The plan's cleverness and cunning lay in its devilish simplicity--it
required only long, painstaking and laborious preparation. There were,
according to the newspapers, two entrances to the banker's private
office; the customers' entrance from the main rotunda of the bank, and
a rear entrance leading in behind the cages to the working quarters of
the staff, which was separated from the general offices by a short,
narrow, enclosed passage with a second door at the extreme end. The
president's office, as befitted his position, was richly furnished, and
the passage, being in reality but an adjunct to the office itself, had
not been overlooked--it was carpeted with a long Persian rug. That
portion of the basement directly beneath the president's office and the
passage had been partitioned off into a storeroom for old files and
books, and was consequently rarely visited. For the rest, the method
was fairly obvious. The storeroom was ceiled in with wood, which, when
carefully cut away, could be replaced during the daytime, and so hide
all traces of what was going on should any one enter the place. It
required, then, simply a certain number of nights' work--and it had
taken three.
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