It had been carefully planned. The conspirators—old hands at the game—had learned that a shipment of silks of unusual richness had been made by a New York house to its jobbers in Saint Louis—had even received from some traitorous clerk the number of the car in which they were carried—had flagged the train, took conductor and brakemen prisoners, as they hurried forward to find out what the red light meant; had afterwards secured the engineer and fireman at the point of a revolver, extinguished the headlight, and looted the car at their leisure. Then, after carefully sealing it up again so that the robbery would not be discovered until the car arrived at its destination, they had convoyed the prisoners to the old stone house, and committed them to the care of the half-witted monster they had brought with them from the city slums, with instructions that they be released in forty-eight hours, in which time they fancied they would be able to get well beyond reach of pursuit. But they had not fully appreciated their confederate’s crazed condition; they had not foreseen in what a horrible way he would carry out their instructions—give them credit for that. Nor had they foreseen that, within a very few hours, one of the keenest detectives in the middle west would be after them. They had thought such search as would be made would be for the missing men, and had hoped that, in the disorganized condition of the road, no very effective search could be made at all. How Stanley followed them, like the bloodhound that he was, and finally ran them down need not be related in detail here. Stanley himself has told the story in the book of memoirs which he published after he had retired from active service. Once he had got his clue to them, the rest was a question of only a few hours; for a wagon heavily laden cannot proceed at any great rate of speed, nor can it pass along the roads unseen. He had sworn in two deputies at a farm house, and with their assistance, had no difficulty in surprising the robbers, as they jogged along a country road, thinking themselves quite secure. It was merely the matter of a levelled revolver and a stern command, and the application of certain lengths of rope to wrists and ankles. Then, turning the wagon about, he had driven in triumph back to Wadsworth, reaching there just at dawn. And the first news he had heard was of Allan’s disappearance. Puzzled and worried, he had seen his prisoners lodged safely in the county jail, and was just preparing to join the search himself, when news of the rescue flashed in from Schooley’s.