True Detective Stories from the Archives of the Pinkertons

by Cleveland Moffett

After a brief delay the pouch was delivered to express messenger Van Waganen, who saw it placed in one of the small iron safes used by express companies in conveying money from city to city. The messenger rode with the safe to the train, and then remained on guard in the express-car, where the safe was placed, as far as Susquehanna, at which point he delivered the pouch to Dwight Chamberlain, a night-clerk and watchman in the joint employ of the Erie Railroad and the United States Express Company. The train left New York at 6 p. m., and reached Susquehanna about midnight.

Watchman Chamberlain, having received the pouch at the station, carried it into the ticket-office and locked it inside a safe belonging to the Erie Railroad Company. He remained on duty the rest of the night, and at seven o'clock the next morning a messenger from the First National Bank of Susquehanna came to get the package. Chamberlain unlocked the safe, took out the pouch, opened it, and then emptied its contents on the table. To his great surprise the package containing the forty thousand dollars was gone, and in its place were several bundles of manila paper cut to the size of bank-bills and done up in small packages as money is done up.

The agent of the company, Clark Evans, was immediately notified, and he at once telegraphed the news of the robbery to the officials of the United States Express Company in New York, who with very little delay placed the matter in the hands of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The direct supervision of the work was undertaken by the late George H. Bangs, at that time general superintendent of the Pinkerton Agency, and a force of detectives at once started for Susquehanna.

An important discovery was made on closer examination of the pouch. It was found that this pouch was not the one that had been sealed up in the express office at New York, but a bogus pouch, so much like the other that the change might easily have escaped notice. The chief points of difference were the tag and the seal, the former having been addressed in a different hand from that of the New York money-clerk, and the latter being an old seal not in use by the company at that time. But the general appearance of the pouch was such that neither the messenger, Van Waganen, nor the watchman, Chamberlain, could swear that it was not the one that he had handled.

After going over the ground carefully and cross-examining Van Waganen and Chamberlain, Superintendent Bangs concluded that the robbery had not been committed on the train and that the genuine money package had reached Susquehanna and been locked in the railroad company's safe by the night-clerk. He was strengthened in this conclusion by the statement of Chamberlain, who admitted that, after locking up the money, he had only been in the ticket-office at intervals during the night. For this he was in no way to blame, as he had other duties to perform about the station, notably those of way-bill clerk.

Thus the robbers would have had full opportunity to approach the safe unobserved and exercise their skill upon it, could they have secured entrance to the ticket-office. Nor was this a difficult matter, since the door leading into it was known to have three keys, in the hands of various employees of the road, from whom they might have been procured or stolen. More important still was the fact, ascertained by Mr. Bangs, that the safe itself had three keys, intrusted to as many men, whose duties required them to have access to the safe. It subsequently transpired that two of these keys had been made by the men who carried them, for their own convenience and without the knowledge of their superiors. The door leading into the ticket-office opened from the men's waiting-room, where people had been coming and going during the entire night of the robbery. Such of these people as could be found were questioned closely as to what they had observed on this night, but they could furnish no information that threw light upon the case.

Some significance was found in the coincidence that nine years before there had been a robbery at Susquehanna, in which thirty thousand dollars had been stolen from the express company's safe. The Pinkertons knew that for years a band of professional thieves had been traveling through the country, operating on safes that could be opened with a key. Among them were experts in fitting locks, especially skilled in making keys from impressions, and known as professional "fitters." At first it was considered possible that the robbery had been committed by these men; but, after the most careful search and inquiry, Superintendent Bangs concluded that this was not the case and that the pouch had been stolen by some person or persons resident in Susquehanna, presumably by one or more of the railroad employees who had access to the office, or by persons intimately acquainted with some of the men who had keys to the safe.

"Shadows" were put on all persons who might have had access to the ticket-office and the safe; but, although this was continued for weeks, nothing conclusive came to light.

About this time a reorganization of the Pinkerton Agency became necessary, through the death of Allan Pinkerton, the founder, and George H. Bangs, the general superintendent; and Robert Pinkerton assumed charge of the investigation at Susquehanna. He undertook the difficult task of picking out one guilty man (or possibly two or three) from a body of fifteen hundred workmen. For, despite lack of evidence either way, there was no doubt in the detective's mind that the money had been taken by some of the employees of either the express or the railroad company. Pinkerton men were taken to Susquehanna and given employment in various positions for the railroad and express companies, their duty being to make friends and hear gossip, and, if possible, in an unguarded moment, at some saloon or boarding-house, or perhaps at the chatty noon hour in the works, secure some important secret. Other detectives came with money in their pockets, and, under the guise of sporting men, made themselves popular at resorts where a poor man come dishonestly and suddenly into money would be apt to spend it.

Day after day, month after month, the watch was continued from many points of view, the conversations of hundreds of workmen were carefully noted, the gambling houses and their inmates were kept under constant scrutiny, the lives of this man and that man and scores of men were turned inside out, and all without any one in Susquehanna suspecting it, the general opinion being that the robbery had been put aside along with many other unsolved mysteries.