Ten Years Among the Mail Bags / Or, Notes from the Diary of a Special Agent of the Post-Office Department

by James Holbrook

The arrest and punishment of another inspires him with salutary fear of similar results in his own case, should he venture upon a like course.

And the effect of such occurrences upon those who have never turned aside from the path of rectitude, is no less decided.

These are the times that "try men's souls." It is a hard thing for one to bear up for weeks and months under a load of suspicion, though conscious of innocence; but this is a still harder task, if he has nothing between the eyes of the public and his inward rottenness but the thin shell of a decent and false reputation. No man can know to its full extent the value of a good character, until he has been through some "fiery trial," in which nothing but such a power could have saved him from ruin.

Yet those who at the time of which I speak, were most firm in conscious integrity, did not escape the stings of annoying suspicions, and significant insinuations.

"Could it be a certain Route Agent?" confidentially asked an officious individual, perhaps quite too willing to start such a suspicion, the aforesaid Agent having, in pursuance of general instructions, denied him the privilege of the mail car. "I saw him," continued our virtuous friend, "sporting a fine turn-out only last Sunday, and they do say that he is rather fast for a young man on so small a salary. It wouldn't surprise me much if they should find that the trouble is there."

Unfortunately for this theory, so well founded on the basis of a Sunday "turn out" and a "they say," the "fast" young man could not have had access to one in a dozen of the lost packages.

This is a specimen of the endless surmises and conjectures that were thrown out in the progress of the affair, much to the annoyance of numerous post masters' clerks, and other officials, whose honesty, aided by the strenuous efforts of the Special Agent to arrive at the truth, carried them through the ordeal triumphantly; and left their accusers, particularly the man who couldn't ride in the mail car, rather "chop-fallen," and possibly not a little disappointed.

The banks within the infected district, suffered in the loss of drafts, &c., to the amount of at least two hundred thousand dollars, while scarcely a business man in either of the two or three cities within range of the prevailing disorder, escaped the vexatious and often injurious consequences of the depredations then going on, for the robber did not stop to select his booty. Indeed, he could not have done so, had he wished it, as the reader will hereafter see.

An investigation of the case was ordered by the Department, and carried on with as much energy as prudence would permit; yet in the midst of it the robberies continued unchecked. Hereupon some of the bank officers grew very impatient, as the victims of depredations are apt to do, if they are not made acquainted with every step that is taken in the delicate process of narrowing down the investigation.

When I had been on the trail for nearly a week, one of those gentlemen—an excellent financier, but by no means profoundly versed in the mysteries of human nature—in his imprudent zeal to find out something, took matters into his own hands, and came near spoiling all by alarming the robber, without detecting him. He prepared a sort of decoy letter, as he called it, well filled with pieces of tissue paper, about the size of bank-notes, and this tempting package he addressed to a cashier to whom several of the missing letters had been directed. This fell into the hands of the robber, but the experiment was rendered harmless by the fact stated by himself after his arrest, that he never stopped to read or examine any letters, except to ascertain whether they contained money. It will never be known, probably, how much good advice the criminal lost, when he committed this tissue of deception to the flames, for the worthy cashier, in his well-meant zeal, supplied the place of bank-notes in the decoy package with what he doubtless considered of more value, namely, a moral lecture to the delinquent, displaying in vivid colors the folly and wickedness of his course, and closing with the warning that if he took that letter, he would surely be detected!