Of course my Police Headquarters friends soon got wind of our presence in town, and the usual “squaring” had to be made. I ascertained through them that the brace of sleuths who worried us at Angola and Cleveland were from Chicago, and that we would have been arrested had it not been for my commercial traveller dodge at the hotel. As I thought, they had wired to Chicago and Cleveland. Word came from the former place that no such drummers as described were in the employ of that house. This information was wired to the detectives at Cleveland, but too late to do us any harm. They found the hackman after a while and an interview with him told them a plain story. I understood that they felt about as ruffled as detectives must feel when big game has easily slipped through their fingers. They waited a long time for me to return from the drug store. Precious little but a collar was found in the satchel in my room. I laughed as I heard this story, and remarked that the boys were entitled to it and our discarded linen.
“Mark,” I said, a few days later, having recalled the experiences we had had that night on the suspension bridge, “what made the cable get taut suddenly when you were about halfway on your plank-crawl?”
“Oh, not much of anything,” he carelessly replied; “I just slipped a bit off the plank, but managed to hold on with my hands.”
“Was the plank narrower than the others and rounded up with ice?” I questioned, curious to know if he had encountered the treacherous place I had, with the same result.
“You’ve described it to a dot,” replied Mark; “but it happened that I could reach a girder with my feet, and that, with a little bracing, got me to the top again. I thought I was going to give you a job of hauling in the cable with a bait attached that had blamed little life in it.”
“Fancy you dangling at the end of that cable of leather and rope with a few hundreds of thousands strapped to your back,” I said, with a sorry attempt at a joke. Shinburn smiled, but he was thinking of his experience, I doubt not. Subsequently I made a daylight trip to the suspension bridge. How we succeeded in getting over the skeleton section that eventful night has ever been a mystery to me. I marvel that I survived to tell of it.
CHAPTER XIII
CAPTAIN JOHN YOUNG’S GRAB
The “Little Joker” won for Mark Shinburn, me, and our associates the contents of the vault of the New Windsor Bank of Westminster, Carroll County, Maryland, while the Ocean Bank enterprise was hatching. All of the combinations were mastered in five nightly sittings. I had arranged the details, such as purchasing a team for a safe “get-away,” and mapping a route for Shinburn, who was to do the work on the vault. While he was at it I went to Buffalo for the treasure of the St. Catharines robbery, made ten days previously. As will be recalled, Shinburn and I, in making our escape, left it with a friend in the Bison City.
Mark picked the lock on the front door of the New Windsor Bank, and our little steel invention soon told the tale of the combination numbers of the vault and inside safes, so that the bank people one morning discovered nearly three hundred thousand dollars gone from their funds, which was about all they had boasted of. Considerable of the loot was in government bonds, as good as gold almost, and better handling for us in a sharp “get-away.” I will not occupy too much space in relating how Shinburn, with his aids Eddie Hughes and Gus Fisher, got off without a hitch, the only clew left of them being the team, abandoned on the outskirts of Baltimore.