True Detective Stories from the Archives of the Pinkertons — John Shaqi
True Detective Stories from the Archives of the PinkertonsMoffett, Cleveland
History
True Detective Stories from the Archives of the Pinkertons
Moffett, Cleveland
Crime -- United States; Criminals -- United States; Detective and mystery stories, American
After a brief delay the pouch was delivered to express messenger Van
Waganen, who saw it placed in one of the small iron safes used by
express companies in conveying money from city to city. The messenger
rode with the safe to the train, and then remained on guard in the
express-car, where the safe was placed, as far as Susquehanna, at
which point he delivered the pouch to Dwight Chamberlain, a
night-clerk and watchman in the joint employ of the Erie Railroad and
the United States Express Company. The train left New York at 6 P. M.,
and reached Susquehanna about midnight.
Watchman Chamberlain, having received the pouch at the station,
carried it into the ticket-office and locked it inside a safe
belonging to the Erie Railroad Company. He remained on duty the rest
of the night, and at seven o'clock the next morning a messenger from
the First National Bank of Susquehanna came to get the package.
Chamberlain unlocked the safe, took out the pouch, opened it, and
then emptied its contents on the table. To his great surprise the
package containing the forty thousand dollars was gone, and in its
place were several bundles of manila paper cut to the size of
bank-bills and done up in small packages as money is done up.
The agent of the company, Clark Evans, was immediately notified, and
he at once telegraphed the news of the robbery to the officials of the
United States Express Company in New York, who with very little delay
placed the matter in the hands of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The
direct supervision of the work was undertaken by the late George H.
Bangs, at that time general superintendent of the Pinkerton Agency,
and a force of detectives at once started for Susquehanna.
An important discovery was made on closer examination of the pouch. It
was found that this pouch was not the one that had been sealed up in
the express office at New York, but a bogus pouch, so much like the
other that the change might easily have escaped notice. The chief
points of difference were the tag and the seal, the former having been
addressed in a different hand from that of the New York money-clerk,
and the latter being an old seal not in use by the company at that
time. But the general appearance of the pouch was such that neither
the messenger, Van Waganen, nor the watchman, Chamberlain, could swear
that it was not the one that he had handled.
After going over the ground carefully and cross-examining Van Waganen
and Chamberlain, Superintendent Bangs concluded that the robbery had
not been committed on the train and that the genuine money package had
reached Susquehanna and been locked in the railroad company's safe by
the night-clerk. He was strengthened in this conclusion by the
statement of Chamberlain, who admitted that, after locking up the
money, he had only been in the ticket-office at intervals during the
night. For this he was in no way to blame, as he had other duties to
perform about the station, notably those of way-bill clerk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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