bout midnight on Tuesday, January 25, 1876, five masked men entered the house of John Whittelsey in Northampton, Massachusetts. Mr. Whittelsey was the cashier of the Northampton National Bank, and was known to have in his possession the keys of the bank building and the combination to the bank vault. The five men entered the house noiselessly, with the aid of false keys, previously prepared. Passing up-stairs to the sleeping-apartments, they overpowered seven inmates of the house, gagging and bi

t Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, are located the great shops of the Erie Railroad, where fifteen hundred men work throughout the year. These men receive their wages on a fixed day toward the end of each month, the pay-roll amounting to many thousands of dollars. It was customary, fourteen years ago, for the company to have a sum of money sufficient for this purpose shipped from New York by express a day or two before the date when the wages were to be paid. Following out this practice, on the night

here were thirteen men in the smoker of a train on the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad when it drew out of Omaha at six o'clock on Friday evening, November 4, 1892, and started on its eastward run. Among these thirteen, sitting about half-way down the aisle, enjoying a good cigar, was Mr. W. G. Pollock of New York, a traveling salesman for W. L. Pollock & Co., of the same city, dealers in diamonds. In the inside pocket of his vest he carried fifteen thousand dollars' worth of uncut diamo

he through express on the Rock Island road left Chicago at 10:45 P. M., on March 12, 1886, with twenty-two thousand dollars in fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills in the keeping of Kellogg Nichols, an old-time messenger of the United States Express Company. This sum had been sent by a Chicago bank to be delivered at the principal bank in Davenport, Iowa. In addition to the usual passenger-coaches, the train drew two express-cars: the first, for express only, just behind the engine; and, followin

So great was the public interest in the crime and the mystery surrounding it that three separate, well-organized investigations of it were undertaken. The Rock Island Railroad officials, with their detectives, conducted one; a Chicago newspaper, the "Daily News," with its detectives, another; and the Pinkertons, in the interest of the United States Express Company, a third. Mr. Pinkerton, as we have seen, concluded that the crime had been committed by railway men. The railway officials were natu

Some time before this the man who had ridden on the free pass, and given the detectives so much trouble, had been accidentally found by Jack Mullins, a brakeman on conductor Danforth's train. He proved to be an advertising solicitor, employed by no other than Mr. Melville E. Stone, who would have given a thousand dollars to know what his agent knew; for the advertising man had seen the conductor bring out the valise containing the all-important fragment of the draft. But he had not realized the

In addition to this, it was found, by the investigations of detectives at Philadelphia, that Schwartz was the son of a wealthy retired butcher there, a most respectable man, and that he had a wife and child in Philadelphia, whom he had entirely deserted. This gave an opportunity to take him into custody and still conceal from him that he was suspected of committing a higher crime. The Philadelphia wife and child were taken on to Chicago, and Schwartz was placed under arrest, charged with bigamy.

he first, and probably the most daring, band of train robbers that ever operated in the United States was the notorious Reno gang, an association of desperate outlaws who, in the years immediately following the war, committed crimes without number in Missouri and Indiana, and for some years terrorized several counties in the region about Seymour in the last-named State. The leaders of this band were four brothers, John Reno, Frank Reno, "Sim" Reno, and William Reno, who rivaled one another in a

ate in the afternoon of Friday, May 4, 1888, two messengers left the American Exchange National Bank, at the northeast corner of Cedar Street and Broadway, New York City, and started down the busy thoroughfare for the office of the Adams Express Company, a few blocks distant. They carried between them, each holding one of the handles, a valise made of canvas and leather, in which had just been placed, in the presence of the paying-teller, a package containing forty-one thousand dollars in greenb