My first act was to put the stones in a safety box, tear up the receipt, and plant the key in a safe, convenient place. Then began the toughest part of the business, getting the stones off my hands and into cash. Day after day I sorted out the larger ones and in my room unharnessed them from their settings. Other articles, clusters and sunbursts, were left intact in their settings⁠—to remove them would depreciate the value. I had many of the best stones reset and sold them for fair prices openly to bookmakers, prize fighters, jockeys, gamblers, and women about town. My money went into the bank, and for the first time in my life I carried a check book.

I was careful, kept clean and sober and away from the hop joints and thieves’ hangouts. For once in my life I managed to get a fair price from pawnshops for some of my junk. Taking one of the reset rings that was perfectly safe and impossible of identification, I would step into the pawnbroker’s at lunch time and always when there were other patrons in his place. The average thief is duck soup for the hockshop man. He will walk by the hockshop and look in. The hockshop man sees him and knows he has something “hot,” or crooked. If there is anybody in the place but the employees, the thief waits till they go out before going in. This convinces the pawnbroker he has a thief to deal with and he offers him half what he would offer an honest man with a legitimate article.

Instead of sneaking into a hockshop, taking a ring out of my pocket, and saying, “How much can I get on this?” I walked in confidently, held out my finger with the ring on, and said: “I want to pledge this ring for one hundred dollars till pay day. My name is so-and-so. I work for such and such a firm. I lost some of my employer’s money at the racetrack and must have it tonight.”