As I have said, there was bad feeling in the band and I think someone interested in Howard's death gave the tip. At any rate, the band took pains to scatter, and the various members were careful to record themselves at different cities remote from New York. The New York police were much relieved and promptly forgot the tip that "something big" was to be "pulled off."
Just about a year later Shevelin, who was not by nature intended for a crook, looked up from a drunken doze at a saloon table into the keen eyes of Jimmy Hope. Shevelin had neither the instinctive inclination nor the nervous system which belong to the natural criminal. The bare fact that he was connected with the projected robbery had made a drinking man of him.
He was in debt and in other trouble, and was genuinely pleased to open negotiations again with the able and confidence-inspiring leader. Everything was now in order to go on with the undertaking. There were no dissensions in the gang, therefore the police had no inkling, the bank was smugly confident of their steel fortress, and it only remained to name the hour.
Hope's operations were much embarrassed by the fact that Patrick Shevelin was only a supplementary watchman. Daniel Keely, his brother-in-law, was the regular night watchman, and absolutely honest, as Hope knew, both from his own investigations and from Shevelin's assurances. Shevelin's duty was as day watchman, chiefly during banking hours. The only time when he did not share his watch with either Keely or the equally incorruptible janitor of the building, Louis Werkle, was on Sunday. Therefore, the morning of a beautiful October Sabbath was chosen.
Hope saw that the weak spot of the bank was also the vulnerable point in his own operations, namely, the nervous and somewhat alcoholic Shevelin. Hope decided it would be best for Shevelin to not be on duty at the bank that Sunday, but to arrange with Werkle, the janitor, to take his place.
THE NIGHT BEFORE
Had Shevelin been of sterner stuff, the robbers would have bound and gagged him and left him with a carefully rehearsed tale of a plucky fight against fearful odds to relate to his rescuers. But it was more than probable that Shevelin would betray himself in the inevitable ordeal of hours and hours of tiresome examination. Therefore, it seemed best to have him at home, sick, where he could establish an unshakable alibi and answer, "I don't know" to all questions.
Shevelin admitted the band Saturday night and concealed them in a storeroom in an upper part of the building. There they sat crowded, cramped, and uncomfortable through the entire night. They dared not smoke nor even eat for fear Keely, the regular night watchman, who occasionally poked his nose into the room during his rounds, might notice an unaccustomed smell.
This matter of smell illustrates how carefully Jimmy Hope worked out the minutest details of his plan. He foresaw that ten men packed into a rather small room would, even without food or smoke, make the atmosphere seem close to the nostrils of the watchman familiar with the usual empty smell of the place.
For this reason Hope ordered his men to bathe before the job and wear clean clothing without any scent whatever. No tobacco, drink, or onions passed their lips on Saturday. As a last precaution, at Hope's order, Shevelin broke a bottle of smelly cough medicine on the floor in the presence of his brother-in-law.