The St. Louis Republic. [volume] (St. Louis, Mo.) 1888-1919, 1901-08-18

was the smallest fraction of an inch deeper
or shallower than it should be.
Machinists have gone carefully over this
work. They say it could not be improved
upon. Said one:
II tell you. the fellow who did that was a
crackerjsck. To make that Il BY Il inch hole
through fve-sixteenths of an inch of steel
needs 4 man who knows his business. And
there are plenty OF marks in there which
show that he made pretty quick knocks. I
think he used a diamond drill and sand to
set it in instead OF OIL"
The head machinist at the smelling works
has a different opinion Of the way the work
was done. but concurs in high praise OF the
skill involved. You notice." he said, that
the opening is not a perfect ellipse, but Is
b~ean-shaped. The fiat inner side would
make the bending back and final breaking Of
the steel very much easier than IL the aper-
ture had been rounded throughout its cir
conference. That was well thought out,
and it is obvious to me that the borer had
exact OF the way in which the
gold was piled inside the safe. l believe that
weeks were spent in the work"
| Winters says: ut took six weeks to dig
the tunnel and two nights to get through the
brick foundations. / did a large part Of
the drilling on the night OF the robbery and
forced through the bottom of the vault"
And this Is Winters's story of how he took
the bullion:
1T took me the whole night to finish
drilling the bottom OF the safe and carry out
the gold. II 1 had had moro time l would
have taken the $4,000 1 left behind.
when I had knocked out the hole. I
climbed into the vault and threw down
about half the gold. / carried these bars to
the outer end of the tunnel and then went
back and threw down the rest. Then be-
gan TO carry of the gold.
Il made fourteen trips from my tunnel to
the wharf beyond the railroad tunnel and
lowered the bars into the water. / made a
mark on the wharf opposite where 1
dropped each bar"
Hard Search Made
for the Burglar.
But before Winters was arrested and led
to confess, there was much search and yio-
lent speculation as to how many men were
engaged on the job. how long they were
at 1t. and what they did with the booty.
There were theories galore. The gold was
carried across to the mountains in a
wagon" said one school of detectives: and
thereupon all overland routes were studied
by men OF energy and ambition. THE gold
was carried out to sea on a boat" said
another school: and forthwith the bay and
the outlying ocean were patrolled by sleuths.
The bars were buried close to the mouth
or the tunnel" said a third school: and the
smeiter buildings were all but torn from
their foundations by the diggers and the
delivers.
WHO did the deed?' asked everybody.
And nobody could guess. Eastern genius
was suspected: an Englishman who had been
In PRISON. and a miner who had been par
doned from prison were almost equal IA
vorites among those theorists who thought
they could reason from bootheel to peniten-
tary. Then there were those who held that
the burglary could have been committed
only by men who were connected with the
smelter. One enterprislng party Of sieuths
went across the bay and found a lovely
eerie nest on the side of a hill overlooking
the mill, and al once there appeared in
print a theory, related as a fact, that here
the chief Of the robber band had waited and
watched with his clan until a confederate
In the mill had wigwagged with a lantern:
There's s42s. oo5.ol in the box. and alrs
we'll"
An the smelter owners encouraged the
theorists and sleuths by increasing their Of
fer OF $1,000 reward to s25,0o.
After everybody else had been suspected.
ana many had been arrested and turned
loose, a cap was found near the bay. II
was a cheap cotton cap, but 1t was the
eiew. Before many hours 1t was identified