Stebbins was a type of a shiftless cunning species of crook which is well known to the Criminal Investigation Department. He was a drifter, weak and unscrupulous, lacking the imagination or skill of more successful rogues. Without leadership it was inevitable that any of his clumsy crimes, from smashing a jeweller’s window to petty thefts in the suburbs, should bring him straight into the hands of the police. In this manner had the terms of imprisonment which had been ferreted out from the records been brought to him. He had dodged hopelessly to the United States where he had also been harried, until the lapse of years had brought him back to this country, where as a minor thief he was nearly forgotten, to act when occasion offered as jackal to bolder and more enterprising spirits.

Billy Bungey, it appeared, had stumbled across him by accident at some race meeting, and learned that Stebbins⁠—which of course was not his real name⁠—was making a more or less precarious existence by washing windows at the Palatial Restaurant. There had been one or two small pilferings and Stebbins confided that he expected at any moment to lose his job.