Rogues and Vagabonds

by George R. Sims

Here Preene, who was travelling with Marston, managed to alight and take a full bag of gold from Brooks, then he slipped it into the carriage where Marston was, and got back again in time to jump into the guard’s van as the train started.

Directly the train was in motion again the other boxes were attacked, and now Brooks, Preene, and Heckett filled their carpet bags with gold, and also large courier bags which they wore across their shoulders, and which were quite concealed by their heavy travelling cloaks.

When the train stopped at Folkestone the work was done. The boxes had been reclosed and filled with shot of the exact weight of the abstracted gold, the safes were relocked, and there was nothing to tell that the guard’s van had been the scene of a daring and gigantic robbery. At Folkestone the three accomplices slipped out of the van and entered the nearest carriages, carrying their spoil with them, its great weight, however, rendering it anything but an easy task.

Here the safes were carefully taken out and handed to the authorities for shipment to Boulogne, and the train sped on its way to Dover.

It was with intense relief that Marston put his head out of window as the train rattled out of Folkestone station, and saw the safes on the platform, zealously guarded by the porters, who little imagined that they were keeping watch over a quantity of shot while the gold was divided among four first-class passengers comfortably seated in the fast-vanishing train.

At Dover the conspirators alighted, each carrying his own bag, and politely declining the offers of the porters, who were anxious to assist them.

Making their way to one of the hotels in the neighbourhood they succeeded in getting refreshments served in a private room, and here, putting their heavy bags under the table, they discussed the return journey.

To avoid the suspicion which such a short stay might have aroused, they had provided themselves with return tickets from Ostend, and it was by the Ostend mail, which leaves Dover shortly after two, that they proposed to return to town with their precious burden.

Paying their bill they got outside. There was an uneasy feeling on them all the time they were within four walls. Even the fact that the waiter remained out of the room some time before he returned with the change filled them with alarm.

They had every hope that the weight had been so accurately replaced that the exchange of shot for precious metal would not be discovered until the safes were opened in Paris, but there was the chance that something might have happened at Folkestone before they were shipped.