transfixed amazement, had beheld
ordinary registered letters vanish before their eyes, without being able
to tell where they went, they longed for the nights to come when the
work was light. Quinsey was immense!

About this time, while in Chicago, Kidder came to me for conference with
an armful of documentary evidence of skillful depredations. Here were
the envelopes in which registered letters had from time to time been
mailed at offices in Southern Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and West
Virginia, addressed to offices in all portions of the great Northwest,
and which had been rifled of large portions of their contents. Everyone
of the letters had passed through the Chicago post-office, where they
had been handled during the night time. At first glance one would say it
surely indicated trouble in Chicago.

But why, if the thief was in Chicago, did he confine himself to
operations on the letters from this particular section, when he could
probably have access to those from any other as well. A few minutes
later when we discovered that everyone of the letters referred to had
also passed through the Cincinnati office, and in every instance had
been dispatched from that office in the morning in through pouches to
Chicago, Kidder adjusted his eye-glasses, and offered as a reward, for
the capture of the villain, a claim near that beautiful miniature
salt-water sea, known as Devil's Lake in Dakota.

On the following morning when I tapped Herrick on the shoulder in
Cincinnati, and asked who wrote the Chicago registry bills at night that
were dispatched in the morning, he answered, "Quinsey," and seemed so
amused at my question that he asked why I wanted to know.

"For the reason that I think whoever is doing it is too inquisitive."

"Well, if its Quinsey, I am afraid we'll have our hands full to catch
him, for he's just a little bit the slickest man in America. He does all
the seemingly impossible things ever heard of, and he does them right
before your eyes, too. Quinsey is absolutely marvelous. Why, one night I
was in the registry room looking around when, suddenly, I discovered my
watch was gone. I had looked to see what time it was when I entered.
Well, a little later somebody found it in the Boston pouch, with a tag
on it marked: 'Covington.'"

"Yes," said Salmon, who was listening, "and I understand he charms
birds, too; while somebody told me a few days ago that at cards he was
so expert that nobody would sit in with hi