The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-12-06
col. [)S
THAT ACCUSING FINGER.
Why the Work of Detectives Is
Easier Than Supposed to BE.

EusIeF lnah supposed 10 Me-
From the Washington Star.
1T takes a case-hardened criminal
to be a stand-patter-to pass unscath-
ed, that is to say, through the ordeal
of the third degree" said a veteran
postofflce inspector. "Only about one
man in a hundred, new in the path
of dishonesty. is able to stand up
under the close questioning of men
whom he knows to be tracking him.
The other ninety-nine go to pieces when
any piece of apparent evidence against
them, manufactured or otherwise, is
suddenly flashed upon them, and fall
all over themselves in confessing
Il worked on two cases involving
such confessions last year. and in one
of these cases the guilty man, al
though we We're absolutely positive of
his guilt could never by any possibili-
ty have been convicted in court of
law had he possessed as much spine as
he did ingenuity.
He was railway postal clerk with
a long run on the other side of the
Mississippi river. One day he Saw a
chance to make a big haul, and, be-
ing poker player, and, consequently
in constant need of money, he prompt
ly accepted the chance.
was given two well-stuffed pouches
of registered mail. He hastily scrawl-
ed Il receipt, but the receipt didn't
read for two pouches of registered
mail, but for only one. The railway
postal clerk had observed how care
lessly the receivers of these receipts
accepted them, generally without any
scrutiny or a merely cursory scrutiny
at best, and so he merely receipted
for one pouch, and, to use the current
phrase he got away with it, The man
who took the receipt didn't look at
it, but tucked it away with his other
papers, and therefore the railway pos
tai clerk found himself in possession
of a nice, fat, tightly packed pouch
of registered mail for which he had
given no receipt whatever, and which
he could do just as he liked with.
HE had a lot of time before the
next stop, and the whole car to him
self, and SO he went through the bag
that looked the most promising, and
rifled it's contents at his leisure. it
was almost exclusively a cash pouch.
There was some jewelry, but this he
tossed away as being too liable to
get him into trouble. The cleanup
that he made was something handsome
only a few hundred dollars short of
$4,000.
He burned all of the envelopes and
other papers in the little stove at one
end of the car, and he tossed the pouch
and the plumber that he didn't elect to
hang on to into river which the train
crossed on a trestle, taking care to at
tach a weight to the pouch so that it
would be sure to sink. He attended
to the delivery of the other
pouch all right-the only pouch
for which he was RESPONSE
ble-and at the wind-up of his out trip
he found himself in possession of the
tidy sum of nearly $3.50 in currency.
Il went out on the case. The man
who had accepted the receipt for the
one pouch remembered perfectly well
that he had really delivered two
pouches to the car. and his statement
put it up to the railway clerk. al
though the latter had fine edge on
the situation, owing to the fact that
he had only receipted for the one
pouch. / knew that it would be per-
fectly useless to ask him whether he
had received one or two pouches, and
l did not present myself to him at
first at all. Instead, l plowed around
and located the girl with whom he was
on confidential terms. l had only been
on the case three days when l learned
that the girl-she lived in Cheyenne
had given a 500 bill to a Cheyenne
tTadesman in payment of a small bill.
When 1 found this out l got a United
States officer to accompany me, and
then found the railway clerk in his
room at hotel in the town at the end
of his run. When he had admitted us
1 went at him at once.
' I've got you dead to rights 1 told
him, and the best thing you can do to
save yourself a long sentence is to own
up instantly. Here l went on, sud-
denly hauling out my wallet and pro-
ducing a one hundred-dollar bill, is a
one-hundred dollar note that your girl
spent in Cheyenne day before yester-
day afternoon. The number of the note
has been identified by the sender of
it, and
It's all off, he interrupted me with
wan and gray face. You've got me
all right. I'll tell you where the money
is and he did. That same night the
money, all but about $500, was found
stuffed behind the taxpayer lining of
a chicken coop back of a deserted
house on the outskirts of Cheyenne.
The cave-in of that railway postal
clerk was wholly unnecessary. The
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES bill that l flashed
on him wasn't the one that had been