Almost before Neal was aware of it the train had slipped into the station, the brass bell on the boiler clanging, the driving wheels slurring to a halt. He waved to the engineer as the cab passed. Below the station at the Pearl Street crossing Mike Levangie, the lank-mustached, one-legged gate-tender, hobbled out of his shack and cranked down the double gate, then clumped over the tracks and lowered the single one. Several passengers got off, a man and a woman got on, the stationmaster came out to check a bundle of Boston newspapers. Neal and Stevens walked to the baggage car where the freight clerk was waiting for them. Neal did not know his name—he was a new fellow—but he was a Mason. “Cold morning,” he remarked as he shoved an iron box across the floor. It contained some thirty thousand dollars in bills and coin. After Neal had signed the receipt book the clerk handed him the box’s key in a sealed envelope. Neal and Stevens carried the box across the platform to the wagon and pushed it under the seat. Then Neal climbed up beside the driver. The driver flicked the reins and the horse started forward. Stevens, who had climbed over the tailboard, remained standing. Just as the wagon began to move, the locomotive backed up suddenly with a clank of couplings. Its piston rods reversed, a jet of steam shot from the cylinders, and the train started off in the direction of Weymouth, Hingham, and the South Shore. The shadow of the wagon moved diagonally across Railroad Avenue toward the Hampton House, a mansard-roofed structure, four stories high, that had been built in the seventies for a trunk factory. It now housed the Slater & Morrill offices as well as the cutting rooms of the upper factory—Slater & Morrill’s lower factory was some distance away on Pearl Street. On the ground floor of the Hampton House, to the left of the center entrance, was the express company’s office. The gilt sign over its door, unchanged from an earlier day, read _New York & Boston Despatch Express Co._