While there, it was easy to palm a key or to get a good look at the garage padlock for future skeleton-key reference; or to note what sort of car-locks were used.
A night or two later, the garage was entered and the best car was stolen.

Dugan, like love, laughed at locksmiths.
Sometimes,--notably in places where dogs were kept,--he would make his initial visit and then, choosing a time when he had seen some of the house's occupants go for a walk with their dogs, would enter by broad daylight, and take a chance at getting the car out, unobserved.

If he were interrupted before starting off in the machine, why, he was that same polite insurance aunt who had come back to revise his estimate on the premium needed for the car; and was taking another look at it to make certain.

Once in the driver's seat and with the engine going, he had no fear of capture.

A whizzing rush to the highroad and down it to the point where his confederate waited with the new number-plates; and he could snap his fat fingers at pursuit.
Dugan had called at the Place, a week earlier.