Then there was Jim Van Rensaellaer’s case. Jim was a big, fat, good-natured agent of the American Express Company at Winnipeg and of the Winnipeg-Moorhead stage company for years, and was liked by everybody. One day, it was discovered that from the vault in the express office had been taken a package of money—said to be $10,000 but really $15,000 (to save extra express charges) which a bank was sending to Winnipeg. There was absolutely no clue to the robbery. For years Van was shadowed by local and imported detectives and every device resorted to in order to catch him. His friends stood staunchly by him, but the money was gone, and who could have taken it if not Van? Coming on the train from Devil’s Lake, Dakota, to Grand Forks one day, I met Jack Noble, a detective, whom I had known for years. He told me the express company never let up in running down express robbers, and that he expected to catch Van before long—and this was a couple of years after the theft. In a friendly spirit I told Van all this when I reached home, but Van seemed perfectly unconcerned, and said he was as much interested in solving the mystery as the company was. Some years later when in London, England, I spent an evening with H. G. McMicken, who at the time of this robbery occupied part of the express office as a railway and steamship ticket office. He was a sort of amateur detective and could open a safe in first-class Raffles style, and he had given a good deal of attention and thought to this affair. The only solution he could offer—and it was probably the correct one—was that on the eventful day a number of workmen were employed in whitewashing the office. The vault door had been left ajar, and one of the men, seizing the opportunity, had snatched the package and secreted it in his whitewash pail, where it would immediately be covered with the lime solution. He could then easily leave for lunch with his booty in the pail, which he doubtless did. This theory was afterwards corroborated by a contractor who told a friend of mine that the culprit had confessed the crime to him—a long time after it had been committed. And the express company was out only $10,000 besides its expenses for detectives, and the bank lost $5,000. But the latter’s reputation suffered more than Van’s. The Case of Lord Gordon-Gordon