“You don’t catch me that way, I am not to be taken in by soft words, and all the traps you set for me won’t make me confess that I had anything to do with the robbery.  You’ve arrested me without cause, and if there is any law in the land I’ll make you suffer for it,” and Wittrock walked excitedly around the room.

Mr. Pinkerton did not reply to this, but touching a bell, told the man who opened the door to bring in the other prisoners.

Wittrock had resumed his seat, his head bowed forward and eyes cast down, but hearing the door opening, he glanced up and saw Weaver and Haight, followed by two detectives, ushered into his room.

Both of them looked discouraged and broken-spirited.  The heart had been taken from them by their arrest, and Wittrock’s boldness and defiant manner began to melt as he saw his faint-hearted accomplices.

“You here, too,” he exclaimed.

“Looks like it, don’t it,” said Haight, with a grim smile.

“You may as well own up, Fred,” said Weaver, “they have the drop on us.”

“Coward!” hissed Wittrock.  Then turning suddenly to Mr. Pinkerton, he said: 

“That cur is right, you have the drop on us.”

“Then you confess you committed the robbery?”

“Yes,” he answered, curtly.

“Was Fotheringham in the ring, too?”

“Fotheringham hadn’t a thing to do with it.”

“How came it, then, that we found some of the Adams express letter heads in his trunk, and which were not the ones printed for the company?”

“Did you do that?”

“Yes; ten or twenty sheets.”

“He never got them from us.  The first time I ever saw him was when I jumped on his car in St. Louis.”

Mr. Pinkerton looked at the frank, open face of the train robber, and wondered that such a man could have committed the crime for which he was now locked up in the “Pinkerton strong box.”  His manner and tone of sincerity, when he declared Fotheringham innocent of any complicity with him or his companions, carried conviction with it.  He believed himself that a blunder had been made, and Fotheringham was wrongfully accused.

“I said, a short time ago,” he continued, addressing Wittrock, “that you could lighten your sentence if you wanted to do so.”

“How?”

“Tell me where you have hid the money.”

Wittrock hesitated, and glanced at his companions.  Perhaps he saw in their faces, that if he didn’t tell, they would.  He was willing, however, to give them the same benefit accorded him, and pointing to Weaver, he said;

“Weaver knows where the money is planted in Chicago, and Cook has some hid around his shanty in Kansas City.  I put some under the large tree, just east of the gate of the old graveyard at Leavenworth.”

A sign from Mr. Pinkerton to one of the detectives, and taking Weaver with him, the man left the room.

Shortly after, Mr. Pinkerton, with the remaining detectives, also took his leave, and the two express robbers were alone.