Ten Years Among the Mail Bags Part 23

This fact was apparently accounted for by a postscript, written in a heavy, rude hand, entirely different from that of the body of the letter, and reading as follows:--

"P. S. I have taken the liberty to borrow this money, but I send the letter, so that you needn't blame the man what wrote it."

(Signed) "POST-BOY."

The rifled doc.u.ment was immediately shown to the post master, and in his opinion, as well as that of the clergyman, a daring robbery had been committed. The latter gentleman was advised by the post master to proceed at once to New York, and confer with the Special Agent, and at the same time to lay all the facts before the Post Master General.

He did so, and it was not long before the Agent had commenced the investigation of the supposed robbery.

In addition to the postscript appended, the letter bore other indications of having been tampered with, which at first sight would seem almost conclusive on this point. Upon the envelope were two wafers, differing in color, one partly overlapping the other, as if they had been put on by different persons at different times.

Notwithstanding these appearances, there were circ.u.mstances strongly conflicting with the supposition that the letter had been robbed. The postscript was an unnatural affair, for no one guilty of opening a letter for the purpose of appropriating its contents, would stop to write an explanatory postscript, especially as such a course would increase the chances of his own detection. And in the present instance, there had been no delay of the letter to allow of such an addition.

By a visit to the office where the letter was mailed, the Agent ascertained that it must have left immediately after having been deposited, and the advanced age and excellent character of the post master, who made up the mail on that occasion, entirely cut off suspicion in that quarter.

An interview was then held with the clergyman who witnessed the mailing of the letter, and from him were obtained the facts already stated. Concerning the writing of the doc.u.ment, and its deposit in the letter box in a perfect state, after the money had been enclosed, he was ready and willing to make oath, and had he been called upon he would have done so in all sincerity and honesty.

In reply to an inquiry whether he used more than one sort of letter paper, he informed me he had had but one kind in his study for several months, and at my request, immediately brought in several sheets of it. A comparison of this with the sheet upon which the _rifled_ epistle had been written, showed that the latter was a totally different article from the first. The shape and design of the stamp, the size of the sheet, and the shade of the paper, were all unlike.

Moreover, the wafers used at the bank, where the hundred-dollar note was obtained, and the letter containing it, sealed, were very dissimilar to either of those which appeared upon the "post-boy"

letter.

From the consideration of all these facts, I was satisfied that a gross and contemptible fraud had been perpetrated by the writer of the letter, and lost no time in proceeding to the village where that personage lived. I called upon the post master and made some inquiries relative to the character and pecuniary circ.u.mstances of the person in question. From the replies made, it appeared, as I have already stated, that his reputation in community was good.

I thought it might be possible that in so small a place, I could ascertain whether he had lately pa.s.sed a hundred-dollar note, as he would have been likely to have done, if it was true that he had not enclosed it in the New Haven letter.

Calling at the store which received most of his custom, I introduced myself to the proprietor, made a confidant of him to some extent, and learned that the very next day after that on which the aforesaid letter was mailed, its author offered him in payment for a barrel of flour, a hundred-dollar note on the bank from which a bill of the like denomination had been obtained, as before-mentioned, in exchange for the "small trash." The merchant could not then change it, but sent the flour, and changed a bill which he supposed to be the same, a few days afterward.

Armed with these irresistible facts, I proceeded to call on the adventurous deceiver of the clergy, who had attempted to make one member of that body second his intention to cheat another. "Insatiate archer! Could not one suffice?"

"Mr. T----," said I, after some preliminary conversation, "it's of no use to mince matters. The fact is, you did not send the money in that New Haven letter. You offered it the day after you pretended to mail it, at Mr. C.'s store. You see I've found out all about it, so I hope you will not deny the truth in the matter."

I then gave him his choice, to send the hundred dollars promptly to his New Haven correspondent, or allow me to prove in a public manner, the facts in my possession.

Being thus hard pressed, and finding himself cornered, he confessed that he had prepared the letter which was received in New Haven--postscript, double wafers and all--before he left home, and that while crossing the street from the bank to the post-office, he subst.i.tuted this for the one he wrote in the clergyman's study! He promised to send the money, and pretended to have suffered severely in his feelings, on account of this dishonest act.

There is no United States law providing for the punishment of such an offence, but public opinion and private conscience make nicer distinctions than the law can do, and often mete out a well deserved penalty to those who elude the less subtle ministers of justice.

In the present instance, the foregoing story was made public by direction of the Post Master General; and the author of the trick, unable to sustain the indignation and contempt of the community in which he lived, was compelled to make a hasty retreat from that part of the country.

CHAPTER XIII.

Young Offenders--Thirty Years ago--A large Haul--A Ray of Light.

The facts of the following case were furnished me by a gentleman connected with the New York post-office. I will introduce him as the relator of his own story, taking some liberty, however, with the phraseology.

It is one of the too numerous cla.s.s of cases, of which mere boys are the heroes, (if the term may thus be perverted,)--a cla.s.s that is represented in this work, which would otherwise be incomplete, professing, as it does, to ill.u.s.trate the various phases of post-office life, as respects persons of different ages and conditions. The present narration will show that our own times are not the only period fertile in juvenile rascality, but that the youth of thirty years ago were too frequently set upon evil.

At the time when the incidents occurred which I am about to narrate, (viz. in the year 1826,) it was the usual practice in the New York office to make up the morning's mails on the preceding evening, and to place them upon tables before they were entered on the "transcripts,"

(sheets or books in which copies of the post-bills are made,) and enclosed in wrappers. At this time a boy twelve or thirteen years of age was employed as a.s.sistant to one of the letter carriers, and generally arrived at the office at an earlier hour in the morning than the regular clerks. The nature of his duties made him well acquainted with the different species of letters, so that he could determine without much difficulty, from its general appearance, whether a letter contained hidden treasures or not.

So, by way of beguiling the time before the arrival of the clerks, or for the sake of a little improving practice, he one morning looked over the Eastern mail, which lay spread before him, and selected a letter addressed by the Cas.h.i.+er of the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank of New York, to the Cas.h.i.+er of one of the banks in Boston, containing four thousand dollars in bank-notes of one thousand dollars each.

On the discovery of this "pile," the boy lost no time in "removing the deposits" to his own pocket, subst.i.tuting for the bank-notes four pieces of paper of an equal size, cut from wrappers lying on the floor. He then resealed the letter and replaced it. The letter was forwarded by due course of mail, and when it was received at the bank, the Cas.h.i.+er discovered to his dismay that the money by some jugglery had been converted into brown paper; and the evident marks of breaking open and resealing, indicated unequivocally that some human agency had been engaged in working the spell.

Information of the loss was immediately conveyed to the New York office, much to the consternation and grief of all concerned, for this office had been considered a model one, and the clerks had taken pride in sustaining its character, to say nothing of their own; and now that suspicion was thrown among them by this daring act of dishonesty, which, from appearances, must have been committed by some one having access to the mails, they felt that all confidence in one another, as well as the confidence of community in them, would be greatly weakened, until the author of the deed should be discovered. It was suggested, indeed, that the robbery might have been committed in the Boston office, but circ.u.mstances rather favored the supposition that the guilt rested with New York.

The Post-Office Department at Was.h.i.+ngton was apprised of the facts in the case, and the attempts made to investigate the matter elicited a good deal of correspondence, which, however, produced no successful result.

Among other expedients, intimations were thrown out that a thorough search should be made of the residences and persons of the clerks, although it was not likely that the thief, whoever he might be, was so green as to keep the money for such a length of time, in any place where its discovery would be positive proof against him; and if the search were unavailing, the only result would be the infliction of mortification upon those who were innocent of the crime.

At this juncture, a ray of light appeared. It was then as well as now the practice of the a.s.sorting clerks to place the letters "mis-sent"

and "overcharged," in a box by themselves, and one morning a letter of this description was mis-sent to this office, directed to Jamaica, L.

I., which was accordingly placed in this box. On our return from breakfast this letter was found to be missing. As the boy before mentioned was the only occupant of the office during our absence, the disappearance of the letter naturally induced the belief that he had taken it. This second instance of delinquency a.s.sumed a double importance from the fact that the purloiner of this and the robber of the Boston letter, were in all probability one and the same person.

Every exertion was therefore made to bring the truth to light.

One of the clerks was dispatched to Jamaica to ascertain whether the letter might not have been somehow received at that office, but his proposed investigations were prevented by the unofficial behavior of his horse, which, unmindful of the important business in hand, ran away, upset the carriage, and spilt out its contents. The clerk was so much injured as to be unable to proceed, and therefore returned without the desired information.

On the next morning, while the "drop letters" were being a.s.sorted, this letter was found among them and was identified. It had been broken open, examined, resealed, but not robbed of a draft for a large amount which it contained. Near the seal were written with a pencil the words "Picked up in Vesey Street."

The hand-writing was believed to be that of the suspected boy, and he was immediately charged with taking and breaking open the letter, which accusation he stoutly denied, but when he was a.s.sured that we knew his hand, that the words which he had written on the letter showed conclusively that he knew something of its whereabouts during its absence, and that it was our determination to investigate the matter thoroughly, his courage gave way, and he confessed opening the letter, but said he did not meddle with the draft which it contained, as he could make no use of it.

Having thus applied an entering wedge, I lost no time in turning to account the information already obtained, which I hoped would lead to the detection of the person who robbed the Boston letter. Indeed, I was entirely unprepared to admit the existence of two such rascals in the New York office, as such repeated instances of delinquency would imply, and was quite positive that the boy before me was the only culprit. I accordingly said to him, "Now, Samuel, I am glad for your sake that you have confessed your guilt in relation to this letter, and I hope you will be equally frank if you have been doing anything else of a similar nature. I strongly suspect that you robbed the Boston letter that we had so much trouble about, and if you did, the best thing you can do will be to confess it."

"No, sir," replied he, "I don't know any more about this Boston letter than you do, and I haven't touched any letter but the Jamaica one."

"It is useless," said I, "for you to make such a.s.sertions, in the face of the probabilities in the case. You have confessed that you stole one letter, and that renders it the more likely that you have robbed the other."

"Perhaps it is likely," returned he, "but I didn't do it."

"Well," said I, "take your choice. If you persist in your denial, you must meet the consequences, and you know that this kind of offence is punished severely; but if you will own up, I will engage that you shall get off as easily as possible."

By such considerations I finally induced him to acknowledge his guilt in relation to the Boston letter, and on being questioned further, he stated that he still had the bills, and offered to show me the place where they were concealed. I at once started off, accompanied by him as my guide. We took a course which soon led us out of the city, and along the banks of the East River.

The day was rainy, and a mist overhung the river and the land. As we plodded along through the mud and wet, the face of my young companion was shaded with a sadness which indicated that the external world harmonized in its gloom with the little world within.

For myself, I must acknowledge that the prospect of reestablis.h.i.+ng lost confidence among my fellow-employes in the post-office, and of putting an end to the suspicion which had haunted almost every one, as well as restoring the stolen property to its rightful owner, produced in me an exhilaration of spirits strangely at variance with all that met my eye. But as we continued to go on and on, with no signs of approaching our place of destination, I began to query with myself, whether my companion might not contemplate giving me the slip, after leading me a wild-goose chase. I could not see, indeed, what motive he could have for such a proceeding, unless he wished to vent his malice on me as one who had been prominent in detecting his misdeeds.

But he kept on steadily, till, after going half a mile or so beyond the old Penitentiary, (a distance of about three miles from the post-office,) he turned from the road and stopped before an old wooden house, apparently uninhabited. The exterior showed signs of many years' conflict with the elements, in which it had been decidedly worsted. Moss had gathered upon the s.h.i.+ngles, and the paint, of which there was here and there a trace, strengthened by a feeble contrast the dark color of the parts from which it had been entirely washed away. Some of the windows were dest.i.tute of gla.s.s, and probably served as a mark for the "slings and arrows" of pa.s.sing boys.

We entered the building, whose damp and musty-smelling air chilled me, heated as I was with my long and fatiguing walk, and ascending a flight of stairs, the boy unlocked the door of a room into which I pa.s.sed by his request. The room contained no furniture but half a dozen chairs, a table, and an old bureau. This last he approached, unlocked, and taking out entirely one of the drawers, he showed another smaller one, which was behind the first when that was in place. Opening this, my eyes were refreshed with a sight of the four bills, of which I immediately took possession, and thinking it well to see what further discoveries I could make in this _terra incognita_, I found a little drawer, concealed like the first one behind another, and containing two or three hundred dollars in bills, which the precocious youth confessed to having purloined at different times from dead letters, which were usually _laid out_ upon tables while the clerks were making up the dead letter account. It would seem that the boy thought no more of robbing a dead letter, than do the camp-followers of plundering dead men after a battle.

After examining the bureau as thoroughly as I was able, and finding no more of the ill-gotten wealth, I asked my companion whether he had any more money that did not belong to him, to which inquiry he returned a negative answer.

The place of concealment was certainly well chosen, for the old house would be the last place to which any one would think of going, who was in search for anything valuable. It seemed to me that it was a particularly fortunate circ.u.mstance that the discovery was made at this time, for he informed me that he had been acc.u.mulating the money found in the bureau with the intention of intrusting it to his uncle, for the purpose of purchasing some property in Newburgh. This would have been a rather large operation for a youth of his age! an operation even worthy of some specimens of Young America at the present day.