CHAPTER XVIII
DISPOSITION OF OCEAN BANK LOOT
I have no doubt that my readers will readily believe that shortly after the opening of the Ocean Bank vault on the morning after our departure there was a considerable stir in the financial world, especially that part of it located at the corner of Fulton and Greenwich streets.
The two hundred thousand dollars that we left on the vault floor enabled the bank to meet its engagements at the clearing house that day; the police closed the bank’s doors early in the day, thus preventing a run; and the bank did not fail. That is, it did not fail then.
On that Sunday afternoon, after we had removed a million and a half from the vault, and paid a visit to Jack McCord’s house as related in the last chapter, he went out of his house on that day, breaking his custom in this respect. He hunted up the other members of the Ring, and notified them all, including Captain Irving, to be at headquarters by nine o’clock the next morning without fail.
At that hour one of my coaches with my finest team stood in Crosby Street near Houston. My best driver held the ribbons over them. In due time came the notice to headquarters of the robbery of the bank. Captain Irving and Detectives McCord and Kelso thereupon hastened to the corner of Crosby and Houston streets and boarded my coach. The horses were started at their best gait, and the detectives were soon at the scene of the loot.
By this time the robbery had become generally known in the vicinity of the bank. The bank’s offices were filled with a mob of shouting depositors and owners of boxes, who were clamoring for their money and valuables. Irving turned them all out and locked the doors and then began to question the bank officials. You will readily imagine that the information which he derived from this questioning was of great benefit to him—it told him so much that he did not know.
The detectives listened to the officials’ stories, looked wise, consulted, and then determined that the job was the work of a Western gang of burglars, which it had long been rumored was coming East. Irving said that guards would at once be placed at all ferries and railroad stations, and assured the bank people that it would be but a day before the robbers would be bagged and the loot returned.
The confident manner of the detectives reassured the bank officials, who began to feel that things were not so bad as they had at first appeared. Irving then attended to the returning of the safe deposit boxes to their owners in the crowd out in the street. The reception of one of these boxes was generally followed by wails of sorrow, long and deep. Then, after cautioning the bank officials to give nothing to the press, but to refer all reporters to headquarters, the detectives left, to place the cordon about the city.
And, to blind the press and the police officials not in the know, this cordon was placed, and many a policeman watched a ferry-house or a railroad station for mythical Western crooks. Yes, the members of the Bank Ring put in their share of this kind of watching, too, though they knew at all times where to find the looters. Indeed, I had a long talk with Jim Kelso while he was stationed at the Harlem depot to catch the robbers.
On the afternoon of the same day that they had visited the looted bank, Irving, Kelso, and McCord met Shinburn and myself at Stetson’s in Central Park. Here we had a wine dinner, and Irving then narrated to us the happenings at the bank that morning. Of course, Shinburn and I expressed the wish that the police might capture that bad Western gang. But the detectives were more particularly interested in the amount they were to get out of the robbery.