While we, in a measure, enjoyed the situation, having the knowledge that we were out of a predicament which held great danger for us, still the irons were not to our liking, even under the conditions; so we asked Frank if it wasn’t about time to liberate us.
“Wait until we’ve passed the next station,” he advised.
Half an hour later the irons were removed and stowed away in Houghtaling’s satchel. The handcuffs he brought with him, but the shackles belonged to Sheriff Smith. We were to send them to him by express. A little later Shinburn and I were strolling about the car, and once we visited the smoker. Of course this brought a lot of questions from the passengers, the most curious ones wanting to know what it all meant. To see a pair of desperate murderers thus roaming at will, seemed, to a few timid ones, like flying in the face of Providence. At last Houghtaling set these meddlesome people at rest by saying: “I received a telegram at the last station, informing me that I’d arrested the wrong men, and that I must at once release them. While I believe them to be guilty, I must obey my superiors. However, I am going to keep an eye on them.”
We reached New York in fine spirits, and Houghtaling immediately arraigned us before Judge Russell in the latter’s private office. Peter Mitchell, subsequently a civil justice, represented us, and upon his statement to the judge that the warrant upon which we had been apprehended, though charging many grave offences, really had no basis for issue except that growing out of an ordinary family quarrel, we were released on a nominal bail. The worst that could befall us under this action was a civil trial. But we knew that the case was as good as ended.
Detective Bob Watts, with his fake warrant, had been defeated. He might now whistle for his reward from New Hampshire.
But our trip was not without its disappointment in another direction, for Shinburn and I had a disagreement. He still insisted that it was unnecessary to have paid Sheriff Smith the thousand-dollar bribe, averring, testily, that it was money thrown away, and exhibited a disinclination to shoulder his share of it. The end of it was a decision to part company. I believed then, and I do to this day, that we would have been turned over to Detective Watts had I trusted to Lawyer Rumsey. I feel morally certain, too, that he overestimated his power with the cunning sheriff.
In the meantime Mark and I made precious little money. I was convinced that the crude methods used by the burglar craft, to master bank vaults, were too antiquated to compete with the great improvement which had been made in the construction of vaults and combination locks. In my brief experience I had become thoroughly disgusted with the lack of success in robbing banks, for fully ninety-nine per cent of failures had been recorded in my mental bookkeeping. This I had good reason to know, for hadn’t I supplied much of the funds which were behind these ventures? I determined that no longer would I have anything to do with the sort of bank robbery that necessitated lugging about three hundred pounds of burglars’ tools. I believed there was some other and more effective method of getting at the millions in vaults whose locks must be mastered. No doubt, if the newspapers of that period had woven the romance about the burglar that we read of to-day when one of the profession exhibits exceptional genius, I would have been dubbed the “Ethical Burglar,” for I began a diligent, systematic study into the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject of bank looting. To do this, I purchased combination locks from all the leading manufacturers and plunged into the intricacies of their mechanism, and at the end of many months of almost constant investigation I felt satisfied that I had not thus applied myself in vain. I could pick every lock, work out every known train of numbers, and had mastered the finest system in the use of high explosives; and, what was of far greater importance than all, I had evolved a tiny instrument scarcely more formidable than a finely tempered piece of very small steel wire. But the possibilities of this invention were greater than I knew, for it worked wonders before the end of its usefulness came. It did away with cumbersome burglars’ tools and made the necessity for the use of explosives of rare occurrence. In fact, it made safe robbing an easier proposition than it ever had been and ever will be again.
When once an entrance to a banking office was obtained, I reduced the art of getting combination numbers to a matter of little concern, by the use of this precious device. All I had to do was to take off the dial knob of a lock, adjust the wire on the inside surface of the dial, and replace the knob; returning later to the bank. The lock in the meantime having been used by the bank people to open the vault or safe, I had only to remove the knob and examine the marks made by the wire, and I had the combination numbers. All that remained between me and the right combination was to figure out the order in which the numbers were used, and that was not difficult.
Another advantage that came to me through this schooling, was the rare accomplishment of being able to watch the unlocking of a vault door, though ten feet away from it, and, with scarcely a failure, obtain the combination numbers. Rarely, indeed, would I require more than one sitting. Thus I mastered the combination locks. Having this control over them, and with the use of the little steel wire, which I christened the “Little Joker,” I went into the safe-robbing business with unlimited energy. The result of my long toil and the expenditure of several hundreds of dollars, proved to be a veritable bonanza.
I was much amazed, when next I heard from Mark Shinburn, to learn that he had been as thoroughly disgusted as I with the old-fashioned mode of breaking bank vaults and had set about to devise better means. His efforts, like mine, had opened up greater opportunities. Presently I tapped on the rock as with a magic wand, and out came a golden stream.