What others might have denominated as "dirty work" he accepted with
heavy impassivity, consoling himself with the contention that its final
end was cleanness. And one of his most valuable assets, outside his
stolid heartlessness, was his speaking acquaintanceship with the women
of the underworld. He remained aloof from them even while he mixed
with them. He never grew into a "moll-buzzer." But in his rough way
he cultivated them. He even helped some of them out of their
troubles--in consideration for "tips" which were to be delivered when
the emergency arose. They accepted his gruffness as simple-mindedness,
as blunt honesty. One or two, with their morbid imaginations touched
by his seeming generosities, made wistful amatory advances which he
promptly repelled. He could afford to have none of them with anything
"on" him. He saw the need of keeping cool headed and clean handed,
with an eye always to the main issue.

And Blake really regarded himself as clean handed. Yet deep in his
nature was that obliquity, that adeptness at trickery, that facility in
deceit, which made him the success he was. He could always meet a
crook on his own ground. He had no extraneous sensibilities to
eliminate. He mastered a secret process of opening and reading letters
without detection. He became an adept at picking a lock. One of his
earlier successes had depended on the cool dexterity with which he had
exchanged trunk checks in a Wabash baggage car at Black Rock, allowing
the "loft" thief under suspicion to carry off a dummy trunk, while he
came into possession of another's belongings and enough evidence to
secure his victim's conviction.

At another time, when "tailing" on a badger-game case, he equipped
himself as a theatrical "bill-sniper," followed his man about without
arousing suspicion, and made liberal use of his magnetized tack-hammer