CHAPTER XIIJUGGLING WITH DEATH
“Curses on it, George; my key won’t lock it!” groaned Mark Shinburn, as he turned, twisted, and in every way tried to move the bolt of the key lock in the door of the big steel vault.
“Don’t give it up, Mark,” I whispered encouragingly, and he manipulated the key again, until, cold night as it was, the perspiration stood like tiny bubbles on his face. I could see it with the aid of the candle which threw a dim light in the banking office.
“No use, George,” he burst out again, presently, throwing himself flat on the floor; “it won’t work, and the trick can’t be done to-night; we’ll have to try it another time!”
“But we’ve got one of the money safes,” said I, by way of encouragement, as I swung open the steel door of a safe in the vault, disclosing many packages of money, mostly in large bills and not a small quantity of gold and silver. “Your key worked on this one to a nicety.”
“Yes, curse it!” Shinburn mumbled; “it seems I got one to fit, but this one will not,” and he contemptuously tossed a key on the floor at my feet. “We might get along well enough under these conditions if I could relock the vault door, but I can’t. The duplicate key will unlock it, but will not, try as I may, lock it again. As it is, the vault door can’t be left as we found it, and we’re in a pretty mess.”
“It unlocked it easily enough,” I commented, as I took the key from his hand, and, thrusting it home in the vault door lock, attempted to turn the bolt at lock again. In vain—I could not.
“I’m losing my cunning,” went on Shinburn as I was working; “here I’ve made three keys, and only one will do the trick for which I shaped it.”
I looked at my watch, for a new thought had come to me. I said, “Lock the money safe, Mark, and let’s get out of this, for the night clerk who sleeps in the bank will be here in ten minutes.”
“I’ll do it, but what about the d—d vault door? We can’t lock that, and to leave it open means the certain discovery that some one’s been tampering with the vault. We’ve come a long way from New York to make a failure.”
“We can’t leave it any way but unlocked,” I said; “and, as a matter of fact, knowing the habits of cashiers as I do, I’ll wager that nothing will be thought of the door being found unlocked. The cashier will think he has been careless, and you canbe certain that he won’t squeal on himself. In the meantime, we’ll make the keys fit. Don’t forget the safe key you threw on the floor.”
Shinburn continued to sit on the floor like a child in a pout.
“Come, Mark, come!” I spoke harshly and almost aloud, impatient over his tardiness and seeming indifference to our danger. “We’re taking a long chance remaining here like this.”
“Blast the luck!” he growled again, “to think we’ve got to miss this fine opportunity of getting away with that swag.” Never in all my experience with Shinburn, this master crook, had I seen him so confoundedly obstinate and so much disturbed. He was an icicle, as a rule—nothing stirred him. Tonight he was disgusted clean through.
“There, that safe is locked,” he said at length, as, springing from the floor, he threw the money safe door to, and turned the key home. Two or three small fortunes were shut from our view. “And that one,” he added, “will be open the next time we come, if we do, or I’ve lost all my cunning.”
“Hold your tongue, Mark,” I said, “and come with me.” How often I had been obliged to urge discretion upon him, for he was ever running risks. As we came out of the vault I closed the great steel door, and once more tried to throw home the bolt. It was useless to try. Shinburn seemed to look at me sarcastically, as though he would tell me therewas no hope of locking the door if he couldn’t do it. Leaving everything as we found it, we left the bank by the rear door. Scarcely had we done so when the night clerk let himself in by the front door.
It was the first work done on the inside of a St. Catharines bank in Ontario, Canada, the vault of which, we had been informed, held a treasure worth the miles we had come to possess it.
The prize seemed to be within our reach, when the failure of the duplicate keys to work brought irritating delay. The cash in one of the safes might have been carried off that night, but it would have been flatly unwise, from our viewpoint, to leave behind thousands which might easily be gotten. To rob one safe would mean discovery of the fact the next morning, and there would end all possibility of getting the contents of the other safe. Both, with properly made keys, could be looted with one visit to the vault.
One of those apparently insignificant oversights on the part of bank officials was the foundation upon which I constructed the plan to rob this bank, and I would direct the attention of the banking world to the incident with all the force I possess. While the method of bank protection of the present period is vastly different from then, it may be that there will be a lesson, after all, found in this history.
It was Jim Griffin, a crook with a reputation, who suggested the robbery. He lived in St. Catharines.A young man who kept company with an Irish serving-girl dropped a remark in Jim’s hearing. The girl was in the employ of the cashier of the bank. Naturally she talked of his affairs, and among other things mentioned the bank keys, which “nearly every night lay on the mantel-piece in the dining room.” As I have said, Jim Griffin heard this girl’s sweetheart speak of the incident, and within two days Jim was in New York, looking for some one to loot the bank. Through a mutual friend I was introduced to him.
“That seems like a fine chance to get a few wax impressions,” was my comment.
“Yes,” rejoined Griffin, with a satisfied smile, “I thought the opportunity too inviting to give it the go-by.”
“Right; if bank cashiers will let servant-girls have opportunities to talk about bank keys lying about the house, I don’t know why we shouldn’t profit by it,” I said. “Shall I interest Mark Shinburn in this?” Griffin assented.
Two days later I was in St. Catharines, and when I had returned to New York had succeeded in making the acquaintance of the sweetheart of the cashier’s serving-girl and had with me the wax impressions of the vault door key and the keys of the two money safes inside. From these impressions I had Shinburn make duplicates.
Several days after this my associates and I wereready to begin the job, and in fact I have already told with what difficulties we had to contend. Our inability to relock the vault door, owing to the misfitting of the key, should have put an end to our hopes of robbing the vault, but, as I anticipated, the cashier, finding the vault door unlocked, believed he had been very careless, and no harm having been done, as he thought, no report of the fact was made to his superiors. Thus was our way paved with opportunity for the next attempt.
Early in the evening, about two weeks later, found us again in the bank and at our work. Two of the keys answered to the turn, but the inside safe key, which had bothered us before, still was out of fit. I decided to delay no more, and that explosives must be used on that safe, though it would require much longer than we’d planned, and there was the added danger that we would not be able to get through in time to catch the through train we expected to use as a safe “get-away.” Missing the train, we would be in the position of not having provided a team. All that could be done was to hope for the best. A fleet pair of horses and a light sleigh, with a dash, we hoped, would land us safely at Niagara Falls, seventeen miles away. The serious end of this proposition would be the little time we’d have to procure a team.
But we got at the work. The holes were drilled in the safe and the “energy” applied; and a mostsatisfactory “blow” was the result. I had never seen a better job. We unlocked the other money safe, and soon had the cash and bonds crammed into a large travelling bag provided for the purpose, all being accomplished as expeditiously as we could. Even then it was fast nearing the time for the night clerk to put in an appearance. We did not dare to remain long enough to put the banking office in shape. Indeed, the vault had to be left open, lest we be caught red-handed. The rear door of the bank had scarcely closed behind us ere the clerk went in the front entrance. To be accurate, we hadn’t gone two blocks when he was hot-footing it to the nearest police station. Instead of a leisurely “get-away,” we found ourselves forced up against the race for liberty, in a fierce snow-storm of the blizzard class. One thing in our favor was the fact that we knew of a hotel where we might get a team, and there we went. Luckily, what we wanted was found, and soon we were off for American soil and safety. It was a situation that required plenty of pluck. The snow was deep, and travelling was no joke to either man or beast. A ride in a temperature such as that night had, and in a gale of wind clouded with flour-dust snow, had nothing to recommend itself to any one; but that was what we had to face or something worse. The poor dumb brutes were much of the time in a perspiration, from the lashing we gave them, but it waseither that for them or capture for us, so we were relentless. I verily believe they never fully recovered from the strain of that night. After the drive, the like of which I do not wish to experience again, we arrived at Niagara Falls about three o’clock in the morning. Putting up the team and paying to have it sent back to St. Catharines, we started for the old suspension bridge. That was the only way across the river, the new one not being open for travel, so we had ascertained on our way to St. Catharines.
A careful reconnoitre of the bridge entrance showed us that an alarm had been sent abroad, for a guard of police was waiting in the neighborhood to arrest suspicious characters. Had my original plan succeeded, we would have had none of this,—we would have been in the United States before the robbery was discovered. But that fact cut no figure in the present dilemma. To the American side we must get, and mighty soon, or we would find ourselves in a Canadian trap. The old suspension bridge, beyond doubt, was not a safe passage for us. It occurred to me that it might be worth while to examine the new bridge; perhaps we could pick our way across it. No one had made the attempt save a few workmen accustomed to that sort of climbing, as monkeys are used to gambolling in tree-tops. Verily workers on suspension bridges and the like, it seemed to me, were never quite at home unlessthey were dangling at the end of a wire many feet above water orterra firma.
We approached the entrance cautiously, and, fortunately, were soon convinced that there wasn’t a police guard in that neighborhood. Undoubtedly they believed that no sane man would attempt to travel the new bridge under the most favorable weather conditions, and certainly not on such a night as we confronted it. But escape we must, and somehow I determined we would. With this feeling we began an investigation. The wind was howling, and at intervals filled almost to suffocation with clouds of powdery snow that fairly beat its way through our clothing. It had rained the day before, a freezing temperature following, and every inch of the bridge work was covered with a veneering of ice, much of it as smooth as glass, rendering foothold extremely uncertain. The night, or rather the morning, for it was going on four o’clock, was dark, there being no moon above the storm. What little light there was to pierce the darkness came from the snow. As for the bridge, the wind swept it clean, as well it might, for at times we kept our feet with great difficulty when a powerful gust came upon us unawares.
It seemed that we were to have less trouble than anticipated, for we’d traversed something like three hundred feet toward the centre, with a well-laid flooring for our feet, and were pressing on farther, cheerfully,before we suddenly had these hopes toppled. I, being in the lead, came mighty near stepping through an opening down into the Niagara River. As I contemplate the experience at this late day, a chill runs through me. I had come to the end of the planking, where the workmen had ceased their labors, possibly on account of the storm in the afternoon. Beyond this, as far as I could discern, was a narrow path of planks laid end to end over the iron girders. The first plank was not more than a dozen inches in width. Further on, it was purely a matter of guessing as to what we would encounter. I got on my knees and felt of the plank. It proved to be what I expected—covered with ice. The only way we could get over it, with any degree of safety, would be to crawl on our hands and knees. The next thing in my mind was, whether or not we could, in the face of the gale, hold to the planking. More nerve-racking still was the uncertainty of what lay farther on in the darkness. I wondered if, and hoped that, the workmen on the American end of the bridge had laid more flooring, perhaps a great deal more, than we had found on this side. If that were the case, the skeleton which lay between us and the flooring on the other side might not be such a menace to our safety as it seemed. All this was mere conjecture, I said to Mark, and the only way to know what was before us was to proceed. It were better, I said, to make an attempt with the possibilityof getting across than to remain on this side and fall into the hands of the police. While it has required considerable time to tell all this, it really happened in a very few minutes. Perhaps five minutes after we were face to face with the danger we had determined what to do.
“It’s like juggling with death,” said Shinburn, coolly, when I asked him if we would better make the attempt to cross on the planking.
“Yes,” I admitted, “it’s a lottery—one chance in many if we get over in safety; but in that bag you have there is a quarter of a million dollars, for which we came to Canada. If we remain on this side of the river much longer, we’re bound to get mixed up with the law, and the cash will go whence it came, perhaps, and we’ll have plenty of time to think it all over in the queen’s prison. Ahead we may meet death, but that I don’t believe, for I haven’t got that feeling—that premonition that sometimes tells a fellow what evil is coming to him. We’ve got to crawl on the planks, that’s the only way I can see to safety. If you can stand it, why, I can.”
I had in mind an experience in the Alps several years before, while touring Europe, and it occurred to me that it might be of some use to follow some of the tactics adopted by my Alpine guide. He carried a long rope, and when my party came to a particularly perilous pathway, alongside a gorgethousands of feet deep, he tied the rope to each of us, so that we appeared like so many knots in it, one a dozen feet, perhaps, from the other. It was hardly possible that one would fall and drag all down with him. If one of the party lost his footing, the worst that could happen to him would be a bad fright from dangling between the sky and the almost bottomless gorge, it all ending in being dragged to safety again.
“I believe that we can find some rope, and in some such way help ourselves out of this predicament,” I said, in making a further explanation of my plan. “There must be rope about the stables in the village. Now, what say you to the idea?”
“Anything to get out of this beastly cold,” Mark answered. “To get out of this I’d go to ——”
“Never mind where, Mark,” I laughed, despite the gravity of our situation.
“Well, I’m an iceberg and no mistake, George; and I want to go anywhere to find a place that will thaw things.”
We hustled among several stables in the neighborhood, and soon had two clothes-lines and three pairs of horse reins. Then back to the bridge we went, where in a few minutes we’d rigged up a cable that seemed strong enough to withstand the strain to which we would put it. I said I’d make the first attempt to cross, so tied one end of the cable to a bridge stay and the other around my body closeunder the arms. The cable was about seventy feet in length, long enough, I reckoned, to let me get to the other side of the skeleton work. If the cable was exhausted before I got over, then I would have to return. That was the alternative. When ready to start, I fastened the treasure satchel to Mark’s back, and told him to remain at the cable stay, and do the best he could for me, in case I slipped from the planks and fell through the skeleton work. If he could pull me to the bridge again, why, all right; if not, well—I shivered at the prospect of dangling in the air hundreds of feet above the dark river.
“If I should fall through, Mark,” I said to him, “and you can’t get me back, just cut the rope. I guess that will end me. Anyway, it will be better than being suspended in the air and freezing to death.”
“Don’t talk like a fool!” he said, in a sort of shivering voice, I thought; “if you think it so serious as that, you shouldn’t start.”
“Well, in case anything should happen, Mark, old boy, I’ll say good-by.”
With that I stepped on the plank and, bending to my knees, began my journey over the slippery planking, with the storm raging about me. Far below was the roaring river I could hear but not see. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had not agreed with Mark on a code of signals. I dared not turn round,so cried out to him, that if I got over all right, I would pull the cable three times. In that case he was to fasten the cable about him and return to me a similar indication of his readiness for the journey. Then I would fasten the cable to a stay at my end of the bridge, and notify him by the same signal to come over. I called back another good-by, which he answered. The wind swept through the thousands of strings of the great skeleton bridge, rendering wild, weird music, it seemed to me; and at times, as I struggled along the treacherous planks, I imagined that the wires were of a prodigious harp, designed to give forth melancholy and discouragement, and that ten thousand demons were at the strings in a mad struggle to achieve my undoing. Again, so mournful was the sweep of the wind, that I could, in my terrible position, fancy my ears laden with the weight of my funeral song. I wished with all my heart that it would cease, that I might better work out my exemption from death, but it persisted in beating on, occasionally threatening to dislodge me by a sudden and more terrifying evidence of its unlimited energy.
I had been creeping along inch by inch, and it seemed to me that I must have been on the way an hour, before I had covered a score of feet, when I paused to catch my breath, which had been almost driven from my body by a fierce shock of wind. And, too, I was compelled to clutch at the plankingwith all the strength left me, that I might not be hurled below as far as my cable would permit. When the wind relented, I called out to Mark, but no response came, the sound of my voice, in all probability, having been drowned ere it got ten feet away. I resumed the struggle and had traversed a dozen feet more, when a gust struck me and one hand slipped from the plank. Down I went with a crash that nearly cracked my head on the ice, and I must have gone below, had not my right hand come in contact with a girder, fortunately close by, when I met with the mishap. With this aid I was able to balance myself and regain my place on the plank. I was trembling with fright, and I knew that my forehead, notwithstanding the cold, was wet with perspiration. It was fortunate I was near a girder when this piece of ill-luck came. The girders, as near as I could guess, were five feet apart. Had I been midway of two, I dare not think of what would have been my fate. Without these supports, from time to time, I am certain that I would have been unable to keep to the path.
Perhaps I’d crawled fifty feet when I came to the end of a plank, and, feeling further ahead and to the right and to the left, I could put my hand on no support save an iron girder at my right side. It was about eight inches wide, and no doubt extended to the edge of the bridge. To the right I thought I saw another plank, but to reach it I must crawlalong the narrow, ice-covered beam. I had barely saved myself from disaster on the planking; how I’d fare on the iron, still narrower, I did not know. Ahead, as I became more accustomed to the darkness, I made out the next girder, but it was too far away. I must creep to the plank at my right or go back to Shinburn. Try as I might, I could find no other solution. My predicament can easily be understood, if any one doubts this history, by an attempt on hands and knees, in broad daylight, to crawl fifty feet along a board twelve inches wide, at an elevation of several hundreds of feet, and coming to the end of that narrow path, turn squarely, and, still on the hands and knees, creep along an eight-inch wide ice-covered iron beam. If this journey will not put the nerves to the test, then I’m no judge of human nature and endurance. But the full force of my danger can only be realized, when the course I have outlined has been gone over in such a night as I have described, with its howling winds and blinding snow clouds. A person who can accomplish the task without the trouble I felt must be a practised athlete or a monkey with a ringed tail.
I came mighty near slipping from the girder the moment I put my knee to it. The wind seemed to come with a sort of broadside force. What saved me I don’t know. At the end of the girder I found a plank, and the solution of my troubles, in part.This plank was not so heavy as the others and had not been so thoroughly frozen to the iron that a strong gust of wind could not sweep it toward the right side of the bridge, one end more than the other. In this manner had my straight passage along the planking been interrupted. I crawled on the plank, finding it very unsteady, owing to the way it rested on the girders. I crept along, and thus I bore to the left, where, after going sixteen feet, I came to the resumption of the straight and narrow path, which I hoped would lead me to the end of my perilous route; that is, I thought so, but to my disappointment I was confronted with another stretch of ice-covered iron to be struggled over. However, it proved to be only eight feet from plank to plank, and I succeeded in spanning it without a mishap. But my hands and feet were aching with the cold. If I had dared, I would have sat astride the plank and slapped my hands together, but time was so precious and the moments must seem so endless to Mark, that I would not. So, pressing on, I gained ten more feet, and felt encouraged. Then I found myself on a terribly slippery and much narrower piece of planking, which evidently had been used as a filler in the pathway. In my anxiety to get along, I did not discover it until I’d taken an insecure hold. Suddenly my hand slipped off, and, sheering to one side, I toppled over. Catching at the planking with both hands, I found myself hangingunder the planking instead of shooting down to the cable’s end. Vainly for a minute I tried to fetch my feet up around the plank. Struggling with all my might, it seemed impossible under the conditions, as I was almost stiff from the cold and weakened by the terrible strain upon me. As my feet swung back and forth in an effort to get a momentum that would assist me, they struck against the girder I’d crossed just before I fell. Here was a simple solution of my nerve-taxing plight. I wondered if another man, Mark Shinburn, for instance, would have been so bewildered as not to think sooner of using the girder as a means of getting back to the planking. I always believed, without wishing to appear egotistical, that I possessed at least the ordinary common sense allotted to man. In this case I seem to have been very short-sighted. Perhaps—ay, I must believe that the awful test to which my mind and body had been subjected, and the fearful roar of the wind and the swirling of the snow, confused me.
I inched my hands along the plank till I got to the girder, and then I pulled myself to the path again. I will not dwell upon the great effort I had to put forth, nor go into detail as to my exhausted state when at last I was comparatively safe again. When I had crawled twelve feet more on the planking, I came to the solid bridge flooring, and with a glad feeling scrambled from my knees. Had I dared,I would have prayed. Pounding the palms of my hands together for a minute, a warm sensation of a freer circulation gave me renewed life, and then I signalled back to Mark that he might know I was safe, and that he’d better get ready to follow me. Unloosing the cable, I soon had the arrangements for his safety completed, had received his sign of readiness, and had notified him to proceed. I knew pretty well that he would have to surmount about every difficulty I had, and perhaps more, and I hoped he would succeed as well. One thing I was certain of, and that was, he would be handicapped more than I. I could have brought the treasure bag with me, but why should I? I might lose my life and he might be saved. If I took the bag with me and my life were lost, he would be deprived of his share of the money, for it would have gone down with me into the river finally. Now that I had accomplished the perilous task, it was more than probable that he would fare no worse.
I kept my hands on the cable constantly, that I might be ready for any emergency. Now and then I detected a trembling that told me of his coming. After perhaps three minutes had passed, I began drawing in the cable, and from the slack I coiled on the flooring it was easy to tell that Shinburn was making progress. I wondered whether he’d be as successful as I, upon arriving at the break in his narrow way. Suddenly the cable became taut, andmy heart went a-thumping until I felt a choking sensation. Almost immediately the tension was relaxed, and I knew Mark was still safe, though no doubt he had met with something unpleasant. I drew in more slack, presently, but with the utmost caution, fearful that I might, in some manner, impede his progress. I believed I could tell by the cable when he crawled over the icy iron sill, as I had done, and then obliquely, back to the straight way again. I measured the cable as a woman measures cloth, from elbow to nose, and found, as near as I could tell in that manner, that about two-thirds of the entire length was at my feet. That my comrade was getting near to the end of his tortuous journey there was no doubt. True enough, for, with the wind bearing the sounds my way, I could hear the crackling of ice on the planks.
“Mark, Mark, lad!” cried I, and waited intently for a response. It came in a sort of gasp, as though the speaker were almost exhausted,—“‘Right, George, ‘right!”
That the poor fellow was about done for I felt certain.
“Courage, Mark; it’s almost over, lad,” I shouted, hoping that my words would reach him, despite the wrong direction of the wind. The many anxious moments were torture to me, but they were soon to end. Five minutes later I saw him emerge from the darkness and the storm, and, forgetfulof my own danger, I reached far out, and, catching hold of him, was his guide to safety. He could not have lasted many minutes more. He trembled as though stricken with ague. I beat his body with my hands and dragged him about until he must have thought I was inhuman, but I felt that I must make his blood flow faster. Presently he grew stronger and was able to speak in awhisper:—
“Jail for mine, George, if the other chance is the sort of wire-walking I’ve just done.”
“To the winds with what we’ve passed through, Mark,” I cried joyously; “for what’s it all to us now that we’re safe? Come, lad, it will be of the easiest sort to get over the remainder of the bridge now;” and, unstrapping the treasure satchel, I relieved him of this burden, and pushing my arm through his, supported him toward the American side. Soon we came to the gate, on the other side of which was a watchman’s shanty. Climbing the gate, I bade him wait while I investigated the premises to see whether any one was inside. The watchman was there, but fast asleep, and snoring so that I could hear him above the rushing of the wind. There was no danger from him—that was certain.
While Mark lingered near the bridge with the treasure, I went after a livery team, with which to drive to the home of a Mr. Webster, according to the story I would tell the driver. Our dearMr. Webster would live somewhere in the country, perhaps ten miles from Niagara Falls. I found the team without difficulty, and, driving after Mark, we were soon on our journey. As I have intimated, we told the driver that it was too rough weather for us to make the long trip to our friend’s place; and as it was best to make as direct a course as possible, in order to facilitate the business that had taken us to that part of the country, he’d better put about in the direction of Tonawanda. Afterward I learned that this ruse saved us from arrest, and we were glad of the forethought.
On the suburbs of Tonawanda I discharged the team, and we walked to the Buffalo side of the village, where we engaged another team. As before, we started for some fictitious friend’s house in the country, but after getting a mile or so out of the village, headed for Buffalo. Arriving there, we discharged that team and went to the house of a friend, where we fairly revelled in a hot breakfast; which by the way we very much needed.
About eleven o’clock in the morning we induced our host to make a little investigation of the police situation for us. He returned after an hour with the none too encouraging news that two men who were believed to be the St. Catharines looters had been traced to Buffalo. Much against my judgment, about two o’clock in the afternoon, with a small bag of cash, the other having been left, with most of theloot, with our friend, Shinburn and I set out for the Erie Railway depot to get a New York train. We had been on the street only a few minutes when I began to reason with him, and to point out the danger of exposing ourselves in so public a place as the Buffalo depot.
“Mark,” I said, “when the superintendent of a railway issues orders as to the running time of trains, he never fails to say to his employees, ‘When you’re in doubt as to the right of way, be sure to take the course you know is safe.’ Now, it’s dollars to doughnuts that the depot is being well watched. I suggest that we about face and drive to another town, much smaller than this, and get a train there.”
Well, we did so, and shortly after dark were in Angola. Putting our team in the stable, we went to the hotel, which was near the depot, put our cash bag carelessly under the counter, and went in to supper. On coming out a few minutes later, I saw that our baggage had been disturbed, as though some one had been examining it. Not far away stood two men in a deep conversation. They frequently, though slyly, cast their eyes in our direction. We calmly smoked our cigars and waited developments. In the meantime I felt for my pistol, to have it handy, not knowing what sort of a fight there might be any minute. Of a truth, we weren’t going to surrender at the first cry of wolf. One of the men presently walked up to me and said, in a most affablemanner, “That’s a fine team you have in the stable.”
“Yes,” I answered, in a hard, cold tone, and as repelling as I could make it. My iceberg reply seemed to shut off any further conversation from that quarter, my inquisitor retiring in much confusion and no doubt mystified. He certainly had met with little success on his first fishing excursion.
I had arranged for a friend to come over by rail from Buffalo that night to take the team back, and a few minutes before the train was due I stepped to the clerk’s desk and told him of it. In doing so I saw one of the men whom I believed to be detectives walk toward me. His partner, a moment before, had left the room. Shinburn was sitting a few feet away, keeping an eye on the treasure bag. The detective hadn’t reached the desk when I’d told the clerk what I wanted to. However, it was a ripe moment in which I might add confusion to the trail, so, waiting until he got close enough to me, I said, at the same time handing the clerk the business card of a well-known Chicago house, “Give us commercial rates, if you please.” Getting the bill, I paid it and turned away. The detective’s partner came in the room just then, and, drawing him aside, took a telegram from his pocket. Both examined it critically. I would have given a good-sized greenback to know what they were reading. I hadn’t a bit of doubt that Mark and I were the interesting subjects of it.
Presently it was time for the train, and with Mark carrying the bag we went to the depot, the detectives following close on our heels. They began to worry me not a little. When I bought two tickets for Cleveland, the sleuth who had shadowed me to the desk was again at my side and heard what I called for and saw what was given me. If I had any doubt as to the identity of the men, it was all removed by this time. A moment later the detectives had wired to some point,—Chicago, I believed, and possibly Cleveland. Probably the former had been asked to wire as to whether the big business house I had mentioned employed drummers answering our descriptions, and police of the latter had, undoubtedly, been asked to watch for our arrival there. Beyond a doubt the country was well aroused over the St. Catharines burglary.
Now, for a fact, the game was getting to be exceedingly fast, and really I didn’t know what to do, and Shinburn had left it all to me. It seemed that the best thing was to put on a bold front and trust to Fate. I hoped I had made no blunder.
True to his agreement, our Buffalo friend came in on the train, but we paid no attention to him, keeping our eyes better engaged in watching the doings of the detectives. They selected a seat in the car where we were, but at the opposite end. It was evident that they had determined to become better acquainted with us. On the train I was in a calmermood and better able to think, with the result that I’d settled upon a plan to prevent the enemy ever setting eyes on us again after the arrival in Cleveland. Alighting from the car with all the dignity at our command, we walked up to a hackman, and waited until it was certain that the detectives were near enough to hear what would be said.
“Here, driver, put us at the Metropolitan Hotel, as soon as you can get there,” I commanded loudly, and followed this up by springing in the hack, Shinburn following. In an instant we were gone from the view of the sleuths, who of course made haste to follow us in another carriage. Thank the stars, we were too quick for them. Safe from immediate danger, we bought another bag, and, transferring the cash to it, left nothing in the old one except a few pieces of soiled linen. Then Shinburn was driven to the house of a friend in Euclid Avenue, where I left him with the treasure. We agreed to meet in about half an hour near the Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Rochester Railway depot. I went to the Metropolitan Hotel with the old bag, expecting I’d have to dodge the detectives. It seemed to me that I must go there in order to throw the hack driver off our game. However, it turned out as I hoped. The detectives had been there, but, failing to find us, at once realized we had played a game on them. Off they had gone to search other hotels. I engaged a room, and after taking my bag there and waiting afew minutes, I came down and told the clerk that I’d be back directly if any one called for me. It was about sixA.M.
“I’m going to a drug store not far away,” I said; “so be sure and tell my friend, if he calls, that I’ll return soon.”
In a few minutes I was with Mark, and we were walking the C. P. and R. railroad ties until the second station was reached, where we awaited a train for Pittsburg. From there we had an uninterrupted journey to New York City.
Of course my Police Headquarters friends soon got wind of our presence in town, and the usual “squaring” had to be made. I ascertained through them that the brace of sleuths who worried us at Angola and Cleveland were from Chicago, and that we would have been arrested had it not been for my commercial traveller dodge at the hotel. As I thought, they had wired to Chicago and Cleveland. Word came from the former place that no such drummers as described were in the employ of that house. This information was wired to the detectives at Cleveland, but too late to do us any harm. They found the hackman after a while and an interview with him told them a plain story. I understood that they felt about as ruffled as detectives must feel when big game has easily slipped through their fingers. They waited a long time for me to return from the drug store. Precious little but a collarwas found in the satchel in my room. I laughed as I heard this story, and remarked that the boys were entitled to it and our discarded linen.
“Mark,” I said, a few days later, having recalled the experiences we had had that night on the suspension bridge, “what made the cable get taut suddenly when you were about halfway on your plank-crawl?”
“Oh, not much of anything,” he carelessly replied; “I just slipped a bit off the plank, but managed to hold on with my hands.”
“Was the plank narrower than the others and rounded up with ice?” I questioned, curious to know if he had encountered the treacherous place I had, with the same result.
“You’ve described it to a dot,” replied Mark; “but it happened that I could reach a girder with my feet, and that, with a little bracing, got me to the top again. I thought I was going to give you a job of hauling in the cable with a bait attached that had blamed little life in it.”
“Fancy you dangling at the end of that cable of leather and rope with a few hundreds of thousands strapped to your back,” I said, with a sorry attempt at a joke. Shinburn smiled, but he was thinking of his experience, I doubt not. Subsequently I made a daylight trip to the suspension bridge. How we succeeded in getting over the skeleton section that eventful night has ever been a mystery to me. I marvel that I survived to tell of it.