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

by James Holbrook

We concealed our faces as well as we could under the circumstances, and passed at as rapid a rate as was compatible with the muscular powers of our Rosinante. It afterwards appeared that Willis was out on a collecting tour that day, and that neither of us were known to him, nor had he the least suspicion of our business.

The mail which had so frequently suffered the loss of its valuable contents, passed over the route in the night, leaving Fort Covington at about ten P. M. and reaching the suspected office a little before midnight.

An interview with the victim of the former losses, resulted in his preparing a letter containing one hundred dollars in bank-notes, addressed to the same New York correspondent to whom the other letters had been sent. A full account of the bills was taken, and the letter sealed with a small wafer. A post-bill was prepared by the post master at Fort Covington, and the letter enclosed in a wrapper directed on the outside to New York City.

For the first time it occurred to me that the string to be put upon the decoy package, might be made to play an important part in supplying evidence of crime. If the letter should be robbed, and then destroyed together with the wrapper, and the money secreted, no proof of the deed would remain excepting the circumstance that the package went into that office and never came out. But the most cunning depredator would never think of destroying a thing so insignificant as a string. So I concluded to make it available in the experiment about to be tried. Among my notes of this case, I find the following description—"A white cotton string, twelve inches long; a knot exactly in the middle, another an inch from one end, and another two inches from the other end,—the last-mentioned end dipped in ink."

The package, tied up with this tell-tale string, was then thrown into the bag, and we soon set out on our return in the mail conveyance. The road lay for the most part through thick swampy woods, upon whose grim silence the cheerful sound of our sleigh-bells made but little impression. Nor did we possess any other means for dispelling the gloom around us than the red glow of a couple of cigars, with which we resisted the encroachments of Jack Frost, so far as our noses were concerned. These (the cigars, not the noses) must have appeared like feeble imitations of a pair of coach lamps.

We had passed over about half the distance through the woods, when an incident occurred serving at least to break the monotony of our ride. A dark object by the side of the road, made conspicuous by the snow upon the ground, attracted our attention and that of our horses, who attempted to halt, and required a smart application of the lash to induce them to resume their pace. A moment after we could distinguish the forms of two persons stepping nearer to the middle of the road as we approached them. Not a word was said by either of us, as we were too much engaged in speculating on the character of the unexpected apparitions, to indulge in conversation; but the driver had evidently made up his mind to forestall any nefarious designs which they might entertain. Requesting me to "raise up a little," he drew from the sleigh-box an instrument effectual to lay such phantoms, to wit, a revolver. There was, however, no occasion for its use, for the personages before us turned out to be two French Canadians too far gone in intoxication to be very formidable antagonists, had they entertained hostile intentions, which they were far from doing, as their energies were entirely devoted to maintaining a perpendicular position, and keeping somewhere within the bounds of the road. Their erratic course rendered it somewhat difficult to avoid running over them, but we finally left them behind, muttering "sacre" and staggering about in a very social manner.

When we had arrived at the village and were within a quarter of a mile of the office, I alighted from the sleigh and walked on, leaving it to overtake me, my object in this being to keep out of sight of the post master, whose suspicions might possibly be excited by seeing a stranger in the sleigh with the mail carrier, although the mail carriage occasionally conveyed passengers. Perhaps this was an excess of caution on my part. At any rate, it did no harm, and I prefer in all such cases to give a wide berth to possibilities.

Once more on our way, my mind was chiefly occupied with conjectures as to the result of that night's experiment, and in determining what steps were to be taken in case the money package had been abstracted. The post master himself had changed the mails on this occasion, the driver in the mean time having gone over to the hotel at my request, in order to afford the former a good opportunity for committing the depredation if he entertained any such design.

The distance to the next post-office on this route was about six miles, and nothing further could be ascertained respecting the condition of the package, till our arrival there. An excellent account had been given me of the post master at this place, and his assistant. The former boarded at the hotel nearly opposite the post-office, which was kept in his store. As he was crossing the street with the mail bag on his way to the office, I overtook him, made myself known to him, and under an injunction of secrecy, disclosed to him the object of my visit at such an unseasonable hour. I furthermore expressed a desire to examine the packages contained in the pouch.