Grady, like "Mother" Mandelbaum, was a "fence," but, while she dealt in everything, Grady specialized in diamonds. He had an office opposite the Manhattan Bank, which bore the sign, "John D. Grady, Diamond Merchant." From the windows of this office, Grady, Jimmy Hope, and his gang gazed hungrily across at the bank and plotted its ruin. Up to the actual day of the robbery, Hope and Grady were in accord on all plans. Afterward the two leaders quarreled over the disposition of the bonds. Hope had his way and there is little doubt that had Grady taken charge of the two million dollars of securities he would have succeeded in selling them, whereas Hope failed.
While "Mother" Mandelbaum was building up her trade with pickpockets and shoplifters, Grady was carrying his business about in a satchel. No man ever took greater chances. At all hours of the night this short, stocky man went about the darkest and most dangerous parts of New York. In the little black satchel, as every criminal knew, was a fortune in diamonds.
When a thief had made a haul, Grady would meet him at any time or place he pleased and take the diamonds off his hands. Only once was he "sandbagged" and robbed of several thousand dollars worth of the stones. He took the misfortune in good part, said it was his own fault, and never took revenge on the men who robbed him.
STEAM-DRILL BURGLARY
While "Mother" Mandelbaum engineered house and dry goods store robberies, Grady set his mind and energies on the great banks. As bold as the Manhattan affair was his assault on a West Side bank. The vaults of this bank were surrounded by a three-foot wall of solid concrete.
Grady opened a first-class saloon next door, and as soon as he got his bearings installed a steam engine in the cellar. This engine was supposed to run the electric light dynamo and an air pump. In reality it was there to drill a hole into the bank next door.
Selecting a Saturday which happened to be a holiday, he commenced operations Friday night, and there was every prospect of being inside the vault long before Monday morning. But, unfortunately, a wide-awake policeman of inquiring mind heard the unfamiliar buzzing out in the street. He prowled around and finally discovered that something unusual was going on in the cellar under the saloon. No answer coming to his knocks, he burst in the door and descended to the cellar. The thieves ran out, but two were caught in the street. Though Grady financed and planned this scheme, he escaped untouched, for there was no evidence against him.
Criminals, successful and unsuccessful, rarely lack women to love them. Strangely enough, this grim, daring, successful general of crime was perpetually spurned and flouted by my sex. Finally there came to him like an angel from heaven a very beautiful, well-bred daughter of the rich. Of course, John fell in love with her—any man would have—and things looked favorable for him.
This woman was the young and almost penniless widow of a member of the "four hundred." She had involved herself in a financial situation from which there was no honest escape. Just as servants of the rich ran to "Mother" Mandelbaum with their secrets, so this woman went to Grady with her inside knowledge.