I was wrong. I knew I was wrong, and yet I persisted. If that is possible of any explanation it is this: From the day I left my father my lines had been cast, or I cast them myself, among crooked people. I had not spent one hour in the company of an honest person. I had lived in an atmosphere of larceny, theft, crime. I thought in terms of theft. Houses were built to be burglarized, citizens were to be robbed, police to be avoided and hated, stool pigeons to be chastised, and thieves to be cultivated and protected. That was my code; the code of my companions. That was the atmosphere I breathed. “If you live with wolves, you will learn to howl.”

In my rambles about Vancouver, I met an acquaintance from Salt Lake. He and his wife were exiled from the Mormon city and could not return in safety till they got a “bunch of trouble fixed up.” He fell on my neck, saying: “Just the party I’m looking for. I’ve got something soft for you; you can’t go wrong.” He invited me to his quarters, a cottage they had rented. They were both smokers, and over the hop he explained the “soft” thing.