When the prison keepers came to take him into court for trial they were amazed to find in place of the well-dressed, well-fed broker they had locked up a few days before a repulsively dirty, ragged, emaciated tramp, whose actions indicated that he was not more than half witted.
This ruse of Sheridan's failed, however, through the persistence of William A. Pinkerton, head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Mr. Pinkerton, who had been on Sheridan's trail for years, identified him positively in spite of his changed appearance, and succeeded in having him convicted and sentenced to five years in Sing Sing prison.
It was from this wizard of crime, Walter Sheridan, that I learned the value of the clever disguises which so often stood me in good stead and which enabled my comrades and me to get our hands on hundreds of thousands of dollars that didn't belong to us.
Early in my career I conceived the idea of furthering my dishonest plans by posing as a wealthy old widow, so crippled that she had to transact whatever business she had with the bank from her seat in her carriage. This plan succeeded beyond my fondest expectations, and I am ashamed to think how many thousands of dollars I stole through this simple but extremely effective little expedient.
This ruse proved its merits the first time we tried it—in the daylight robbery of a Brooklyn, New York, bank, where one of my two companions walked away with $40,000 while I sat outside in my carriage listening to the old cashier's advice about investing the money my lamented husband had left me.
But let me go back to the very beginning and show you just how this bold robbery was planned and carried out.
We had had our eyes on this bank for a week—Johnny Meaney, Tom Bigelow, and I. Between the hours of 12 and 1 each day we found there were few customers in the bank and the institution was left in charge of the old cashier and a young bookkeeper.
But the cashier, although over sixty years old, was a keen-eyed, nervous man, whose suspicions were apt to be easily aroused. And, besides, the window in the wire cage where he did business with the bank's customers was so situated that he could always see out of the corner of his eye the vault and the long counter where the money was piled.
We all agreed that it was not safe to attempt the robbery while the cashier was in his usual place. If I could only devise some way of getting him outside the bank for a few minutes it would be easy for one of the men to hold the young bookkeeper in conversation at the paying teller's window, which was so placed that while he stood there his back was toward the vault. That would give just the opportunity we needed for the third member of the party to step unnoticed through a convenient side door and get the plunder.