According to the contract which I prepared, the banker paid five thousand dollars down and was to pay me an equal amount as soon as I had completed my arrangements and set the date for the robbery. He further agreed that there should be at least $50,000 in cash in the bank vault on the night of our visit.
It was further provided that the banker should cooperate with me and my fellow robbers in every possible way, and that he should do nothing to aid in our arrest or conviction for the crime, which, as was expressly stated, was committed at his suggestion, and not ours. In case the robbery was interrupted before we could get inside the vault the banker was to pay us $25,000 in cash in addition to the $10,000 already advanced.
I agreed to leave no stone unturned to carry out the robbery and promised to return the agreement to the banker as soon as all its provisions had been fulfilled.
All this I set down on paper in as businesslike way as I knew how. It was a document which would have made the poor old banker's ruin even greater than his thievings had done if I had been the sort of woman to break faith with him. With trembling fingers he signed it and counted out $5,000 in bills.
From the banker I had gained a good idea of the bank and the sort of vault we would have to enter. Now, to get some good, reliable men to help me do the job.
Of all the bank burglars in my acquaintance George Mason seemed best fitted for this particular crime. He was a cool, resourceful fellow and had had wide experience in blowing open bank vaults.
George readily agreed to join me, and for the rest of the party he recommended two younger men—Tom Smith and Frank Jones, I will call them, although those were not their names. I do not like to reveal their identity here because they later reformed and led honest lives.
Right here let me say that I never told these three men of my arrangements with the banker or that I was to receive from him $10,000 in addition to what we expected to find in the vault. If they are alive to-day and read these lines they will learn here for the first time that the bank in Quincy, Ill., which they helped Sophie Lyons rob was robbed by request of its president.
BORING INTO THE BANK VAULT
I sent word to the banker that we were ready and he came to my house and paid me $5,000 more. Then, by different routes, George Mason, the other two robbers and I proceeded to Quincy.