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After three hours, all the Short Tails were stuffed into the silt chamber.
    There they stood, pressed against the crypts, every ear cocked in the direction of Jerome Park. They seemed not to breathe, while Pearly paced back and forth in the light of a dozen flickering candles. All the burglars were there in black masks (some, out of habit, had even hauled sacks through the tunnel); the agile woola boys with their strong and springy legs; the well-tailored con men; the pickpockets; the guns (marksmen in the gang wars, who were held in low regard because they could pick neither pockets nor locks); even the chef, who was uncomfortable unless he could cook with hot provisions. Romeo Tan stood with his hand on the lip of the exit pipe, listening intently for a faint white roar. Pearly stopped pacing and looked at his men. For five minutes they didn’t move a millimeter, and stood in terror of the deluge that might race through the Bronx tunnel into the chamber that was echoing with their heartbeats.
    “Do I hear water?” asked Pearly, cocking his head. He watched all hundred Short Tails turn white, as if he had drawn a Venetian blind. “It took three hours to get in,” he said, “so it will take three hours to get out. What’s that!” They started, and then sighed as one, like inmates of hell. “I thought I heard something. I guess it was nothing. Would anyone like a glass of... water!” They moaned.
    He pranced about as if his legs were stilts. “I have a proposition for you,” he said.
    But a horrified shudder passed through the crowd as a masked burglar shouted “Look!” and held up a pair of false teeth. Everyone remembered Bat Charney’s shame about what he called his “elephant’s castanets.” All that was left of Bat rested aloft in the burglars hand. They gazed at it meekly until Pearly cut short their devotions.
    “Shall we proceed, gentlemen, or do you wish to increase the chance of being trapped forever in this underground tea bag (where we would flavor the city’s drinking water for twenty years), by irrelevant stupidities such as a silent prayer over a pair of dentures?” Pearly’s cheek was twitching, signifying one of the many species of his cool anger. “Imagine, if you will,” he said, “that we are not in a dank and mossy crypt, but in a room of gold; that upon each solid brick is stamped a fine and florid eagle, crown, or fleur-de-lys; that warm rays make the air softer and yellower than butter; that you breathe not this base, black, wet mist, but a sparkling bronze infusion that has been mellowed by its constant reverberation within walls of pure gold.” He sucked in his breath. “The light of this room would be just that shade that we are told arises sometimes against the clouds beyond the bay, making the world gold the way it is said happens once in a... every... well... sometimes. My plan, you see,” he said in pain, writhing internally, “is to build a golden room in a high place, and post watchmen to watch the clouds. When they turn gold, and the light sprays upon the city, the room will open. The light will stuff the chamber. Then the doors will seal shut. And the goldenness will be trapped forever.” The thieves’ mouths hung open. “You can come there, all of you! You can bathe in the light, drink-in the air, run your hands along the smooth walls. Even in the pit and trough of night, the golden room will be brightly boiling. And it will be ours.” Tranquilized with longing, he looked dreamily at the ceiling. “In the center, I will put a simple bed, and there I will repose in warmth and gold... for eternity.”
    For a moment, they forgot where they were, and bombarded Pearly with questions. When he told them what he intended, the cynics replied that he had lost his mind. No one could rob a gold carrier. But Pearly countered with a scheme. A lookout at Sandy Hook would scan the sea day and night from a tower that they would build in the guise of charitable works. Another