The Burglar's Fate and the Detectives (True Crime Story). Allan Pinkerton

In the pages which follow I have narrated a story of actual occurrence. No touch of fiction obscures the truthful recital. The crime which is here detailed was actually committed, and under the circumstances which I have related. The four young men, whose real names are clothed with the charitable mantle of fiction, deliberately perpetrated the deed for which they suffered and to-day are inmates of a prison. No tint or coloring of the imagination has given a deeper touch to the action of the story, and the process of detection is detailed with all the frankness and truthfulness of an active participant. As a revelation of the certain consequences which follow the perpetration of crime, I send this volume forth, in the fervent hope that those who may read its pages, will glean from this history the lessons of virtue, of honor, and of the strictest integrity. If in the punishment of Eugene Pearson, Dr. Johnson, Newton Edwards and Thomas Duncan, the young men of to-day, tempted by folly or extravagance, will learn that their condemnation was but the natural and inevitable result of thoughtless crime, and if their experience shall be the means of deterring one young man from the commission of a deed, which the repentance of years will not obliterate, I shall feel that I have not labored in vain. As a true story of detective experience, the actors in which are still living, I give this volume to the world, trusting that its perusal may not fail in its object of interesting and instructing the few or many who may read its pages.

ALLAN PINKERTON.

CHAPTER I.

Table of Contents

Geneva—The Robbery—Search for the Burglars—My Agency Notified.

Geneva is one of the prettiest and most thriving little towns in the west. Situated, as it is, in the midst of one of the finest agricultural districts in the country, its growth has been rapid beyond expectation, while its social progress has been almost phenomenal. Stretching for miles in all directions, over a country beautifully interspersed with gentle elevations and depressions, lie the well-cultivated farms of the honest tillers of the soil. The farm-houses, which nestle down beneath the tall trees, present an appearance of comfort and beauty rarely witnessed, while the commodious and substantial out-buildings evince the thorough neatness of systematic husbandry. Standing upon a high knoll, and gazing over the scene upon a bright sunny morning, the eye lights upon a panorama of rustic splendor that delights the vision and entrances the senses. The vast fields, with their varied crops, give indications of a sure financial return which the gathered harvests unfailingly justify, and the rural population of Geneva are, in the main, a community of honest, independent people, who have cheerfully toiled for the honest competence they so fully enjoy.

Nor is the town dependent alone upon the farmer and the herdsman for its success in a financial sense. Nature has been bounteous in her gifts to this locality, and in addition to the fertile and fruitful soil, there is found imbedded under the surface, great mines of coal, of excellent quality, and seemingly inexhaustible in quantity. This enterprise alone affords employment to hundreds of men and boys, who, with their begrimed faces and brawny arms, toil day and night in the bowels of the earth for the "black diamonds," which impart warmth and light to countless happy homes, and materially add to the wealth of the miners.

Numerous manufacturing industries also find a home here. Large buildings, out of whose huge chimneys the black smoke is pouring forth in dense volumes, and whose busy wheels and roaring furnace fires, mingled with the sound of scores of ringing hammers, make

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