THE NIGHT BEFORE
Had Shevelin been of sterner stuff, the robbers would have bound and gagged him and left him with a carefully rehearsed tale of a plucky fight against fearful odds to relate to his rescuers. But it was more than probable that Shevelin would betray himself in the inevitable ordeal of hours and hours of tiresome examination. Therefore, it seemed best to have him at home, sick, where he could establish an unshakable alibi and answer, "I don't know" to all questions.
Shevelin admitted the band Saturday night and concealed them in a storeroom in an upper part of the building. There they sat crowded, cramped, and uncomfortable through the entire night. They dared not smoke nor even eat for fear Keely, the regular night watchman, who occasionally poked his nose into the room during his rounds, might notice an unaccustomed smell.
This matter of smell illustrates how carefully Jimmy Hope worked out the minutest details of his plan. He foresaw that ten men packed into a rather small room would, even without food or smoke, make the atmosphere seem close to the nostrils of the watchman familiar with the usual empty smell of the place.
For this reason Hope ordered his men to bathe before the job and wear clean clothing without any scent whatever. No tobacco, drink, or onions passed their lips on Saturday. As a last precaution, at Hope's order, Shevelin broke a bottle of smelly cough medicine on the floor in the presence of his brother-in-law.
As I have said, the regular night watchman was Keely—an honest, incorruptible man. Shevelin was day watchman. Shevelin worked from six in the morning until six at night, when Keely came on duty for the night job.
The janitor of the building, who lived over the bank with his family, was a worthy, honest man, named Werkle. Everybody trusted Werkle, and so it had come about that Werkle was now and then made temporary day or night watchman, whenever Shevelin or Keely were sick or wanted a day off.
Though, as I have said, the genius of "Western George" Howard in discovering a simple and speedy method of opening the lock by inserting a wire through a small hole bored beneath it was the one thing which made Hope's plans feasible, yet, at the last minute, this method became unnecessary.