When the robbery occurred I was working for the _Globe-Democrat_; later, when it was discovered by detectives working for the railroad and the express company who the star robber was, I was connected with the _Republic_. Early one afternoon I was shown a telegram from some backwoods town in Missouri—let us say Bald Knob, just for a name’s sake—that Lem Rollins (that name will do as well as any other), an ex-employee of the Missouri Pacific, had been arrested by detectives for the road and express company for the crime, and that upon searching his room they had found most of the stolen money. Also, because of other facts with which he had been confronted he had confessed that he and he alone had been guilty of the express robbery. The dispatch added that he had shown the detectives where the remainder of the money lay hidden, and that this very afternoon he would be en route to St. Louis, scheduled to arrive over the St. Louis & San Francisco, and that he would be confined in the county jail here. Imagine the excitement. The burglar had not told how he had accomplished this great feat, and here he was now en route to St. Louis, and might be met and interviewed on the train. From a news point of view the story was immense.
When I came in Wandell exclaimed: “I’ll tell you what you do, Dreiser—Lord! I thought you wouldn’t come back in time! Here’s a St. Louis & San Francisco time-table; according to it you can take a local that leaves here at two-fifteen and get as far as this place, Pacific, where the incoming express stops. It’s just possible that the _Globe_ and the other papers haven’t got hold of this yet—maybe they have, but whatever happens, we won’t get licked, and that’s the main thing.”
I hurried down to the Union Station, but when I asked for a ticket to Pacific, the ticket agent asked “Which road?”
“Sure, Missouri Pacific, and St. Louis & San Francisco.”
“They both go to the same place, do they?”
“St. Louis & San Francisco. It’s waiting now.”
I hurried to it, but the thought of this other road in from Pacific troubled me. Suppose the bandit should be on the other train instead of on this! I consulted with the conductor when he came for my ticket and was told that Pacific was the only place at which these two roads met, one going west and the other southwest from there. “Good,” I thought. “Then he is certain to be on this line.”