Bank vault

“ There’s sure to be a screw loose in almost every case. It’s an honor with a subcellar, and dark things are hidden there.
I have already said that lax business methods, as practised at the Ocean Bank in New York City, and the expensive habits of John Taylor, one of the bank’s trusted clerks, were the prime factors in making my plan to loot the vault an assured success. ”

“ That is nothing.”
“No,” agreed Larry. His gaze went farther about the cage and rested on the open door of a sort of closet, or vault. It was practically a vault, for there was a heavy iron portal to it.
“Is that where you keep the bank’s money, Mr. Bentfield?” Larry asked, with a smile. “It does not seem to be a very safe place.”
“No, that’s a vault where we keep old ledgers that are out of use. We file them away merely for reference. They are seldom looked at, and sometimes we burn them up. The vault is fire-proof, [142] and that’s the most that can be said of it. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Had the combination numbers been changed at his leave-taking, he couldn’t have opened the safe, and perhaps,491 having failed the first time, he wouldn’t have been tempted again. It doesn’t pay to be lax in business methods.
I was introduced to a “right” watchman in Boston once upon a time, and having in view the looting of the bank in his charge, wanted the vault examined. The outer door of the vault was of wood and was next to the steel one. The watchman reported to me the next day what I wanted and more. The president had asked him if he’d opened the wooden door. ”

“ From the banker I had gained a good idea of the bank and the sort of vault we would have to enter. Now, to get some good, reliable men to help me do the job.
Of all the bank burglars in my acquaintance George Mason seemed best fitted for this particular [Pg 131] crime. He was a cool, resourceful fellow and had had wide experience in blowing open bank vaults. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Evidently the officers of the Webster Bank had relied upon the solidity of their vault doors for protection, and upon the fact that with plate glass windows upon two sides, facing Rector street and Broadway, the policeman on the beat could see the entire front of the vault as plainly as though it had been standing in the street itself, by the light of the gas-burner, kept burning the entire night directly in front of the combination lock. ”

“ As I saw the great safes through the open vault door, I wondered about how many days would pass ere I could be the master of all I surveyed in the vault. How different would be the conditions then. By the time the box was in Davidson’s hands, I signed him everything was lovely, and, bidding his friend adieu, we went away. What a dupe the man had been, but of how much use after all. We walked up Broadway toward the court-house to Cedar Street, where we turned to Nassau, and from there we doubled back to our rendezvous. ”

“ Therefore it would seem that it would be a most desperate, if not a hopeless, undertaking to attempt to gain entrance to the bank vault, or, if successful, to get away with its contents, without being discovered.
But to the bank burglar the greater the risk, the234 greater the desire to “beat” it. For he who continues in the ranks of professional burglars does so as much for the excitement of the game as for the desire for pelf. Though, of course, the larger the loot, the larger the satisfaction. It is the same feeling as that which animates the hunter of the lion, tiger, and elephant. ”

“ No one dreamed that it was in the cupboard, under the desk at which Norton was so innocently working.
Watching his chance, the absconder slipped into the vault with the bag containing the million. Unobserved he pulled out the two ledgers, smeared some liquid glue on their backs, and stuck the backs on the narrow end of the valise. The valise, with the money, he slipped into the space occupied by the books, the ledger backs being outward. It fitted perfectly, and no one looking at the row of old ledgers in the vault would have suspected that two of them consisted of backs only. ”

“ With the first noise from the stone there came the sound of many feet close by, and I sped off with all my might across the field as though a thousand imps were at my heels. I never ran so in my life, not when I was a farm lad away up in old New Hampshire. Indeed, I did not stop until I had placed a mile between me and the ill-fated141 woods. That our pursuers had discovered the bag of cash and were in waiting for some one of our party to return and get it was beyond question. I would not venture near the place again for all the money the Cadiz bank vault could hold. ”

“ If repairs were to be made, the cellar would no doubt be cleaned and the tools discovered. The blame might fall on Billy. It didn’t suit me, either, to have a lot of high explosive found in the bank; it would cause too general an investigation and perhaps a change of the combination on the vault, and the safes as well. Of a truth, for several weeks there lay in the cellar several powerful jimmies, a copper hammer, several steel wedges, braces, and drills, and a number of smaller instruments for finer work. Billy removed these articles, and I felt better satisfied. ”

“ Dangling the bag of money on one hand, Bad News led the way into the dark bank. Some one found a lamp and lighted it. The vault of the Medicine Tree Bank was merely a big safe, and now its formidable front door hung drunkenly open from a heavy charge of explosive.
“Don’t touch anythin’,” advised Cultus. “Send somebody for the bank officials.”
“That’s right,” agreed Bad News. “Somebody go after John Freeman.”
A man ran out through the rear. ”

“ Of course not!” Mrs. Martin replied. “But Mr. Narr might think it wrong of Mr. Keller to lose the keys. One of the keys, it seems, opens Mr. Narr’s strong box in the bank. In the box, or safe deposit vault, are valuable papers, stocks, bonds and so on. Mr. Narr may think that because Mr. Keller has lost the keys some one may find them and open the box, robbing him of his wealth.”
“Could they do that?” asked Ted.
“I think not, my dear. It takes two keys to open the safe deposit box in the bank. One key is that of the man who rents the box, and the other key is kept in the bank.” ”

“ Ellis, a counterfeiter, suggested that a bank at Brockport, seventeen miles west of Rochester, would be a comparatively easy piece of loot, owing to the habits of the police guard of the village, which consisted of a lone night watchman. Ellis said this watchman invariably went off duty at eleven o’clock at night. As to the vault of the bank, he declared it could be robbed, despite the combination lock used on it and its heavy steel work in general, by tunnelling from the top. Shinburn and Ryan decided to attempt the job, agreeing to pay Ellis ten per cent of the treasure obtained. ”

“ Jimmy Hope, a notorious bank burglar, got into a certain bank in Bleecker Street in New York City,492 and, taking off the dial of the vault lock, drilled a hole through the door to strike the steel dog in the lock. The object was to get at the dog and break it. Bad aim resulted, and the dog was missed. Too much time had been consumed to drill another hole, and putty was used to fill up the useless one. For months the tampering was undiscovered, not to mention the marks on the dial plate caused by the unscrewing of the dial. ”

“ Their original value is somewhat over seventeen hundred and fifty millions, and their weight is about ninety-one tons. The immense extent of space necessary to accommodate such a mass in the Bank vaults may be imagined. The place, with its piles on piles of boxes reaching far away into dim distance, looks like some gigantic wine-cellar or bonded warehouse.
As each day adds, as we have seen, about fifty thousand notes to the number, it is necessary to find some means of destroying those which have passed their allotted term of preservation. ”

“ Careful measurements had shown where the tunneling through the thick walls of the bank could best be bored. Work was done only at night, and in a week's time only a thin coating of plaster separated them from the treasure. The robbers entered the vault on Saturday night, broke open three safes which they found there and escaped with a million dollars in cash and securities. After this crime America was not safe for Raymond, so he and his comrades, including Charley Bullard, fled to Europe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I fancy your stepfather is back of that lease, cleverly covered. The repairs give a fine opportunity for what has been going on: a tunnel, starting underneath the stage, runs up and under the main vault of the bank.”
“But that vault is at the end of the safety-deposit department,” said Sperry. “There is only a heavy rail across, and the bank is lighted at night so that any one passing can see clear down to the end of the vault.”
Baldy smiled.
“Wait and see,” he said. “Everything is timed for to-night. There is a grip in your room with painters’ tools inside of it. Just a precaution. ”

“ Hughes stood on guard while Utley and Big Bill went at the vault lock. The keys did their work, and it was the matter of but a few minutes to transfer the cash and bonds to a satchel there for the purpose. Besides this, the lads tied up a big bag of silver coin, weighing much more than the average man would care to carry a great distance, even travelling at his leisure. ”

“ I believed that on one of these trips, which occurred about eleven o’clock, I could capture the watchman. In the meantime, Patrolman Conners would keep the outside private watchmen well away from the bank. With my associates carrying the needful tools and others of us “walking” the captured watchman into the bank, it would be easy to overcome the other one and work our way into the vault. ”

“ Electricity can and will eat its way through the hardest chilled steel, high explosive will open the strongest door of a vault ever manufactured after the most ingenious plan of the master mechanic, bank clerks and night and day watchmen of easy morals can be corrupted, burglar-alarms may be put out of service by detectives like Tom Davidson and Joe Seymour of the New York City Detective Bureau, but there is one safeguard which cannot be broken down by the burglar craft, and that is Eternal Vigilance! ”

“ If I could only be inside the vault when the tellers unlock their safes, without attracting attention, we could soon put the Corn Exchange Bank out of business.”
Now, surely here was an enthusiastic bank employee with his enthusiasm misdirected. I saw right away that I must cool him off if I was to depend upon him for a level head in an emergency. Brains and coolness, in my business, were the corner-stones of success.
“See here, Billy,” I said warningly, “you mustn’t let your shrewdness in getting combination numbers give you a big head. ”

“ The fact of there being such deposits was frequently spoken of by the directors at meetings of the board. Some of the directors and quite a number of other persons had such deposits in the bank. No compensation was expected or received by the institution. It was a bailee without reward. The bank alleged that on the 5th of August, 1871, the bonds of the defendant in error were stolen from its vault. She did not learn the fact until some two or three weeks afterwards. ”

“ I'm getting awfully economical."
The Elmore Bank had just put in a new safe and vault. Mr. Adams was very proud of it, and insisted on an inspection by every one. The vault was a small one, but it had a new, patented door. It fastened with three solid steel bolts thrown simultaneously with a single handle, and had a time-lock. Mr. Adams beamingly explained its workings to Mr. Spencer, who showed a courteous but not too intelligent interest. The two children, May and Agatha, were delighted by the shining metal and funny clock and knobs. ”

“ The “Little Joker” won for Mark Shinburn, me, and our associates the contents of the vault of the New Windsor Bank of Westminster, Carroll County, Maryland, while the Ocean Bank enterprise was hatching. All of the combinations were mastered in five nightly sittings. I had arranged the details, such as purchasing a team for a safe “get-away,” and mapping a route for Shinburn, who was to do the work on the vault. ”