From the big stack of sealed envelopes, we all imagined that we had now made the great haul always expected. But, while the volume of currency was large, the actual value was in fact small; not, at the farthest, above a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars.
Mooney cursed as the denominations of these bills continued to appear in the packages. But there was nothing to do but go ahead. And he carried it out, in every detail, precisely as he had planned it. He removed the money from the envelopes, and packed it into his bag. Then he filled the envelopes with newspaper until they appeared to be the same bulk.
He had not enough newspaper for all the packages and we looked about the car for anything we could find for the purpose.
When the envelopes were filled with paper so they resembled, in bulk, their former appearance, Mooney gummed down the flaps and pasted down the sealing-wax seals. The packages were now all precisely in appearance as they had been when they were taken out of the safe. The seals were not broken because they had been thoroughly softened by the heat of the plumber’s candle before they had been removed, and so were easily gummed back into position.
This was all carefully done. No one could have told that the packages had been in any sense tampered with. Mooney had noted the exact position they occupied in the safe, and he returned them precisely to this position. The envelope, which he had given the express agent to put in with them, he also restored to the position it had occupied when the agent thrust it in. He had plenty of leisure to carry this out unhurriedly. It had all been accomplished by the time the train arrived at the coal tipple.
Mooney closed the safe. The train stopped to take coal and went on.
The sheriff, the nervous conductor, and the armed express agent waited in vain for the signal to bring them forward into a desperate encounter with outlaws.
When the train pulled out Mooney opened the door to the express car and sent me back for the conductor and his associates.
They came immediately and Mooney acted out the last scene in his comedy.
He told the men that the Department’s information about the holdup at this tipple had been probably intended as misleading. One never knew whether one had precisely any criminal plan. This information may have been given out to the Department with the primary intention of leading it to look for the train robbers at a point distant from that at which they were intending to put their criminal operations into effect.