bolted like the bank - you remember! - and all the while the
window's open, and the Deacon's over the hills and far away.
What do you think of me?]

MOORE. I've seen your sort before, I have.

BRODIE. Not you. As for Leslie's -

MOORE. That was a nick above you.

BRODIE. Ay was it. He wellnigh took me red-handed; and that was
better luck than I deserved. If I'd not been drunk, and in my
tantrums, you'd never have got my hand within a thousand years of
such a job.

MOORE. Why not? You're the King of the Cracksmen, ain't you?

BRODIE. Why not! He asks me why not! Gods, what a brain it is!
Hark ye, Badger, it's all very well to be King of the Cracksmen,
as you call it; but however respectable he may have the
misfortune to be, one's friend is one's friend, and as such must
be severely let alone. What! shall there be no more honour among
thieves than there is honesty among politicians? Why, man, if
under heaven there were but one poor lock unpicked, and that the
lock of one whose claret you've drunk, and who has babbled of
woman across your own mahogany - that lock, sir, were entirely
sacred. Sacred as the Kirk of Scotland; sacred as King George
upon his throne; sacred as the memory of Bruce and Bannockburn.

MOORE. Oh, rot! I ain't a parson, I ain't; I never had no