Читать книгу Why Crime Does Not Pay - Mrs. Sophie Van Elkan Lyons Burke - Страница 16

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It was hard for a young man to get a foothold with an organized party of bank robbers, for the more experienced men were reluctant to risk their chances of success by taking on a beginner.

"No doubt you're all right," they told him, "but you can see yourself that we can't afford to have anybody around that hasn't had experience in our line of business. It's too risky for us, and it wouldn't be fair to you."

"But how am I going to get experience if some of you chaps don't give me a chance?" Raymond replied; but still he got no encouragement from my husband and his companions.

"All right," he finally said one day. "I'll show you what I can do—I won't be asking to be taken in with you; you will be asking me."

So Raymond, in order to get experience, cheerfully made up his mind to make his first attempt in that line alone. He broke into an express company's office on Liberty Street and forced open a safe containing $30,000 in gold. The inner box, however, in which the money was kept, proved too much for Raymond's limited experience. To his great disgust, daylight came before he was able to get it open.

Tired and mad, Raymond trudged home in the gray of the morning, dusty, greasy, and with his tools under his arm. The newspapers printed the full details of the curious failure to reach the funds in the express company's safe, and Ned Lyons and his companions guessed very quickly whose work it was. Meeting Raymond a few days later, they accused him of having done the bungling job. He admitted that the joke was on him, and they all laughed loudly at his effort to get some experience.

"You're all right," said Big Jim Brady. "You've got the right idea—that's the only way to learn; keep at it and you will make a name for yourself some day."

His next undertaking was more successful. From the safe of an insurance company in Cambridge, Mass., his native town, he took $20,000 in cash. This established him as a bank burglar, and he soon became associated with a gang of expert cracksmen, including Ike Marsh, Bob Cochran, and Charley Bullard.