Читать книгу Secret and Urgent - The Story of Codes and Ciphers - Анон - Страница 17

A criminals’ code of sorts, common to the whole underworld, still exists, but it has become largely a matter of inflection and innuendo, with the inclusion of a few special identifying terms. The professional thief in E. H. Sutherland’s Professional Thief tells the following story:

“The language of the underworld is both an evidence of the isolation of the underworld and also a means of identification. A professional thief can tell in two minutes’ conversation with a stranger whether he is acquainted with the criminal underworld and in two minutes more what particular rackets he knows intimately. If a thief were in the can and another person were brought in, the first might ask, ‘Where were you nailed?’ The second might say, ‘In the shed.’ It is possible that an amateur might know that ‘nailed’ meant arrested but no amateur would use the word ‘shed’ for railroad station.

“I was eating supper in a cafeteria with an occasional thief who was a student in law school. Two coppers were sitting at another table near by. The occasional thief had selected our table and had not recognized them as coppers. They were not in uniform. My friend said loud enough so the coppers could hear, ‘Did you hear what Jerry Myers got?’ I knew alright Jerry got four years, but I was not going to let the coppers know we were talking about anyone who had received a bit, and I had to hush the youngster up. I could not say ‘Nix!’ as a thief might have said if the coppers had not been able to hear, for this in itself would have informed the coppers that we were worth watching. So I said, ‘I understand the doctor said he got tonsillitis.’ A professional thief would have sensed danger at once and would have carried on along that line, but my friend started in again, ‘No, I mean—’ but I kicked him under the table and butted in again with some more about tonsillitis. The police were watching us carefully and I could not office my partner by moving my eyes toward them. I had to get up and go to the counter for something more to eat. When I returned I picked up his book on Conveyances and looked at it and then asked, ‘Have you seen the new book on abnormal psychology by Dr. Oglesby?’ The policemen immediately got up and reached for their hats. I nudged my partner to look at them as they got up and you could see that each had a revolver in a holster. My partner now understood why I had interrupted him and he asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me they were here?’ I had told him a half-dozen times in language any professional thief would have understood.”