“And that newspaper I made you throw out. Here’s the reason. We might be in jail tomorrow on suspicion. We figure to get picked up any time because, well, because we’re what we are. Everything in your room, if they find your room, is taken down and held and examined. Suppose that happened tomorrow and while you’re locked up the parcel of junk is found in the lot wrapped in the missing part of the paper found in your room. No lawyer in California could beat that case. That proves possession and that’s all they need to convict you of burglary. And here’s something else about house burglary. You seldom get money. Everything has to be sold. And that’s where your danger and troubles begin in earnest. Not one house burglar in a hundred is caught in the act. It’s always when he is trying to sell his plunder.

“I could steal, take, and carry away,” he continued, smiling, “fifty thousand dollars’ worth of plunder⁠—rugs, furs, paintings, statuary, and such junk in thirty days, if I wanted to make a pack horse of myself. But just imagine trying to dispose of it. There’s where you ‘sup with sorrow’ as the poet says, Kid. Take nothing you can’t put in your coat pocket. You’ve got to watch yourself like a fat man on a diet. The smallest trifle will upset you, and you’ll have leisure to repent your carelessness. When you get your new suit from the tailor’s, take all the tags out of it, and when you buy a hat don’t let the hatter stamp your name on the sweatband. You don’t know what house you might lose it in.

“I know thieves so conceited and foolish that they have their names in their hats and monogrammed pocket handkerchiefs, and neat little notebooks with all their friends’ addresses and phone numbers carefully noted. That’s the type of thief that calls the police ‘a bunch of chumps,’ and goes to jail crying, ‘Somebody snitched.’