CHAPTER VI
The Passing of Mooney
A strange fatality seemed to follow White and Mooney.
These two men were perhaps the most accomplished highwaymen that ever operated in any country, and yet something unforeseen—something they seemed unable to anticipate—always interfered to prevent them from obtaining the great fortune they expected.
In one of the earlier robberies, the packages done up in old newspapers which they kicked out of the way, when they were searching for the shipment of money, contained the very treasure for which they were looking; while the only thing they carried away from that night’s work was an inconsiderable sum of money gathered from the rifled registered mail.
The sealed packages that Mooney took out of the safe on the night that he and I, in such theatrical fashion, held up the through express, proved, upon examination, to be registered bonds of some industrial corporation which were being delivered in the south, while the loot from the last holdup had been about a thousand dollars in small bills.
And now, finally in the great haul which they were at last able to make, the only result was White’s capture and imprisonment for a term of years, equal practically, for life. The thing ended also in disaster no less for Mooney.
I have often wondered who this man really was and what was his origin.
I think he had been in nearly every country, and he was familiar with practically every device that could be of service to his profession. He was a skilled electrician; a very wizard at it. The manager of the circus was glad to carry him along although he had practically no duties. But the skill with which he was able to adjust anything of a mechanical nature that happened, for the moment, to be out of repair, made him invaluable. And he seemed to do it with no effort; with practically no preliminary inquiry, as though, by a sort of instinct, he was able to locate the difficulty and adjust it. I have always felt that given any sort of an even chance the government officials would never have been able to outwit this man. It was not any plan laid for him that tripped him up. It was the inevitable tragedy of life.
I did not think about this very much at the time. I was young enough for events to make little impression on me. The whole thing was a sort of adventure, without, as it seemed to me, any moral relations.
I traveled on for some weeks with the circus precisely as I had been accustomed to do.