A certain Jew, proprietor of a pawnshop, was in reality a receiver of stolen goods.  It was common knowledge among certain crooks in the city, that the recently stolen Bland diamonds had come into this man’s hands.  Blizzard thought that it would be funny to take these diamonds away from the Jew, hold them for a while, and then, since the fellow was after all a friend, return them.  To break into Reichman’s store at night would be dangerous.  Reichman himself was no coward, and he employed a savage night-watchman, just out of Sing Sing.  So Blizzard planned a robbery in a spirit of farce, and in the broad and crowded light of day.

Six stalwart young fellows entered Reichman’s pawnshop at eleven-thirty in the morning.  Each one had a watch or an overcoat to pawn.  They crowded about Reichman, all talking at once.  They were strangers to him.  At exactly the same time the attention of the six policemen on the six nearest beats was attracted by the drunken and disorderly behavior of six more stalwart young fellows—­one to each policeman.  In the end six arrests were made, the six young drunkards were marched off to the station house, and the beats of the six policemen were for the time being deserted.

Sharp at eleven-thirty-seven, five of the six young men in Reichman’s shop flung an overcoat over his head and rushed him into a dark corner, choking him so that he could not scream.  A person in the street, however, saw the struggle, and rushed off to find the nearest policeman, who of course could not be found.  Meanwhile the sixth young man ran lightly upstairs, looked under the mattress of the palatial Reichman bed, where he had been told to look, and secured the stolen diamonds.  The farce came to a proper conclusion.  Reichman could not complain to the police that he had been robbed of stolen goods.  And he went about for many days with a sour face.

Blizzard came every day to condole with him, and finally to return the diamonds.  Then he told Reichman, a man he could trust, how the robbery had been worked, and the two put their heads together.

If six policemen could be so easily put out of commission at a given moment, why not many?  If a pawnshop could be so easily looted, why not Tiffany’s, or one of the great wholesale jewellers in Maiden Lane?  Why not the Sub-Treasury?

In Blizzard’s mind the idea became an obsession; and he worked out schemes, in all their details; only to think of something bigger and more engaging.  One or two details were present in all his plans:  a hiding-place for the treasure when he should get it, and a large number of lieutenants whom he could trust.  He could, he believed, at the least throw the whole city into a state of chaos for a few hours—­for half a day—­for a whole day.  And during that period of lawless confusion anything might happen to anybody—­to Barbara for instance.  But his plans were not ripe, nor his trusted lieutenants as yet sufficient in number.  He must therefore either put off his vengeance indefinitely, or run the risk of having his own career as a criminal come to a very sudden end.  For once in his life he vacillated.  But it was something more than the desire for vengeance which decided him to risk everything on immediate action.