After a long consultation with my associates, including Billy, the enterprise was hung up, but not entirely abandoned. I knew that the bank’s officers were contemplating extensive repairs about the building, soon, and that it would be too dangerous, under the conditions, to proceed with new plans. Besides, there was that hidden in the cellar of the bank that I would not have found there for a considerable amount of money. Billy had carried in a kit of burglars’ tools, an article at a time, until a fair-sized bundle had been gathered there for use in an emergency. If repairs were to be made, the cellar would no doubt be cleaned and the tools discovered. The blame might fall on Billy. It didn’t suit me, either, to have a lot of high explosive found in the bank; it would cause too general an investigation and perhaps a change of the combination on the vault, and the safes as well. Of a truth, for several weeks there lay in the cellar several powerful jimmies, a copper hammer, several steel wedges, braces, and drills, and a number of smaller instruments for finer work. Billy removed these articles, and I felt better satisfied.
As long as I had a level-headed fellow like Billy with me, I said I’d not give up the plot to rob the bank, and I meant it. Through three separate attempts to accomplish the loot he had stood by me, ready to assume all sorts of risks; and he was just as anxious as ever to continue. During the time I knew him, even at the beginning, he did not appear to be any too strong physically, and along toward the last he seemed to be rapidly losing health. It was perhaps a month or six weeks after the last attempt, that he grew so ill that his retirement from the bank was necessary. About that time I realized, with sorrow, that he hadn’t long to live. Discouraged because of the many reverses I had sustained, I at length concluded that I should be obliged to place the Corn Exchange Bank loot enterprise on the “back number” list.
Of all the “putters up” of jobs with whom I had come in contact in a long, varied experience, Billy, without a doubt, stood at the head. For faithfulness and iron nerve, and a disposition to use both with the hope of winning wealth by unlawful means, I believe he had no equal. Many times since I have wondered how long the bank continued to use the combinations which Billy purloined under my teaching. As he was the only one, except myself, having knowledge of our visits to the vault, none of the officials ever knew how we, on those occasions, surveyed the interior of the money safes, into which we might easily have broken our way and carried off a few hundreds of thousands. Perhaps these pages may come to the attention of some one connected with the bank three decades ago, in which case this history will no doubt prove interesting. If I have gone too much into detail in telling of my efforts to rob the bank, I trust that I shall be dealt with leniently; my object in doing so being to clearly demonstrate what difficulties I encountered, what watchfulness on the part of President Noblit did, what fairly faithful service of inside watchmen accomplished toward saving the bank’s millions to its stockholders and depositors, and how nearly successful I was in my efforts to possess what did not belong to me. And I would have come out victorious, there’s no doubt, had the iron door been found as Billy Hatch left it. Without question the inside watchmen discovered it unfastened. I will not say how they came to do so, for I know not. Perhaps Tom Davis told them that the bank might be robbed, and they became more watchful. Whether or not Davis was faithful to me, I do not know. I am inclined to think that he was faithful. I believe the door was accidentally discovered unfastened. Had it been otherwise, it seems to me the bank scuttle would have been examined and fastened. It was open all night. It is with regret to-day that I meditate over the energy I put into the plan to loot the bank. If Billy and I had worked together as energetically in a worthy cause, we should have accomplished, no doubt, something that might have lifted us to a higher plane of thought, and fame might have crowned us; but instead naught came to us, save remorse and poverty, and at the end oblivion.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE PERFIDY OF CAPTAIN JIM IRVING
“The hounds—interfering, sneaking hounds—I hate ’em!” roared Captain James Irving, the head of the New York Detective Bureau in Mulberry Street.
“The infernal meddlers—that’s what they are, cap!” said Detective Sergeant Phil Farley, bolstering up his captain’s fury.
“I wish they were in ——!” continued Irving, as he paced—almost ran—from one end to the other of his private office.
“That same, cap—and the devil keep ’em there till it freezes over.”
“By the eternal, they’ll not beat me out of my own,” fumed Irving. “What right have these Pinkerton hounds to mix in my business? If I feel like doing things my way, suddenly these devils of private detectives poke in their noses. What right, I say, have they to interfere with the regular police?”