This operation of attempted preserving was done in the privacy of the baggage car, and all went well until we got about three miles from town. Through the negligence of some section hands a rail was left without the fish-plate being bolted on, and the whole train was ditched.
The engineer was killed, and the conductor was badly injured, as also were two or three passengers. I escaped through a window, and after helping some of the injured who needed surgical attendance, I went to the baggage car. It was a wreck. So was most of the baggage. My trunk and one or two others were intact, and while awaiting the arrival of the relief train and wrecking crew, my thoughts again got to wandering.
There was a score of us. Some were injured, one dead, and all of us anxious. The morning was just breaking; the rain had ceased to fall; and, as I looked away down the railroad, I could just distinguish a cloud of steam and smoke, through the fog, which showed the approach of a train.
Something seemed to tell me that I was about to be confronted with some disagreeable occurrence, and, in anticipation of this premonition becoming a fact, I quickly hauled my trunk to a little shed used by workmen, and impatiently awaited the wrecker. Therefore, I was not astonished when I saw that the first man to alight was my friend, the detective of Grand Rapids. He also saw me, but seemed to pay very little attention to me, as he knew I could not escape, for by this time it was broad daylight, and no trains coming or going.
Finally he accosted me, and we entered into “an agreement” to have my trunk taken to the junction of the road, which was done to my entire satisfaction, and, I have every reason to think, to his also. Just what that little agreement cost me I am not at liberty to say, for that officer still lives.
It was a dark and dreary day when I got into the wild wildernesses of Northern Michigan’s lumber tracts. I was soon established in a hut, and it shortly became known that I was a lumber operator of considerable means, and was regarded with much consideration by the hardy hewers of trees and strippers of bark. The men were all honest, it seemed. So one day I went out in the evergreen forest and failed to return.
A week or so later what was purported to be my dead body was found pinioned to the earth by a fallen tree. Money and papers were found in the clothes on the body which established my identity beyond the question of a doubt.
Thus, by case No. 5, after a great deal of trouble and thrilling escapes from the law’s officers, I added the neat little sum of $20,000 to my bank account by September 1st, as I had anticipated.
When I had finished with the trunk I presented it to a friend, but at the time did not tell to what use it had been put.
Some years afterwards I met him at his home, and told him all about it. Then he and his wife declared that often they had found it open—no one having touched it—when both declared it had been closed and locked the day previous.