It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.

The line encapsulates O. Henry’s characteristic irony about human cleverness and moral ambiguity. By pairing “beautiful and simple” with “swindles,” the sentence suggests that the most effective deceptions resemble good art or good engineering: elegant, economical, and persuasive. The phrasing also hints at a broader social critique—fraud succeeds not only because of the swindler’s ingenuity but because audiences want to believe in a clean, compelling story. In O. Henry’s world, where schemes and reversals often expose both vice and vulnerability, the remark admires craft while simultaneously condemning its purpose, inviting readers to question why simplicity can be so disarming when attached to wrongdoing.