5/19 After talking it over with Mr.Toomey they returned to Cowperwood's office with a promising scheme. Nahum Dickensheets, one of the judges of the State Court of Appeals, and a man long since attached, by methods which need not here be described, to Cowperwood's star, had been persuaded to bring his extensive technical knowledge to bear on the emergency. At his suggestion the work of digging the tunnel was at once begun--first at the east or Franklin Street end; then, after eight months' digging, at the west or Canal Street end. A shaft was actually sunk some thirty feet back of Mr.Purdy's building--between it and the river--while that gentleman watched with a quizzical gleam in his eye this defiant procedure. |