You get up the next evening, go to the same restaurant, get something to eat, and look over the papers. You find nothing about your doings; you didn’t expect to. You know the gambler missed his silver. You know he will suspect somebody around the boarding house and lock his room door in future. You take stock and decide to lay off for a few nights and give your luck a chance to switch.

You are slowly making up your mind to get out of this burglary racket; it’s too tough. Suppose you had stuck up the gambler. Maybe his money was downstairs in a safe and you wouldn’t have got it. You would have had to dash out into the street whether you got it or not. How could you tell who would be in the street when you went out? The cop on the beat might be sitting on the front steps. You might bump into the milk man, the bread man, or the ice man. You decide that the whole thing is very uncertain, after all.

For the first time you see clearly this dangerous angle of this business of yours. You can plan and plot and scheme; you can figure out just what you’ll do from the minute you step into a place till you step out of it, but the great weakness of it is⁠—you can’t tell who or what is going to be outside when you go out, and all your ingenuity can’t overcome it. You toss the whole thing out of your mind and go to a theater. After that you go to your room. It’s a warm night, you’re in no hurry about going to bed, so you sit in the dark by the window getting the cool air.

You wonder who will occupy the transient room directly across the light well from you. Last night a woman and two children were in it. They talked all during the forenoon and kept you awake. You hope they have gone away. Just as you are ready to go to bed a light is switched on in the room across the way. Idly you look over. The window is open and the curtain is up. A fat man with a pink complexion and gray hair is standing in the middle of the room. His door is still open, you can see through his room and out into the hall. He stands facing you, his legs apart, hands in his pockets, and his hat on the back of his head.