On a hot, sultry weekday of summer, in the bank of the small agricultural town of Geneva, business has been bustling all afternoon. Just after the doors have been closed for the day, a knock is heard -- and inwards burst two men, who seize the clerks and bind them -- and then lock them into the safe!
Allan Pinkerton, well-known head of an American private detective agency of the 1800s, wrote several books about the life of the detective -- in some cases, as with The Burglar's Fate and the Detectives, in fictionalized form.
"If in the punishment of Eugene Pearson, Dr. Johnson, Newton Edwards and Thomas Duncan, the young men of to-day who are tempted by folly or extravagance 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." -- Allan Pinkerton