Sad and sore I turned away and trudged through the storm to my room at Irish Annie’s where I found food and drink and light and heat and the consoling hop layout.
I was out early the next afternoon to find out what had happened at Swede Pete’s that caused him to shift his money. He was around town drunk as a ragman, going from one bar to another, buying drinks for all hands, and telling with great relish how he had saved his bankroll from the “burglars.” I heard his boisterous laugh as I was passing one of the saloons and went in to get an earful. He threw an American twenty-dollar piece on the bar, and as it bounced up and down, roared: “Yump, you beggar, yump! Many times I ha’ to yump for you.” Then everybody was invited to drink and listen to his tale.
I gathered from it that his cash register “bane on the bum.” Something got wrong with its locking arrangement the night before, and Pete took his money to bed with him. “Ay take the old bankroll and throw her under the mattress and lay my two hundred pounds Swede beef on her,” he finished with a roar. Then, bouncing another gold piece on the bar, he ordered it to “yump” and the house to drink. If he suspected me he didn’t show it, and I went out not relishing his talk or his liquor. I thought of sticking him up, but he knew my voice and that wouldn’t do. I thought of chloroform, but my awful experience with the Chinamen warned me against it. I had no desire to get tangled up with Pete’s “two hundred pounds Swede beef” that wasn’t beef at all, but bone and muscle he put on in his youth as a laborer in the Northwest lumber camps. After much thought, I let him go and gave him up as a total loss.
I don’t know what the statistics show, but I should say that for every five hundred burglaries one burglar gets arrested. On the other hand, my experiences showed that if the burglar gets what he is after one time in five he is lucky.
After my bad luck with the big Swede I sat down and gave my system of stealing a good overhauling. As near as I could calculate ten thousand dollars had slipped out of my hands since I left Los Angeles. I wasn’t satisfied to put this down to tough luck entirely. I saw that carelessness had something to do with it. I should have planted the mine payroll in a safer place. A more careful and experienced “blacksmith” would have taken measures to prevent that big safe from falling on its face and burying the money beyond reach, and in the matter of Swede Pete I was careless and overconfident, in not checking on him the night I went after his money. Figuring that my luck was about due to change for the better, I resolved to pull myself together, tighten up my system, and look around me for something else.
If business houses took as much precaution in protecting themselves from thieves as thieves do in protecting themselves from the police, the business of burglary and robbery would reach the vanishing point in no time. Thieves are occasionally careless; business men are habitually so; both pay for their carelessness sooner or later.
In looking about for some worth-while endeavor, I came upon an instance of carelessness on the part of a business man that I never saw equaled in all my years of stealing. It cost him a small fortune in diamonds and sent him into the bankruptcy court. The Christmas holidays were coming on, and the jewelry store in this mining camp spread out a display of stones that would have done credit to any large city. I was naturally attracted; and began investigating the jeweler’s system. I found that he slept on the premises in a room back of his storeroom. He testified in court later that he carried no burglary insurance, that he could not get fire insurance because the town had no fire department, and that he slept in his store to protect himself in case of fire or attempted theft. I watched him closely through every business hour of the day—from seven to eight o’clock one day, from eight to nine the next, from nine to ten the next—and so on through the entire day from his opening hour till he closed at night. I found that he left his store in darkness to save on the light bill, and to my amazement I also found that, instead of locking his safe carefully and completely at night, he gave the combination knob only a quarter turn, leaving it “on the quarter,” or only partly locked and at the mercy of any one with a working knowledge of combination locks.
This putting out of the lights and careless locking of his safe was entirely due to a feeling of security because he slept in his place of business.
After gathering every scrap of information available, I was sure I could “take” the spot if I got a fair break on the luck. The rear room of the place was used as a workshop. This made it possible to enter the back door without waking the owner, who slept in a small room between the shop and the big front storeroom. When I decided to go against this thing, I sat down and looked far ahead.
The stones would have to go to the “American side” to be disposed of in some big city. I decided on San Francisco and planned my route there. Irish Annie was no small problem. I had no intention of confiding in her or giving her any part of the junk, if I got it. I was under no obligation to her. Our relations were just those of two social outcasts, thrown together by chance, and our parting could mean nothing to either of us. To disarm any suspicions she might have later on, I told her I planned to go to Carson City, Nevada, for the big fight between Fitzsimmons and Corbett. This would give me a reasonable excuse for leaving after the burglary.