I pushed him aside without saying a word, whistled, and went in, and caught the principal with pen in hand at work at a table, with a pile of correspondence before him, while at the same time my two men at the door rushed in, and I called to them to secure the clerk, and bring him into the private room, which they did. I then stepped out of the private room and locked the outside door, and returning, informed the principal what I knew about him, and so terrified him as to extort from him a full confession of his connection with the business. He confessed that they were thoroughly caught, and must be broken up; which conviction was soon deepened, when one of my men answering a knock at the outside door, let in an officer, accompanied by another of the principals. I took possession of the contents of the office, made the parties deliver up the mails for that day and the day before, (the money received from which they still had on hand,) in order to refund the money to the swindled parties; made them give me money enough to pay for the requisite stationery and postage, all of which I got from them on the spot; and then took due proceedings against them legally, leaving the office in charge of one of my men, till I could get around to it and examine the correspondence, which was in time to be destroyed. I made these fellows advance me money, too, to pay for the rent of the office, on which a month's rent was then due the lessor, and for another month's rent. These fellows were men in high social position, and they tried hard to bribe me into silence, and made large and tempting offers, and promised also to quit the business forever; but I reminded them that their very offer was an offence against the law, and suggested that they must not even repeat their bribes. There was a third member of this honest firm, but the officer sent to arrest him reported that he was out of town, to return next day; and as we wanted him too, we took good care that his friends should have no opportunity to communicate to him, or anybody else that day. I never saw more "sore-headed" chaps than they. The fear of exposition through the public press, was a terrible one for them; and as it was compounding no felony, and was no breach of law to agree to not give the facts to the press, and to let these chaps be brought before the proper officers and plead guilty, under assumed names, when we should get to that point, I had no hesitancy in accepting for myself and my men a pretty large sum of money from them. It was true that the money gave me some uneasiness, as I reflected that it had probably been cheated out of poor victims, although the rascals asserted that they had not made much in that way. But their correspondence showed that they had. The third man was arrested next day, and kept apart from the other two. He was taken before the mayor under his assumed name, and there made a pitiful confession, disclosing more than his _confreres_ had done.