His unblemished record was referred to in an occasional editorial.
When an ex-police reporter came to him, asking him to father a
macaronic volume bearing the title "Criminals of America," Blake not
only added his name to the title page, but advanced three hundred
dollars to assist towards its launching.

The result of all this was a subtle yet unmistakable shifting of
values, an achievement of public glory at the loss of official
confidence. He excused his waning popularity among his co-workers on
the ground of envy. It was, he held, merely the inevitable penalty for
supreme success in any field. But a hint would come, now and then,
that troubled him. "You think you 're a big gun, Blake," one of his
underworld victims once had the temerity to cry out at him. "You think
you 're the king of the Hawkshaws! But if you were on _my_ side of the
fence, you 'd last about as long as a snowball on a crownsheet!"




III

It was not until the advent of Copeland, the new First Deputy, that
Blake began to suspect his own position. Copeland was an out-and-out
"office" man, anything but a "flat foot." Weak looking and pallid,
with the sedentary air of a junior desk clerk, vibratingly restless
with no actual promise of being penetrating, he was of that
indeterminate type which never seems to acquire a personality of its
own. The small and bony and steel-blue face was as neutral as the
spare and reticent figure that sat before a bald table in a bald room
as inexpressive and reticent as its occupant. Copeland was not only