Again was Billy to be useful. I started him on a silent hunt with instructions to “Wait, be patient, and take advantage of the simplest thing.” For several days, he kept the keenest sort of watch. Finally, to our joy, the paying teller left his key, quite accidentally, in the lock of his private drawer; and Billy improved the opportunity and most effectually. He got a wax impression of it, doing it slyly enough, and I made a duplicate. It required a few trials and a number of extra rasps of the file to make the key right, but, persevering, we eventually were rewarded. One morning Billy opened the drawer, and, as I hoped, discovered a slip of paper containing three numbers. He made a copy of them, and when I tried the series on the paying teller’s safe, the door came open, and we found ourselves right up to the money chest. As to the latter, why, a bandbox would be no easier to break! This much accomplished, my faithful Billy and I turned our attention to the receiving teller’s safe. Ten days later we had mastered that by the same methods. Naturally we felt elated—we were down to the two strong boxes which contained the cash. No doubt we could have gotten duplicate keys to the chests, but, as I have said, they could easily be forced. Thus concluding, I wouldn’t put myself to further trouble on that score. Besides, it was dangerous work—this frequent injecting of my uninvited presence in the bank’s vault. By some unforeseen accident I might be discovered in the midst of our secret work.
But to proceed. It seemed to me that the time was about near to plan for the removal of the treasure. The surroundings on the outside of the bank were such that I could see, from the start, that some smart engineering must be done. One factor in the coming loot of which I would not lose sight was my faithful Billy. If the success of my plotting could be assured through the blame falling on him, then I was prepared to forfeit all, though I had gone ever so far. He had been too “square” in his dealings with me to be sacrificed. That I was determined upon, no matter what others might think. Suspicion should not fall on him. He was willing enough, though, that the trick be “pulled off” in his time.
“I’ll take my chances of arrest, George,” he said, “anything to get away with the cash.” I would not listen to him, though it was advanced that in the event that he was arrested we might make a dicker with the bank,—in other words, obtain a sacred promise of his release, provided we returned to the bank a good-sized sum of money as a ransom.
The game was a big one, and, being set on making it a clean sweep, not unlike that of the Ocean Bank, I held to my own ideas and proceeded accordingly. Although it was thought by the bank officials that the two night watchmen remained at the bank during the daylight hours of Sunday, while Billy was absent on leave, it was not so entirely. One of them occasionally would absent himself for several hours, usually going to his home in Pine Street. My plan was to profit by this watchman’s negligence—loot the bank in his absence. We would then have only one watchman to deal with. Outside of business hours, as I’ve said, the Second Street door was the usual entrance to the bank. It was secured on the inside. The Chestnut Street door was never open on Sundays or holidays unless President Noblit chose to use it, for he carried the key. On an occasion or two, so I learned, he’d surprised the watchmen by coming in that way. It happened seldom, however. So, with one of the watchmen out of the bank for two or three hours on Sunday morning, it seemed to me that the loot could be done. We could better get at him, I argued, if one of my associates got inside before the victim really knew who his visitor might be. If an entrance were gained by the main door with a key, he might, momentarily, be thrown off his guard in the belief that it was President Noblit coming in. There was another argument which seemed to favor an entrance by that door: it was infrequently used out of business hours, and therefore would get less attention from the watchman. He would more than likely linger in the vicinity of the Second Street door, if he had any inclination at all to perform his duty faithfully. Thus believing, I planned to overcome the lone watchman. Accordingly I made a duplicate key to the Chestnut Street door from a wax impression supplied me by Billy.
About seven o’clock in the morning of a Sunday in February, two associates and I were waiting near the bank. I had with me Tall Jim and Little Dick Moore, both of whom I could depend upon in almost any emergency. I had the Chestnut Street door key, and the surroundings were such that I felt confident of soon having in my possession the long-contrived-for cash. But it is the unexpected that is always popping up to make one glad or disappointed, as the case may be. I had schemed to overcome one watchman or possibly more, inside the bank, but I hadn’t looked for interference from a watchman on the outside who had no connection whatsoever with the bank. It so happened that Tom Davis, in the joint employ of several warehouses not far from the bank, was on his way home that morning after a night’s work. Confound his eyes, I would that they’d been full of sleep, but they weren’t! Upon seeing three strange-looking men lingering at different points near the bank, he became curious. The greater his curiosity, the more dangerous he was to our game, for soon he grew suspicious. It wasn’t policy for any of my party to run, for that would set afloat the rumor, or even worse, the truth, that an attempt was being made to rob the bank, so we stood our ground. It didn’t avail my associates—they couldn’t bluff it through. I did—somehow. They were charged with being suspicious characters and locked up. When Tall Jim was searched, a pair of handcuffs and a set of false whiskers, the latter very much like those worn by one of the night watchmen of the bank, were found on him. This, as I feared, gave rise to the impression that the prisoners were plotters against the bank. To make matters worse, a few days later another suspiciously acting stranger was arrested in the neighborhood of the bank. He proved to be Big Kid Wheeler, an escaped convict from the state prison at Auburn, New York. He was a well-known crook among the grafting fraternity. The trio went to prison, and thus was my force depleted.
But I didn’t let the lads go to prison without an effort to save them. The day after Little Dick and Tall Jim’s arrest I went to my influential friends, who introduced me to Colonel Bill Mann, the district attorney. I had been told he was a very pleasant gentleman and usually open to a deal. I had twenty thousand dollars, one half of it for him and the other to put up as cash bail, but he declared it was impossible to accommodate me. The bank officials, he said, were pressing him too hard, and that to consent to bail for the prisoners would seem like tampering with justice. With evident regret, he said:—
“I need the money, young man, but I can’t take it.”
I urged him with all the persuasiveness I possessed to come to my relief, but he, with repeated regrets, said he must not. So Tall Jim and Little Dick went to prison for two and a half years, and the Big Kid was returned to Auburn prison.
Thus came to naught, for the time being, the energetic work of Billy and my planning for three months. But I wasn’t discouraged—the game was too large. I would not go down to defeat so easily.