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January at Marryatville while he was investigating a series of break-ins in the area. In the preceding weeks, there had been a number of armed robberies in which shots had been fired, and Hyde approached three men said to be acting suspiciously near the branch office of the Municipal Tramways Trust. Unfortunately, he was not carrying his service revolver. In the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century, Hyde was one of only two South Australian police officers killed on duty. The gunman was seen resting his hand on a fence during the shooting, and a tracker was brought in but a rainstorm had wiped out the men’s trails. Two hats and black Chesterfield coats with velvet collars that were thought to belong to the men were found but no charges were brought. There were also suggestions that the killers might have been members of the King Hit Push, which, at the time, was in the business of robbing tramcar offices.
    In March 1909, two months after Hyde’s shooting, Ryan went to a Sydney prison for three months on an idle and disorderly charge. He tried to escape, for which he was given a sentence of three years. Then, while being moved from Adelaide to Gladstone Gaol, Ryan jumped from a train going at speed between Hoyleton and Kybunga. Despite falling heavily, by the time the train had been stopped and a search commenced, he was clean away. He was out for more than a year before he was acquitted of gaol breaking on a technicality and then promptly arrested for stealing a bicycle. It was time to move east again and who should Ryan meet up with in Sydney but his old friend Mackay, now known as Samuel ‘Jewey’ Freeman and running the Riley Street Push.
    The Eveleigh Railway Workshops robbery was executed on 10 June 1914, four days after Freeman shot nightwatchman Michael McHale in the face during a robbery at the Paddington post office in Oxford Street. A bystander, Edward Heagney, was also shot but both he and McHale survived.
    On 10 June two Eveleigh employees arrived by horse and cart at the factory, bringing the payroll, which totalled slightly more than £3300. They unloaded the first chest of money and, as they were taking out the second, Ryan drove up in an old grey car with Freeman in the passenger seat. Freeman put a gun to the head of one employee, Norman Twiss, and threatened to blow his brains out. He and Ryan loaded the second chest into the car and the pair drove away.
    The Sydney Morning Herald
was both enchanted by the robbery and able to use it as a stick with which to beat the state’s administration:
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    The Eveleigh holdup is surely unique of its kind in Australia. For audacity of conception and cool effrontery of execution it could hardly have been surpassed but had there been a policeman about, the robbers may have been apprehended. We commend to the Government’s notice the increase of the police force.
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    Unfortunately for Freeman and Ryan, the number of the car had been taken. Even more unfortunately for them, they had not bothered to steal a car. They had simply used one belonging to Arthur Tatham from Castlereagh, who had duly reported it stolen. When interviewed, though, he seemed to know a suspiciously large amount about the robbery. Also, the man in charge of the payroll told the police that Twiss had been unusually cool in the face of a gun being put to his head. Indeed, it seemed almost as if he had expected the attack.
    Then Freeman was shelved. He delayed leaving Sydney for too long, and on 24 June the police arrested him as he was boarding the Melbourne Express. Though he claimed he had been at the races on the day of the robbery, he was charged, which left Shiner Ryan very much on his own. For the moment, things went well enough for him, while he stayed in Sydney and sent his share of the proceeds to his friend Sam Falkiner in Melbourne. Then, however, things began to unravel. First, Falkiner took some of the takings—which he would later tell the jury