry went on, "and that fault or strength is in himself, not in his stars. There is no bunch of bunk I hate worse than that environment is to blame for crime and the individual has almost nothing to do with it."

"Give Shakespeare credit for thinking it out