The brains we criminals expended in saving some robbery from failure or in escaping the consequences of our deeds would have won us lasting success and happiness in any honorable pursuit—used, as they were, for crime, they brought us in the end only disgrace and remorse. That is the lesson which these experiences have taught me and which I hope every reader of this page will learn.
If there was ever a thief who planned his crimes with greater attention to the smallest details than Harry Raymond, the man who stole the famous Gainsborough, I never knew him.
But even Raymond's painstaking care was not proof against all the startling surprises which confronted him and his plans were often completely ruined by one of these unexpected happenings.
Raymond was always a restless man—never content to remain long in one place. When stories of the rich gold and diamond mines in South Africa reached his ears he began to cast longing eyes in that direction. Where there was so much treasure he thought there surely ought to be an opportunity to get his hands on a share of it.
He tried to induce Mark Shinburn to go with him, but Shinburn had his eye on several big robberies nearer home, and so Raymond set out alone. On the way he met Charley King, a noted English thief, and the two joined forces.
Raymond hadn't been in South Africa twenty-four hours before he learned that a steamer left Cape Town for England every week with a heavy shipment of gold and diamonds on board. His next step was to find out just how this treasure was brought down from the mines.
As he soon learned, it came by stage each week, the day before the steamer sailed. The bags of gold dust and uncut diamonds were locked in a strong box which was carried under the driver's seat. There was only one other man on the coach besides the driver—a big, powerful Boer, who carried a brace of revolvers and a repeating rifle and had the reputation of being a dead shot.
There was just one difficulty in the way—Raymond really needed a third man to assist King and him. Among all the criminals in Cape Town whom he knew there was none he could trust, and so he at last decided to ask a wholly inexperienced man to join the party. The man he selected was an American sea captain who had been obliged to flee from his native land after setting fire to his ship for the insurance. He was desperately in need of money and was, therefore, only too glad of the opportunity to share in the fortune Raymond proposed to steal.
Raymond, with his customary caution, studied the proposition from every angle. At last he was convinced that he had provided for every contingency which could possibly arise to prevent his robbery of the coach.
This was his plan—to stretch a rope across some lonely spot in the road and trip the horses. Before the driver and the guard could recover from their astonishment and extricate themselves from the overturned coach, Raymond and his companions would leap from their ambush and overpower them.