The next evening Billy carefully left the door unfastened, and at the midnight following I made an inspection. Good--the watchmen had not locked it! There was hope of getting to the vault by this means. But I would not depend upon one instance of oversight on the part of the watchmen; three opportunities must be given them to prove their negligence. If they thus condemned themselves, it would show to me that they trusted to Billy alone as the caretaker of that door. For the next two days the experiment was kept up. Upon making the nightly visits, I found the door as Billy would leave it. This seemed to be the best kind of proof that I might depend on getting at the vault through the iron door. With this favorable outlook I decided to “turn off the trick” the next Saturday night, only forty-eight hours away. Billy was cautioned not to fail me. His task would be to leave the door unfastened, without fail. Incidentally, he was to take a look at the scuttle of the bank. About that, however, I was not much concerned, for it had been left unlocked every night since I began the work. Not over cautious were those inside watchmen. In every other respect, so far as I could determine, I had the plot well in hand. For the third time I had my team at the beck. In order to make the “get-away” quicker, I provided a relay of horses which would take the “dust” to New York, where it would never be in the possession of the Corn Exchange Bank again. I felt confident that a third disappointment wasn’t due. Surely perseverance such as had been shown would finally be rewarded, even though the recipient was a burglar. Again a night for action came and found me ready. My associates were well drilled. Billy the faithful one--to me--had obeyed, implicitly, his instructions. “The very last thing I did,” he assured me, that evening, “was to examine the scuttle of the bank and the iron door to the office, and both were left unfastened. All you’ve got to do is walk in on the watchmen.” A more favorable night for the loot couldn’t have been selected, had I been the creator of the weather. It was as black as could be. In fact it was as black as a black cat would look in a dark cellar, and the moon, thanks to her queenly favor, wasn’t to put in an early appearance that night. That our working across the roofs to the bank might not be detected, I had provided thick woollen blankets, which were laid, and soon there was a pathway as soft and yielding to the foot as you please. It would have made a fine stepping for a dainty bride from church to carriage.