Three or four days after William's arrival in Union City, he was informed by the superintendent of the express company having charge of the operation, that there was a young man in Moscow who could give important information relative to the first robbery at that place. This young man, Thomas Carr by name, was a lawyer who had once had fine prospects, but he had become very dissipated, and he finally had been taken seriously ill, so that he had lost his practice. On recovering his health he had reformed his habits, but he had found great difficulty in winning back clients, and his income was hardly enough to support him. On learning that this impecunious lawyer had valuable information, William strongly suspected that it would amount to little more than a good lie, invented to obtain money from the express company; nevertheless, he sent for the young man and heard his story.
According to Carr, a man named John Witherspoon had visited him about six weeks before, and had asked him whether he would like to get a large sum of money. Carr replied affirmatively, of course, and wished to know how it could be obtained. Witherspoon had said that the express company could be robbed very easily by boarding a train at any water-tank, overpowering the messenger, and making him open the safe. Witherspoon also had said that he and several others had robbed a train at Moscow some weeks before, and that they had got only sixteen hundred dollars, but that they should do better next time. He had asked Carr to go to Cairo and find out when there would be a large shipment of money to the South; then Carr was to take the same train and give a signal to the rest of the party on arriving at the designated spot.
On hearing Carr's story, William sent him back to Moscow with instructions to renew his intimacy with Witherspoon, and to report any news he might learn at once; in case it should prove to be of any value, the company would pay him well for his services. It is hardly necessary to add that Mr. Carr, having failed to get, as he had hoped, a roving commission as detective at the company's expense, was not heard from again, his bonanza of news having run out very quickly on discovering that no money was to be paid in advance.