CHAPTER XXI
Thisstrange coincidence of the marked piece of silver more than ever convinced me of the necessity for keeping something ahead so I wouldn’t be forced to go out and take long chances for short money. With enough in my pocket now to last me a month, I gave the town a thorough canvassing for something worth while. I found many places that appeared to be advertising for a burglar, and the most promising was the big general store. It was packed to the roof with merchandise, and the owners, to save floor space, had placed the safe behind stairs, where it could not be seen from the street. I “pegged” the spot for a week and satisfied myself that after the store was closed at night no one entered it till opening-up time in the morning.
The expression, “I have him pegged,” which has crept into common usage, is thieves’ slang pure and simple, and has nothing to do with the game of cribbage as many suppose. The thief, to save himselfthe trouble of staying up all night watching a spot to make sure no one enters after closing hours, puts a small wooden peg in the door jamb after the place is locked up. At five or six o’clock in the morning he takes a look. If the peg is in place the door has not been opened. If it is found lying in the doorway, that means somebody has opened the door in the night. If he finds the place is visited in the night he must then stay out and learn why and at what time and how often. He now has the place “pegged” and plans accordingly or passes it up as too tough.
Dynamite and drills were to be had for the taking at any mine. I invited my friend, the waiter, to “come in on the caper,” but he declined for the very good reason that he had “done enough time.” Compared with the work I had put in getting the mine payroll this was simple and I went against it alone, confident of success and glad I wouldn’t have to split the money with anybody. The “box” was of a make that has long been extinct. It was an experiment on the part of the manufacturers, and a costly one, for the “box men” soon found a fatal weakness in its make-up and hungrily sought them out till the last one went into the junk pile.
The one I had designs on looked more like an old-fashioned clothes closet than a receptacle for money. Its four wheels rested on a heavy wooden platform that served to reënforce the thin floor of the storeroom. The work of putting a hole in it, placing the “shot,” and laying a five-minute fuse took an hour. The man that does this kind of work alone must now take a look at the street to be sure there are no late stragglers around. When he satisfies himself on thispoint he returns and lights his fuse. While it is burning he goes back to the street some distance away and plants himself in a hall or doorway till he hears the explosion. Then when he is satisfied there is no alarm, he goes after his money.
I was in the door of an all-night saloon when my explosion arrived. Nobody appeared on the street and after a few minutes I went back to the store to finish the business. Inside, I saw that my “shot” had resulted in something entirely unforeseen. The outer plate of the door was torn from its place and lying to one side, bent and twisted. The force of the explosion had shifted the ponderous box from its platform. It had fallen forward on its face and ten sturdy burglars couldn’t have turned it over. Had it remained upright the money would have been mine in five minutes. Lying on its face, its contents were as safe from me as if they had been in the town bank. The next day a gang of men turned it partly over and one of the clerks finished opening it with a crowbar I left in the store.
The storekeepers said “there was nothing in the safe anyway.” My friend, the waiter, who stood by when it was opened, said they hurried to the bank with a fat package and “what was in it was plenty.”
This failure took the heart out of me for a few days, and I don’t know what depths of despondency I might have wallowed in but for my friend. He suggested, with the best intentions I am sure, that I take a job washing dishes in the place where he worked. This was a jolt to my pride. Of course I had nothing against dishwashers or dishwashing. I saw that any able-bodied dishwasher would have more to show forhis ten years’ hard work than I had for mine, and if I had been in the notion of going to work I would have taken that kind of job as quick as any. But the thought of working was as foreign to me as the thought of burglary or robbery would be to a settled printer or plumber after ten years at his trade. I wasn’t lazy or indolent; I knew there were lots of easier and safer ways of making a living, but they were the ways of other people, people I didn’t know or understand, and didn’t want to. I didn’t call them suckers or saps because they were different and worked for a living. They represented society. Society represented law, order, discipline, punishment. Society was a machine geared to grind me to pieces. Society was an enemy. There was a high wall between me and society; a wall reared by myself, maybe—I wasn’t sure. Anyway I wasn’t going to crawl over the wall and join the enemy just because I had taken a few jolts of hard luck.
I did go over the wall in the end and take my hat off to society and admit I was wrong, but I didn’t do it because of discouragement, because I was afraid of the future, because of the police. I didn’t do it because I realized I was wrong; I knew I was wrong years before. I did it because—but that’s a separate story, to be told later, in its place.
So, instead of following the waiter’s advice, I busied myself with a few careful hotel burglaries, got a small bankroll together again, bought some presentable clothes, and kept looking around for a decent piece of money. The booming mining town had its share of gamblers, women of the night, thieves, and hop fiends—nearly all of them renegades or fugitives fromthe “American side.” Their leisure time was given to drinking or smoking hop. I had weaned myself from gambling. I was naturally a light drinker. So it fell out that, in this town of no amusements, the hop joint claimed me.
One afternoon as I lay smoking my day’s portion of hop a voice, a woman’s voice, strangely familiar, came to me through a thin partition from the adjoining room. When she finished talking to the Chinese boy that attended the hop layouts, I fell to wondering who the speaker could be. My contact with women had been very limited, and it didn’t take much elimination to fix the voice as that of the street girl of Chicago, the girl from whose crib I had carried the dead man; the girl I avoided because I believed she had carelessly killed him with an overdose of some drug. Just to satisfy myself that I was right, more than anything, I got up and stepped into her room. No mistake; it was she. She knew me instantly and I needed no introduction, no sponsor.
Irish Annie had changed. She was now a well-poised, confident woman. The world had treated her better than it does most of her kind, and yet she was not spoiled. She instantly referred to “that awful night,” and sincerely acknowledged the service I had done her. We compared notes roughly. She had left Chicago to avoid going to jail for a theft, and after many hardships and adventures found herself in this British Columbia mining camp. A lucky prospector in the mines, finding himself rich overnight, had bought an establishment for her and she was prospering.
To show her gratitude to me, she gave a blowout at her place, introduced me to her “girls” as “an oldfriend from the States,” set a room apart for me, and insisted upon me making her home my home. The Chinese boy brought meals to my room, a hop layout was procured so I could smoke in peace and security. My room was more comfortable than any I could have had in a hotel, the meals were better than at the restaurants, I was treated with deference by everybody in the place, so I remained there. I paid the rent on rent day, ordered the liquors and provisions, and “slipped” the town marshal his “once a week.” The Tenderloin, the marshal, and his deputies accepted me as Annie’s protector and the man about the place—something I was not and did not aspire to be. I didn’t take the trouble to enlighten them. I preferred to have them believe anything rather than the truth. This would make my stealing easier.
This soft life that loomed before me in Irish Annie’s had about as much lure for me as the dishwashing job. Without taking her into my confidence, I went on with my burgling. That was my trade and I would not leave it for a job in a restaurant, a “job” in Annie’s, or a position in a bank.
Winter came with a rush and a roar. I had thought of getting away from the North, but it came before I was prepared and there was nothing to do but stick it out with the others.
Of all the gamblers that found their way into this camp “Swede Pete” was probably the cleverest. I knew him from towns on the “American side,” where he played in all the big poker games with more or less success. He submitted a scheme to me that looked very good. His plan was to buy a box of playing cards, mark each deck, and have me, as a capableburglar, go into one of the big poker rooms, open the card locker, and substitute his box of marked cards for a box of legitimate cards belonging to the house. I looked at the place and saw my end of the business would be simple. He went to work on his cards, and after many days and nights of patient toil put his “work” on them so he could read them from the back as easily as from the front. When he had replaced the seals on each deck and on the box that contained them, he put them in my hands and it was but an hour’s work for me to put them in the locker and return to him the full box that his had replaced.
The following night he sat in the game as usual. Whenever he lost a pot he threw the unlucky deck on the floor and ordered a fresh one. After a night or two of this, the gamekeeper had to open a fresh box. This was our box and Pete’s luck changed at once. In a couple of nights’ play he got the long end of the money in the game. From what I heard and saw I estimated his winnings, or stealings, at three thousand dollars. It was understood that the money should be split evenly between us. When he gave me my end of it he declared he had won but fifteen hundred and that he had to have a man in the game with him and the money had to go three ways. I took the five hundred dollars knowing I was getting the worst of it and wondering how I could get even.
Pete was a big, six-foot, blond giant, good-natured, generous, and with a laugh you could hear a block. Everybody liked him; he was a good spender and a good loser. He carried a bankroll of several thousand dollars, as I knew, but the thought of robbing him never entered my mind till he burnt me in themarked-card transaction. He was interested in a saloon and had a game of his own in a rear room. I watched him carefully and learned that when the game and the bar were closed for the night he put his bankroll in the cash register, locked it, and went to bed in a comfortable little room that adjoined the big barroom. Apparently his money was safe. He left his room door open; the register could not be opened without waking him.
After thinking the matter over pro and con, I decided to beat off the barroom, carry the register out and into the alley and smash it open with an ax. Every night for a week I watched him from across the street and saw him make up his cash for the day, then put his own money in the register, lock it carefully, and go into his bedroom. Satisfied on this point, I now kept away from his place so as not to be too fresh in his mind on the morning after I got his money.
At last a stormy night came that drove everybody off the street. I kept out of the neighborhood of Pete’s place till four o’clock in the morning. I had no trouble getting into the barroom through a door opening into the hall that separated the saloon from the hotel office. Carefully removing a lot of glasses from around the register, I lifted it and placed it on the bar. Then I had to go around the bar, pick it up again, and carry it out into the hall where I put it on a table while I went back to close the door. All the while Swede Pete was snoring like a horse.
Lifting the heavy weight again, I made my way slowly to the sidewalk. Groping along in the blinding storm of snow and sleet, I missed my footing and fellflat on my back with the heavy register fair on my chest. Its sharp edge dug into my ribs and although I never went to a doctor, I believe to this day a couple of them were cracked or splintered. Unable to lift it again, I tied my handkerchief in the grill work at the top of the thing and painfully dragged it to an opening between two buildings and down into the alley where I had planted an ax.
I was morally certain Pete’s money was in it. I saw him put it there the night before, but on this last night I had kept away, not caring to be seen about his place. There was one chance in a million that he hadn’t locked the register, so before attacking it with the ax I touched one of the keys. The bell did not ring, but the cash drawer opened. But to my dismay it did not slide out with the slow, labored, obese movement of a cash drawer loaded with heavy gold and silver; instead it shot out with a thin, empty, hollow jerk that told me there was nothing in it.
With numb and freezing fingers I explored the little cups only to find them bare of coin. The compartments in the back gave up no fat bankroll. The thing was as empty and as inviting as a new-dug grave. This last blow was too much for my philosophy. Cursing the snow and sleet and every organic thing, I started back determined to go into Pete’s bedroom and search for his money. I was too late. At the door I looked into the hall and saw the porter limbering up for another day’s work.
Sad and sore I turned away and trudged through the storm to my room at Irish Annie’s where I found food and drink and light and heat and the consoling hop layout.
I was out early the next afternoon to find out what had happened at Swede Pete’s that caused him to shift his money. He was around town drunk as a ragman, going from one bar to another, buying drinks for all hands, and telling with great relish how he had saved his bankroll from the “burglars.” I heard his boisterous laugh as I was passing one of the saloons and went in to get an earful. He threw an American twenty-dollar piece on the bar, and as it bounced up and down, roared: “Yump, you beggar, yump! Many times I ha’ to yump for you.” Then everybody was invited to drink and listen to his tale.
I gathered from it that his cash register “bane on the bum.” Something got wrong with its locking arrangement the night before, and Pete took his money to bed with him. “Ay take the old bankroll and throw her under the mattress and lay my two hundred pounds Swede beef on her,” he finished with a roar. Then, bouncing another gold piece on the bar, he ordered it to “yump” and the house to drink. If he suspected me he didn’t show it, and I went out not relishing his talk or his liquor. I thought of sticking him up, but he knew my voice and that wouldn’t do. I thought of chloroform, but my awful experience with the Chinamen warned me against it. I had no desire to get tangled up with Pete’s “two hundred pounds Swede beef” that wasn’t beef at all, but bone and muscle he put on in his youth as a laborer in the Northwest lumber camps. After much thought, I let him go and gave him up as a total loss.
I don’t know what the statistics show, but I should say that for every five hundred burglaries one burglar gets arrested. On the other hand, my experiencesshowed that if the burglar gets what he is after one time in five he is lucky.
After my bad luck with the big Swede I sat down and gave my system of stealing a good overhauling. As near as I could calculate ten thousand dollars had slipped out of my hands since I left Los Angeles. I wasn’t satisfied to put this down to tough luck entirely. I saw that carelessness had something to do with it. I should have planted the mine payroll in a safer place. A more careful and experienced “blacksmith” would have taken measures to prevent that big safe from falling on its face and burying the money beyond reach, and in the matter of Swede Pete I was careless and overconfident, in not checking on him the night I went after his money. Figuring that my luck was about due to change for the better, I resolved to pull myself together, tighten up my system, and look around me for something else.
If business houses took as much precaution in protecting themselves from thieves as thieves do in protecting themselves from the police, the business of burglary and robbery would reach the vanishing point in no time. Thieves are occasionally careless; business men are habitually so; both pay for their carelessness sooner or later.
In looking about for some worth-while endeavor, I came upon an instance of carelessness on the part of a business man that I never saw equaled in all my years of stealing. It cost him a small fortune in diamonds and sent him into the bankruptcy court. The Christmas holidays were coming on, and the jewelry store in this mining camp spread out a display of stones that would have done credit to any large city. I wasnaturally attracted; and began investigating the jeweler’s system. I found that he slept on the premises in a room back of his storeroom. He testified in court later that he carried no burglary insurance, that he could not get fire insurance because the town had no fire department, and that he slept in his store to protect himself in case of fire or attempted theft. I watched him closely through every business hour of the day—from seven to eight o’clock one day, from eight to nine the next, from nine to ten the next—and so on through the entire day from his opening hour till he closed at night. I found that he left his store in darkness to save on the light bill, and to my amazement I also found that, instead of locking his safe carefully and completely at night, he gave the combination knob only a quarter turn, leaving it “on the quarter,” or only partly locked and at the mercy of any one with a working knowledge of combination locks.
This putting out of the lights and careless locking of his safe was entirely due to a feeling of security because he slept in his place of business.
After gathering every scrap of information available, I was sure I could “take” the spot if I got a fair break on the luck. The rear room of the place was used as a workshop. This made it possible to enter the back door without waking the owner, who slept in a small room between the shop and the big front storeroom. When I decided to go against this thing, I sat down and looked far ahead.
The stones would have to go to the “American side” to be disposed of in some big city. I decided on San Francisco and planned my route there. Irish Annie was no small problem. I had no intention of confidingin her or giving her any part of the junk, if I got it. I was under no obligation to her. Our relations were just those of two social outcasts, thrown together by chance, and our parting could mean nothing to either of us. To disarm any suspicions she might have later on, I told her I planned to go to Carson City, Nevada, for the big fight between Fitzsimmons and Corbett. This would give me a reasonable excuse for leaving after the burglary.
With the five hundred dollars I got from Swede Pete and more I had picked up around the hotels, I was amply supplied with expense money and had no worry on that point. Two weeks ahead I bought an old Indian cayuse and a cheap secondhand saddle and bridle, planning to ride across the boundary line fifteen miles distant, plant the junk, and return before the burglary was discovered.
The old horse was staked out in a corral where I could get him at any time. I even rode to the “American side,” crossing the Columbia River, which marked the boundary, on the ice, and picked out a place to plant my stuff. A week ahead I rented a front room in a lodging house across the street and from my window watched every move in the store every evening. I saw the boss go out to dinner, leaving the place in charge of his clerk and an apprentice boy. I saw his man in the repair shop go out and away. I saw the boy go home after the boss returned, and later saw the clerk depart. An hour after, the owner began gathering the most valuable articles from show window and show cases, placing them in specially made trays and boxes that fitted snugly in the safe. Then the big door swung shut, and a quarter turn of the knob locked it so that itcould be opened quickly in the morning by the lazy, careless owner, or just as quickly at night by an industrious, careful burglar.
My mistake in not checking Swede Pete the night before was not repeated here. When the final night came I stood in the snowstorm outside the window, cap pulled down and overcoat buttoned up, looking carelessly at the cheap articles he left there overnight. When he locked his safe as usual, I went back to my room across the street and saw him secure his front door, put out the lights, and go back into his bedroom.
At one o’clock I was at the back door of the store and after a few minutes of the most careful work I stood in the warm workshop where a big stove still glowed in the dark. The doors inside were open to allow the warm air passage into the sleeper’s room and the front room beyond. I had all the luck at last.
There was no serious obstacle. The sleeper slept on. The safe door opened as easy for me as for him. The inside of the safe was like a beehive—fifty watches, wound up, ticked noisily. Some years ago jewelers thought watches should be kept running all or part of the time to insure perfection. I believe this is no longer done. For fear their ticking should wake the sleeper when I passed through his room on my way out, I wrapped them in their box in my overcoat. Taking nothing else except some gold rings, all the stones, and what money was in the cash drawer, I closed the safe, went back out the rear door and, closing it carefully, departed unseen.
All my junk went into a grain bag at the corral, where I kept the old cayuse. He was gentle as a dog, but the ticking of the watches almost drove him frantic.He reared and pawed and snorted in fear. I couldn’t get into the saddle, and had to snub him up to a tree where, for ten or fifteen minutes, I let him listen to the ticks and get over his fright. At last he cooled off and allowed me to mount him and turn his head south toward the “line.” Riding away, I looked back over the night’s work and thought with satisfaction that no human being could possibly suspect me of it.
In the small town across the line I planted the stones and cash carefully in the plant I had prepared, but put the watches in another place where they could tick themselves out in security. At seven o’clock in the morning the faithful old horse was back in the corral, well fed and rubbed down, and I was in my room at Irish Annie’s. In the afternoon she came in with the small town “Extra” paper. I saw that this burglary, one of the simplest and easiest of my life, was by far the most profitable. Diamonds valued at twenty thousand dollars, wholesale price, fifty watches, five hundred dollars cash, and a parcel of gold wedding rings roughly outlined the loss. I immediately “pooh-poohed” the business to her, telling her I knew enough about burglary to see that it was an inside job and that it was done by the storekeeper to beat his creditors. She believed me and no suspicion whatever found lodgment in her mind.
The next day’s paper questioned the burglary. It was hard to believe that any sane man could be guilty of such carelessness as the jeweler frankly admitted. He also admitted that the stock was taken on consignment, that the stones were not paid for, and that if they were not recovered he would be broke and bankrupted. The town was divided as to whether he hadrobbed himself, and the marshal and his deputies remained dormant.
I paid another week’s board for the old horse, and another week’s rent for the room opposite the jeweler’s. I had no use for them any more, but thought it safest not to give either of them up too soon and chance arousing suspicion.
After a restless month I said good-bye to Annie and to the “Canadian side.” Leaving the watches and rings where they were, I dug up the plant of stones and cash, and went into Spokane, where I threw away my good clothes, put on overalls, a mackinaw coat, a lumberjack’s cap, and bought a cheap ticket to Seattle. There I changed again, buying an expensive outfit of clothes and other things necessary for the traveler. Three days later I was in San Francisco, safe, secure, and unsuspected.
My first act was to put the stones in a safety box, tear up the receipt, and plant the key in a safe, convenient place. Then began the toughest part of the business, getting the stones off my hands and into cash. Day after day I sorted out the larger ones and in my room “unharnessed” them from their settings. Other articles, clusters and sunbursts, were left intact in their settings—to remove them would depreciate the value. I had many of the best stones reset and sold them for fair prices openly to bookmakers, prize fighters, jockeys, gamblers, and women about town. My money went into the bank, and for the first time in my life I carried a check book.
I was careful, kept clean and sober and away from the hop joints and thieves’ hangouts. For once in my life I managed to get a fair price from pawnshops forsome of my junk. Taking one of the reset rings that was perfectly safe and impossible of identification, I would step into the pawnbroker’s at lunch time and always when there were other patrons in his place. The average thief is duck soup for the hockshop man. He will walk by the hockshop and look in. The hockshop man sees him and knows he has something “hot,” or crooked. If there is anybody in the place but the employees, the thief waits till they go out before going in. This convinces the pawnbroker he has a thief to deal with and he offers him half what he would offer an honest man with a legitimate article.
Instead of sneaking into a hockshop, taking a ring out of my pocket, and saying, “How much can I get on this?” I walked in confidently, held out my finger with the ring on, and said: “I want to pledge this ring for one hundred dollars till pay day. My name is so-and-so. I work for such and such a firm. I lost some of my employer’s money at the race track and must have it to-night.”
I always asked for a sum far in excess of what I expected, but that served to convince the pawnbroker I knew nothing about pawning things, that I was honest, that the ring was mine and that I would probably redeem it. After inspecting it, he would offer me much more than if he thought it was crooked. If it was redeemed he would get his big interest, and if not he would still be safely below the wholesale price, which is the dead line for him.
In one way and another I unloaded most of my stones to advantage. I could go about with them one at a time in safety; they were impossible of identification when out of their original settings. While I wastrying to find some safe way of selling the pieces I had left in their settings, I met by chance a young chap I had known on the road. He had settled down, got married, and was making a semi-legitimate and uncertain living gambling. He was square enough, and I arranged with him to sell them for me. He was in San Francisco when the burglary was committed and was in no danger of being charged with it if he did get arrested.
He got rid of them quickly to his friends in the Tenderloin and to small pawnshops, getting a price that satisfied me and left him a good profit. I cleaned everything up and quit with eight thousand dollars in the bank and several very nice stones that I wanted to keep. Of late I had thought of buying a saloon some time and leaving the burglary business. Now, as I looked over the small dives and joints with their hangers-around, their discordant pianos and beery-voiced singers, and drunken, bedraggled women, I found they had no attraction. Now that I could have one of those places I didn’t want it.
The notion of going into any decent business never occurred to me. Without any definite notion of what to do, I settled down to have a few months of ease and relaxation. The race tracks and gambling houses were running wide open, but I kept away from them and didn’t get hurt. The wine dumps, the “Coast,” Chinatown, and the dingy dives that fascinated me when I first saw them, no longer held anything of interest.
I’m not finding fault with these brave days of jungle music, synthetic liquor, and dimple-kneed maids, and anybody that thinks the world is going to the bowwowsbecause of them ought to think back to San Francisco or any other big city of twenty years ago—when train conductors steered suckers against the bunko men; when coppers located “work” for burglars and stalled for them while they worked; when pickpockets paid the police so much a day for “exclusive privileges” and had to put a substitute “mob” in their district if they wanted to go out of town to a country fair for a week. Those were the days when there were saloons by the thousand; when the saloonkeeper ordered the police to pinch the Salvation Army for disturbing his peace by singing hymns in the street; when there were race tracks, gambling unrestricted, crooked prize fights; when there were cribs by the mile and hop joints by the score. These things may exist now, but if they do, I don’t know where. I knew where they were then, and with plenty of money and leisure I did them all.