As he studied the case, Mr. Pinkerton recalled a circumstance that had happened in the fall of 1875. On the night of November 4, 1875, the First National Bank of Pittston, Pennsylvania, had been robbed of sixty thousand dollars, and Mr. Pinkerton had gone there to investigate the case. He met a number of safe-men, it being a business custom with safe-men to flock to the scene of an important bank robbery in order to supply new safes for the ones that have been wrecked. While they were all examining the vault, still littered with debris of the explosion, the representative of one of the safe-companies picked up a small air-pump used by the robbers, and, looking at it critically, remarked that he would have sworn it belonged to his company, did he not know that was impossible. The air-pump was, he declared, of precisely his company's model, one that had been recently devised for a special purpose. At the time Mr. Pinkerton regarded this as merely a coincidence, but now the memory came to him as a flash of inspiration that the man who had remarked the similarity in the air-pump represented the same company that employed Evans. In view of all the circumstances, it was decided to put Evans under the closest questioning. He did not deny that he had made unusual efforts to effect the return of the securities, but professed that it was because he was sincerely sorry for the many people who had been ruined through the robbery. And he professed to believe, also, that he had been unjustly treated in the affair, though just how, and by whom, he would not say. To the detective's trained observation it was apparent that he was worried and apprehensive and not at all sure of himself. In November, 1876, George H. Bangs, superintendent of the Pinkerton Agency, a man possessed of very remarkable skill in eliciting confessions from suspected persons, had an interview with Evans. He professed to Evans that the detectives had secured evidence that practically cleared up the whole mystery; that they _knew_ (whereas they still only surmised) that the robbery had been committed by the Dunlap and Scott gang, and that Evans was a confederate; that for weeks they had been shadowing Scott and Dunlap (which was true), and could arrest them at any moment; that there was no doubt that the gang had been trying to play Evans false (a very shrewd guess), and would sacrifice him without the slightest compunction; and, finally, that there was open to Evans one of two courses--either to suffer arrest on a charge of bank robbery, with the prospect of twenty years in prison, or save himself, and at the same time earn a substantial money reward, by making a clean confession of his connection with the crime. All this, delivered with an air of completest certainty, was more than Evans could stand up against. He broke down completely, and told all he knew.