The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1922-03-23

| AAANo
and joined the big six-footer in ter
rorized refrain. We quit the town I'M
mediately, knowing we'll that the
night was lost, and further. that it
was only a matter of time until that
COD would arouse the entire town and
have a posse on our trail.
A few days later we read in the
Charleston papers the officers YER
sion of his encounter with desperate
bank burglars. The bank voted him
a reward for his courage in driving
the bandits out of town. So goes
the world!
The incident delayed for day or
two our first attack on the time
locker safe. We were compelled to
find another job at Brunson, South
Carolina. The First National Bank
was the chosen victim and it had a
very beautiful time-lock safe. 1t
would not be long before We knew
how we'll "old nitro" would perform
| on the safe-makers' masterpiece. We
determined not to permit any faint
ing, historical cops to interfere with
this operation; so before we went
near the bank we hunted the town
over for Mister Chief Of Police, and
found him industriously trying the
doors of all the stores. In response
to our command to ut up his hands
he inquired if we lew who he was.
We took his gun off him and walked
him down to the bank, telling him on
the way that we were there to rob
the bank, but would treat him with
courtesy and consideration if he be-
fhaved himself like gentleman and
didn't give us any trouble. He trem-
bled and shook like "a shimmy dance,
but was as docile as lamb. We tied
him up, feet together and hands be-
hind, and then forced our entrance
through the front door of the bank.
The vault door was easy, though
the explosion was quite loud, and the
chief let out a. yell. One of the boys
took an apple out of his pocket AND
fed it to the chief to calm and sub
due him. The much vaunted and
widely advertised automatic time
locker was a tough proposition. 1t
required twenty-one explosions be-
fore we got it open, but we finally
wrecked it after two hours of blast
ing, and once more the ingenuity of
the cracksman prevailed over the
skill of the safe maker. ,.5..
Brother cracksmen of the Under
world quickly sought us out and anx-
iously solicited information as to how
we did it. We told them, and it was
not long before every bank burglar
in the country was user of the de-
structive ''nitro,' and the automatic
time lockers were being Knocked over
like pins in a bowling alley. The
safe makers had to go to work again.
The bankers no longer went home at
nights and slept the sleep Of the un-
worried.
1 haven't any idea of the amount of
money that the bank burglars got the
first year we mastered the time-lock
safe, but an approximate conception
can be got by figuring the loot of my
gang. We robbed eight banks in
Virginia, and North and South Caro-
lima, for total of s250,000. I know
of at least ten other gangs that oper-
ated that year, so conservative esti-
mate would be s2,000,00o-and not
a robber caught!
! For ten years the life of the cracks
man was simply one robbery after an
other. The safe maker was elimi-
mated as a competitive factor. The
Underworld felt and believed that
the time-lock safe was the last word
in safe building. By no stretch of the
Imagination could they picture the
safe maker designing anything that
could resist the force of the ''old
soup (nitro-glycerine is called
soup" because it looks like vegetable
soup).
Well, we had that beautiful dream
for ten years. We had ten years of
continued success, no worries, no
troubles, ten years of nothing but
sunshine and ease with never pes
simistic thought Of the future. We
thought we had beaten the safe build
er for all time.
And then we woke up one morning
to find the screw-door safe staring
us plumb in the face!
This is the greatest piece of me-
chanical safe-making ingenuity ever
! devised, great, stolid, Gibraltar
like hunk of steel, the door being