A Great Gold Robbery. Vallis smiled. " I will. Open the safe." Stevens took the key and opened the safe, wondering. Wallis dragged out the case of gold, and with the help of a chisel and hammer stripped off the cover. Then he took out a couple of the bars and began with grave de liberation to cut one of them in half. Stev ens looked on uneasily. The work was not easy, for the bar was one and a half inches thick, and gold, though soft, is troublesome to cut. At length Wallis got through, and taking one complete bar and one of the pieces, placed them on the spring balance. "It's rather too much," he said, smiling to himself at the thought of a man weighing gold and not regarding accuracy within a pound or two avoirdupois. He lifted what he had weighed from the scale pan to the table before Stevens. "There is your ,£2,000," he said sternly, "and about .£100 over." Stevens shrieked out useless oaths. " I won't take it." "All right," said Wallis, "please your self. The payment is good even for a legal debt, since gold bullion is a universal and international currency. You are now tem porarily rich; ^2,100 is a handsome sum." While Stevens hurled threats and prayers indifferently at his head, Wallis put the re mainder of the gold into two strong hand bags, and prepared to leave. "By the by," he said, " if Graham be comes troublesome, give him a nugget on account, it will please him. Your latest dancing girl would love a lump, and you might dispose of the surplus to a 'fence.' Good-bye." Wallis was gone, and Stevens sat trem bling at the table, with five hundred and fifty useless ounces of solid gold mocking his wretchedness. Wallis walked down Gray's Inn Road, carrying a bag, loaded with over forty pounds weight, in each hand. He was strong, but the weight was terrible, and the
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infinite weariness of the burden oppressed him. He was not troubled by the simple fact of his crime; but the futility of it, the pressing danger of discovery with the gold in his possession, the waste of thought and skill—these things stabbed him into anger. He went down Snow Hill into Farrington Street, and so to Blackfriars Bridge. The gold grew heavier as he walked, and no re lief was possible by an interchange of loads. The treasure, which any one among the passing crowd would have killed him to possess, was nothing but a burden and a danger. He stopped in the middle of Blackfriars Bridge and rested the bags for a moment on the parapet, thinking. Wallis was in many respects a practical genius. He had no imagination to disturb the soundness of his judgment, and his execution when a plan had been formed was prompt and perfect. He had designed and executed the cleverest and most successful gold robbery that records tell of. He had failed where he was certain to fail, and now in failure his judgment, which had been disturbed by the false glimmer of suc cess, came back to him. With a quick deliberate movement, he pushed both bags off the parapet into the river. A policeman approached, proudly indig nant. " Young man, the public has no business to throw things into the river." "No!" answered Wallis lightly, "there are many things which we have no business to do." "You are about no good." "On the contrary, I never did a better deed in my life." Wallis walked with the policeman to the station. He knew the intolerable weight of those bags, and knew that the gold would at least secure the useful purpose of keeping them at the bottom of the river. He was de tained for twenty-four hours, and released with a warning. The sententious solemnity of the police amused him. He went away,
