CHAPTER XX
Springcame. For me that meant moving, and while I was trying to decide where to go I made by chance the acquaintance of a coal miner who had worked in a small mine in one of the middle-west provinces of Canada. In the course of our talks I learned by asking a few casual questions that the mine worked between thirty and forty men; that it was on a short branch road off the Canadian Pacific; that the pay-off was in cash, on or about the first of every month, and that the money was shipped by express from the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The fact that the payroll had to be held one night at the point where itwas transferred to the branch road into the mine interested me. I knew the place, and that there was little or no police protection. There were four or five thousand dollars that had to lie somewhere in a small town overnight, practically unprotected. The two thousand miles I would have to travel meant nothing. If the thing couldn’t be handled, I would still be in the midst of fertile fields where I could make a living without taking tough chances against wised-up city police and the busy stool pigeon.
Bidding farewell to the bums and yeggs at “Mother Moustache’s” wine dump in “Sonora Town,” where they all hung out and did their drinking, I discarded my gray suit for a pair of overalls, a rough coat, a blue shirt, and a cap, and took to the road for a three-week jump. Through California, across Oregon, and into Spokane, Washington, where I found my bartender friend and recovered my “instruments,” which had been lying unused in the safe. The gun I left with him, as it was cumbersome and useless to me on the road. I could get one when I got nearer my destination.
On through Butte, Great Falls, and to the Canadian line I traveled; on north to Calgary again, but this time I turned eastward and soon arrived at the town where the mine payroll had to be transferred.
I had managed my money carefully during the winter and still had enough to carry me for a few months by economizing. The first thing I did was to take a look at the “box” in the depot, which was the express office as well. I had confidently expected to find a safe of cheap or obsolete make, such as was generally in use then in the smaller towns.
One look at this “box” made me regret that I had ever met the talkative coal miner. It was of the latest make and belonged in a bank instead of an express office in a town of two thousand people. It was as near burglar-proof as any safe could be, and in addition to this it was “chested,” which, in terms of burglary, means it had a steel chest inside—a safe within a safe. I was dismayed. I saw at a glance that it was too much for me. It was the kind of safe that discourages the “heavy man” (safe breaker). He looks it over and says to his mob: “Yes, I can beat her all right,” and explains to them in detail just how it can be done. “But,” he finishes, “it would take three or four shots to get into the guts of her and, you know, the first shot wakes the natives up. If they don’t hear another they don’t know what woke them, and go back to sleep; but when they do hear the second shot they get up to find out what it’s about. Then comes the last one, and they’re on top of you with shotguns and pitchforks. You’ve got to stand them off and dash out. Where? Why, nowhere. There’s no getaway here, and I don’t want the coin bad enough to go against it.”
I knew if they put the payroll in that “box” it would be as safe from me as if it was in the bank at Winnipeg. I couldn’t have opened it if I had it in the town blacksmith shop for twenty-four hours. Discouraging as the business looked, I decided to stay in the place and have a look at the money when it arrived.
I got a room at the hotel, hung my coat up on a rack, and went about in my shirt sleeves trying to appear like a miner or ranch hand and attract noattention. Every night at nine o’clock, when the train came in from the east, I was on the depot platform with the town loungers and did as much staring around as any of them. At last the end of the month came, and with it the payroll. This night the station agent, who was telegraph operator, express agent, and everything else about the depot, was a bit more alert, walking around with an air of importance, responsibility. When the train pulled in, he was at the door of the express car, and, sure enough, out came the payroll in a small leather container, about the size of a woman’s hand bag.
When the train departed, the agent, with a firm grip on the leather pouch, returned to his office escorted by the depot loungers. The payroll was locked securely in the inner compartment of the big safe, and then the heavy outer door closed upon it, shutting out any hopes I had of getting my hands on it that night. I went off to bed sad and thoughtful.
The next morning at ten o’clock I followed the payroll aboard the jerkwater train that carried it to the waiting miners. At twelve o’clock I sat on the sidewalk across from the mine office and gloomily watched the paymaster portioning it out to the joyful miners. In the afternoon I rode back to the main line with my mind made up to let the thing go and look elsewhere for something not so tough.
There was a Chinese laundry in the town and I had often thought of going into it for a smoke to kill off the dull hours, and now, both dull and despondent, I made my way to it and into the confidence of the boss Chinaman, who made me welcome. He was hospitable and kindly as all Chinese are who have not becomesour and suspicious under the impositions of their white brothers.
A moderate quantity of opium will not inflame or distort the imagination. I do not say it is an aid to clear thinking, but it is a fact that I left the laundry with what I thought, and still think, was nothing less than an inspiration.
The next day I went over the town thoroughly and looked at every “box” in it. There was not one that I couldn’t beat. My “inspiration” told me that if I could put the depot safe out of business a few days before the payroll arrived again, the agent would be forced to lock it in one of the other safes in the town and I might get a chance at it. After traveling the great distance and spending so much time and money, I hated to quit without making a try for this money.
I jumped fifty miles farther east, where I got dynamite and drills, stealing them at a mine, and returned to wait another month before I could do anything more. A week before the payroll was due, I went into the depot one night with a sledge hammer, knocked the combination knob off the “box,” battered the spindle in, and smashed the handle on the door. Adding another touch to the “burglary,” I left a couple of crowbars behind, broke open the till, smashed things generally, and threw cigarette and cigar snipes and pipe scrapings on the floor. When the station man opened up the next morning, his office looked as if it had been raided by a tribe of yeggs that had tried to wreck it when they failed to open the “box.” There was a tremendous hue and cry, and a fruitless man hunt. An inspector of police came, looked at the safe, and declared the job was done by a band of thievesthat had been ravaging depots and post offices farther east. The battered safe was shipped to Toronto to be opened and repaired by its makers.
I waited with much anxiety and not a little curiosity to see what would be done with the leather pouch when it arrived at the end of the month.
Two days after the safe and express office were wrecked, a “redcoat,” as the Mounted Police are called, was killed by a drunken Indian. Every idle able-bodied man in town joined the man hunt that lasted ten days, and my “burglary” was forgotten in the new excitement. I kept a careful watch on the depot agent, and saw he was taking the day’s small receipts home with him every night. I looked over his house and prepared to enter it in case he did the same with the payroll instead of leaving it in one of the safes. My most careful check on his residence showed he had no children, no dog, no old people in it. He and his wife were all I would have to contend with.
On the evening the money was due I went over the whole thing carefully and satisfied myself that nothing had been left undone in the way of precaution and protection. Not a glance of suspicion had turned in my direction so far, and I was sure that if I got my hands on the money I could plant it, stand pat, and weather the storm.
At last the train pulled in. A mail sack was thrown out to a small boy, who ran off to the post office with it. The leather pouch was put into the agent’s hands and a few of the “regulars” at the depot followed him to his office. As usual he at once put out the lights, locked the place up, and walked across the street to the post office, surrounded by the depotloungers. The small mail was distributed in five minutes, and he turned toward home with the payroll under his arm, a neighbor on each side of him, and I half a block behind.
His neighbors left him at his front gate, and his wife met him at the front door. I was relieved when the business resolved itself into a house burglary, for forcing safes with explosives is an uphill job for one man and is seldom attempted. The house was new, well built, and small—three rooms downstairs and two above. It was in a large lot with a few small trees and some plants around it. I took up my watch at once, and from the vacant lot adjoining I saw them sit down to dinner. After a half hour at the table, they got up and I could hear them shutting doors, putting windows down, and fastening them. For a minute the house was dark, then a light appeared upstairs, which meant they were going to bed. Another half hour and the upstairs light was doused. I walked away. I had “put them to bed” and could do nothing more till after midnight.
In the city the burglar finds most people asleep at dawn; in the country most people wake with the dawn. I knew I must start early and set one o’clock as the hour to begin. Allowing myself two hours to get in, get action, and get out, I could have it over by three o’clock, which would give me time to plant the money and be in my room before daylight. My parcel of instruments and a gun were planted a few blocks away. I went after them, returned to the house, and found a place in the yard where I could watch and wait without being seen by any chance passer-by. With two hours to kill, I went over the thing again and couldthink of nothing more in the way of precaution. I had even picked a place in a lot near by to plant the money.
At one o’clock I took off my shoes and put them in my back pockets. There in that house was a big piece of money. I had put in almost two months planning to get it, and now that I was ready to “step” I summoned everything in the way of professional skill that I had acquired in the years since the Smiler gave me my first lesson. I found the kitchen door locked. The key inside was soon displaced and the door unlocked with one of my own. Once inside I shut the door; this was in the country and I could not chance stray, hungry dogs or cats coming in for food and knocking pans around while I was upstairs. The door to the dining room was shut, but not locked. There was a rocking-chair in line between the front and back dining-room doors. I carefully pushed it to one side, making the way clear in case of a hasty leaving.
At the foot of the stairs in the hall I could hear the man breathing. The bedroom door upstairs was open. The stairs were solid, well put together, and did not creak, but I took a long time in doing them, wondering all the while where I would find the leather bag. No such luck as getting it off the dresser. No, he would surely have it under his pillow. After a long wait at the door of their room my ears picked up the woman’s gentler breathing. They both slept the sleep of young, healthy, tired workers, and I could wish for nothing more. There was light enough from the window to enable me to look over the dresser. The pouch was not there and I prayed it wouldn’t be inone of the drawers, for of all the abominable obstacles that balk the burglar of a sleeping room the bureau drawer is the first and worst.
After wasting the better part of an hour going through the room, I concluded the thing was under his head. Kneeling beside his pillow, I put the gun beside me on the floor, ready to my hand, where I could get it and stick him up if he woke up on me. The sleeper was lying on his back. His head was on the middle of his pillow, and directly beneath it was the leather bag.
A watch or purse may be taken from under a pillow with ease, but an object the size of this bag I wanted will shift the pillow when it is withdrawn. It pulls the pillow with it, the pillow pulls the sleeper’s head with it, and he wakes up. When the burglar gets up against this, he has to put one hand against the end of the pillow, holding it in place, while he tugs gently at the spoils below.
Whether it was my pulling on the pouch I don’t know, but the sleeping man stirred uneasily and his regular breathing stopped. I shrank down lower beside the bed, one hand under his head and the other at the pillow, breathless from the intense concentration and suspense. He stirred again and then floundered heavily over on his side, his back to me and his head off the leather. I could not hear him breathe. I was sure he was awake, but not alarmed. After a heart-breaking fifteen minutes his sleep became natural again, and I slowly, softly pulled the pouch free from under his pillow. It was mine now, and it was my business to hold on to it.
I took as long going downstairs as I did going up,and at last made my way out of the house, closing the kitchen door softly behind me. Putting my shoes on, I hastened away to plant the money. In the neighborhood was a big vacant lot, its boundaries marked by a row of broken and leaning fence posts from which the boards had been taken for firewood or other uses. Pulling one of the loose posts from its place, I threw the pouch in the hole and jammed the post down on top of it. The gun and instruments I threw into a small stream near by. I wanted to be entirely clean of anything incriminating in case I was suspected, arrested, and searched.
In the security of my room I went over the night’s work. After an hour’s thought I could think of but one more thing I ought to do. My socks might have picked up dirt or dust around the house. A particle of dust, a piece of thread or lint or raveling of cloth might convict me if suspicion fell on me. Taking the socks off my feet, I went out and threw them in a lot.
Fully satisfied that I had done everything possible to insure safety, I returned to the hotel. Daylight was coming on. Going upstairs I met the porter coming down to open up. He gave me a sleepy “good-morning,” and I went on to my room and to bed, but not to sleep. I was in the dining room as usual about seven o’clock. The room was noisy, every one was talking at once. A tall man got up from the table, saying in a loud Western drawl: “Waal, I’m fer lynchin’ ’em if we git ’em.” A quiet-spoken Englishman next me at the long table told me all about the burglary. Out in the street I saw with some concern that the town was on fire with excitement.
I got through the forenoon all right, standing around the street discussing the burglary with acquaintances I had made in the town, doing more listening than talking. At noon, when I went into the hotel for dinner, the constable, the hotel men, and the porter I met on the stairs in the early morning were standing at the bar with their heads together talking earnestly. When they saw me they quit talking and went out on the sidewalk. One glance from the constable told me I was suspected. I saw that the porter had done his deadly work; I was due for a lot of questioning. Along in the afternoon the superintendent of the mine where the payroll belonged got into town and took charge of things. There was a powwow in the magistrate’s office. I saw the hotel porter go in, and braced myself to take the blow.
In a few minutes the constable came out and over to me where I stood with a crowd of natives. “Please step inside, young man,” he said. Inside a group of men were seated and I was given a chair. I was determined to answer no questions. No use in going into long, detailed explanations of my movements and have them exploded and discredited on investigation, and thus strengthen the case against myself.
The magistrate began on me. “Young man, we want you to explain your business here. Who you are, where you’re from, and what you do for a living? You are suspected as the burglar who last night entered the express agent’s house and made off with four thousand and eight hundred dollars cash. You were seen entering your hotel at daylight this morning. Explain that to us.”
My mind jumped back to the floggings, the darkcells with their bread and water, to my escape from jail, and to every other hardship I had accepted without weakening, and I laughed at him. Here was a little, pompous fat man blustering under his black skullcap behind a cheap table with a few legal papers on it, trying to make me talk.
I said to him: “Did you ever sleep in my hotel?”
“Yes,” he answered, forgetting his dignity.
“Well, then, you know that the wash room and toilet are in a covered space between the two wings of the building, outside and at the rear, and to get to them you go down the back stairs and out a back door.”
“Very well,” he replied, “now tell us why you were at the depot the last two times the payroll was left off. Why you followed it up to the mine, and why you followed the agent home last night.”
I brazened it out with all the indignation I could muster, reminding him that I was a British subject and it was my right to stand mute and answer no questions. The mine superintendent said to the others so I could hear him: “My men want to lynch somebody; I don’t know whether I can control them.” I knew all about miners and knew they never lynched anybody anywhere. I knew I was in Canada where lynching never flourished.
I turned to a group of miners at the back of the room. “This man says you want to lynch me. Before you do it, I want to know why.”
One of them, a giant, red-headed Irishman with shaggy, white eyebrows and pebbly blue eyes, said: “Don’t worry, me boy, there’ll be no lynchin’ here.”
Turning to the magistrate, I said: “You telegraph,at my expense, the Minister of Justice at Ottawa that this man,” pointing to the superintendent, “is trying to incite these miners to lynch me. And I want a copy of the telegram and my request made a matter of record in your office.”
The magistrate looked confused. The superintendent said, “I’ll make the complaint. I want this man held.” The constable arrested me “In the queen’s name,” searched me and locked me in the town jail, a one-room affair in a lot back of his house. He brought me blankets and supper, and left me to meditate in silence and privacy. I went over everything again. The shoe was on the other foot this time; they hadn’t a thing on me. No court in Christendom would convict me on those shreds of suspicion. I rolled up in the blankets and went to sleep with the comfortable thought that the forty-eight hundred dollars might help me to forget the awful lashing I took at New Westminster when I got to San Francisco or Chicago with them.
Next morning in court it was shown by witnesses that I was at the depot twice when the money arrived; that I went to the mine once on the same train with it; and a woman testified that she saw me walking behind the station agent and his neighbors as they went home the night of the burglary. The porter who spilled the beans finished the trial by testifying that he met me on the stairs in the early morning; that I was nervous, acted suspiciously, and tried to avoid him.
I made no defense, but set up a loud and long protest that did no good. I was held for trial and whisked away to the provincial jail. I was convincedthat the mine superintendent had engineered the thing on the theory that I was guilty and in hopes that something would transpire in his favor while I was waiting to be tried.
The provincial jail was like the one I escaped from. The jailer was sober and decent, giving me plenty of books and fair treatment. I had a cell to myself, kept away from the other prisoners, tried my case mentally every day, and got acquitted every time, and at night I spent large chunks of the payroll that was so securely planted in the post hole.
After three months of leisure, reading and pleasant anticipations, I went to court. A judge had arrived for the fall assizes and mine was the only felony case. The witnesses were all there. I pleaded not guilty and my case was set for trial at two o’clock in the afternoon. The judge asked if I had counsel. I told him I had no lawyer and didn’t want one; that I had but little money and would need it when I was acquitted.
“Better get counsel,” he snapped. “A defendant that tries his own case has a fool for a lawyer.”
I replied by asking him to read the testimony from the lower court before wasting his time trying me.
While I was eating dinner the mine superintendent came to my cell and said if I would give up the money I could go free. I threatened to sue him for false imprisonment when I got out. He went away mad. I decided they wanted me to get a local lawyer in hopes I would unbosom myself to him so he could do the same with them.
At two o’clock I was back in court. The judge was a brusque, businesslike little old man with thebrisk, aggressive air of a terrier. His hair was clipped short and his cropped beard grew in every direction. He wore a coarse suit of tweeds, hobnailed shoes, and a cheap flannel shirt, with a linen collar and no tie. He had two sheets of paper in his hand, looking at them.
“Have you anything more than this?” he asked the Crown counsel.
“Nothing, Your Lordship.”
“And do you expect me to try a man on this ragged rot?” Throwing the papers on his desk, he turned toward me. “Defendant discharged.”
I walked out and over to the jail, where I got my belongings—forty dollars, a pocketknife, and a lead pencil. The constable who made the arrest followed me all over town—to the barber’s, the restaurant, and at last to the depot. A train came in going in the opposite direction from the scene of the burglary, and I boarded it without buying a ticket. He watched the train leave, but did not get on. At a junction I got off and traveled south to a stage-line connection, where I took the stage back in the direction of my money. After ten days of maneuvering and detouring, I reached a settlement off the railroad about thirty miles away from where I was arrested.
Hiring a saddle horse there, I jogged away in high spirits, timing myself to get into the town about midnight, when I could lift the plant and be far away before daylight. Everything favored me as I rode into the town. There wasn’t a stray dog or cat on the back streets, and every soul was in bed asleep. Turning a corner, I came in sight of the big, vacant lot. Yes, there it was. My eye took in the row ofleaning, rotten posts down one side and across the front, then to the inner line of the lot where I put the leather pouch in its post hole. There seemed to be a change there. Was I at the right lot? Yes, there, a block away, was the house I entered, plain in the moonlight. My eye followed the route I took from the house to the lot. I pulled up the tired horse, certain I was at the right spot; and I was.
But on top of the spot, directly on top of it, stood a long, wide, well-built, substantial, two-story frame building.
That hour when I saw the money was lost to me was probably the saddest of my life. I never got a greater shock. I am telling this story because it is an interesting incident, not to cause anybody misery or mirth. Yet I know that any thief reading it will groan in sympathy with me. The honest reader will laugh and say: “It served him right.”
In the last ten years I have learned money-honesty. I have come to like it, it has become a habit. I practice it daily. Some day I may learn to laugh at the loss of that forty-eight hundred, but I’ll never learn to like laughing over it. It will never become a habit to be practiced daily.
Slumping off the horse, I threw the bridle rein over his head, left him standing patiently in the street, and walked stiffly over to the building. As near as I could judge one corner of it was directly over the spot where I made my plant. The front and one side of it covered the line where the decayed fence had formerly marked the boundary of the lot. Small barred windows in the cement foundation showed there was a basement and crushed my hopes that the money mightbe under the building. A careful survey of the place convinced me that the payroll was gone and there was no use in hanging around and inviting another pinch. Right here I should have muttered a string of oaths, thrown myself into the saddle, sunk my spurs, rowel deep, into the flanks of my horse, and dashed madly out of town. Sore from the long ride, I was barely able to throw a stiff leg over the saddle and settle down in it. Turning the horse’s head in the direction of his home, I threw the reins on his neck and let him jog along as he liked. I was crushed. It was an hour before I could think rationally. Then the question came into my mind that is in your mind now, reader. Who got the money?
I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. I don’t know. I wish I could tell what became of Julia, the girl from Madam Singleton’s. I wish I could tell you what was done at the Diamond Palace when the tray of stones was missed, and whether Chew Chee, the Chinese boy, was recaptured and had to go to prison.
I can’t answer any of those questions. The nature of my business was such that I preferred to leave them unanswered rather than bring disaster by inquiring too closely. I know the mine payroll never got back into the owner’s hands. I assume it was found by a laborer, who kept it. The reconstruction of the finding of my money and the picturing of its finder furnished me with many hours of mental relaxation. Lying in the dungeon or in the hop joint or on the grass in the public parks, I pieced it together painfully. But never could I see the lucky finder as an honest man; nor by any effort of imagination could I ever picture him as putting the money to any good use.In the end, he always turned out to be a drunken, dissolute day laborer, sweating in the sun as he dug out the ditch for the foundation of that building. I saw him turn up the leather pouch with his shovel, seize it, open it stealthily, and thrust it inside his shirt. Then he threw down his shovel, walked over to the boss, and demanded his “time.”
I heard the foreman say: “All right, you’re no good anyway. I was going to fire you to-night.”
I followed the finder to the little depot where he bought a ticket to the wide-open joyful town of Montreal. There I watched him dissipate my money riotously in the slums. At last, and with great satisfaction, I saw him dead in the gutter without a dime, and followed his body to the morgue, where the coroner pronounced it a case of “acute alcoholism.”
After a long tiresome ride I delivered the fagged horse to his owner and went off to a quiet spot to sum up and see how I stood with the world. My loss was not put down to poetic justice or attributed to the law of compensation. I just classified it as a mess of tough luck and tried to forget it. An inventory of my possessions showed one pocketknife, one pencil, a bandanna handkerchief, tobacco and papers, and nine dollars. I was a hundred miles away from any place where I could put my hands on a dollar without getting arrested at sunrise. I had no gun, no keys, no instruments. I was a shorn lamb. No one but myself was to blame for the shearing, and it was up to me to get busy and temper the wind as quickly as possible.
In the way of clothes I had those I left Los Angeles in—overalls, blue shirt, a stout coat, and a cheap cap.
After bumming a stage ride, beating my way overa jerkwater branch road, and stowing away on a Columbia River boat loaded with dynamite and explosive oil for the mines, I got into one of the prosperous camps with a lone dollar in my pocket. The town was booming; crowded with miners, prospectors, and speculators. Beds were two dollars a night and meals a dollar. This caused me no uneasiness, for I knew it would be easier to get three dollars there than fifteen cents in the big cities where, in those days, a “chicken dinner” could be had for a dime and a “flop” on a bare floor for a “jit,” as the Southern negro affectionately calls his nickel.
In a restaurant I met an old friend in the person of the waiter, who had formerly been a very active member of the “Johnson” family. He was still in good standing, although he had retired from the road after several unfortunate experiments with burglary and robbery. It was late at night; I took an hour to eat, and he listened with genuine sympathy to all the harrowing details of my latest experience. At the cash register, where he also officiated, my dollar was no good. He offered to share his room with me, and when I declined, explaining that I would be too busy to sleep, he magnanimously suggested that I “prowl the joint” he lived in. This looked all right, and I took his room key with the understanding that if anything went wrong in the place I could say I was looking for his room and he would alibi for me.
It was late when I started to look through his hotel. I lost half an hour locating a sleeper with his door unlocked, and another half hour pulling his moneyless trousers from under his head, where he had placed them from force of habit. I fared better in anotherroom, and, calling it a night, hastened to my friend’s place to return his key and look over my takings.
The restaurant was deserted. I joined him at a back table, where he sat cleaning a row of water glasses. Blowing his breath into one, like a housewife with a lamp chimney, he polished it carefully with a soiled napkin. “Did you score?” he inquired.
“Yes,” I said.
I spread my money on the table to look it over. My sad experience with the twenty-dollar bill had made me careful. The paper money looked safe enough, and so did the silver except one fifty-cent piece that was worn smooth and had a monogram engraved on one side of it—a pocket piece or keepsake.
“Take this out in the back and throw it away,” I said to him; “it’s deadly poison.”
Instead, he rang it up on the register, saying, “That will pay your check; no use wasting it. It will go to the bank in the morning.”
I went to his room and to bed. At seven o’clock he came in with this amazing story, and I suggest a careful study of it by any young man who thinks stealing is an exact science, and all he has to do is outwit the coppers.
“Thirty minutes after you left the restaurant,” said he, “a guy came in and ate his breakfast in silence. He laid down a five-dollar bill to pay his check and the four-bit piece you threw me was in the change I gave him. He jumped stiff-legged and began frothing at the mouth when he saw it.
“‘I was robbed last night in my room. I had to wake the clerk up this morning and borrow fivedollars. This fifty-cent piece is mine. I had it last night. It has my initials on it. I’ve carried it five years. How did it get into your till?’
“I told him I took it in an hour before from a short, stout, red-headed man with a broken nose and about forty years old. He is going to have a policeman at the place until the redhead shows up again. I promised to point him out if I see him anywhere. You’re safe; but you had better eat somewhere else for a while.”