Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

the expressman and the detective From Allan Pinkerton

The Expressman and the Detective by Allan Pinkerton During the greater portion of a very busy life, I have been actively engaged in the profession of a Detective, and hence have been brought in contact with many men, and have been an interested participant in many exciting occurrences. The narration of some of the most interesting of these events, happening in connection with my professional labors, is the realization of a pleasure I have long anticipated, and is the fulfillment of promises repeatedly made to numerous friends in by gone days. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

In the build-up to the Civil War, Montgomery is a thriving town-a local capital grown rich on cotton and the railroad. When $10,000 disappears from the railroad, suspicion falls on a clerk named Maroney, an upstanding citizen whose only vice is a love of horseracing. The railroad hires the South's best detectives to tail Maroney, looking for a clue as to where the money has gone, but they find nothing. So they turn to the only man who can help: Allan Pinkerton.The head of the nation's first modern detective agency, Pinkerton invented undercover detective work, and he sends his finest agent, Mr. Porter, to infiltrate the high society of the old South. Whether Maroney is the culprit or merely a scapegoat, Porter will get to the truth. Allan Pinkerton never rests until justice is served.This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Allan J. Pinkerton (25 August 1819 - 1 July 1884) was a Scottish American detective and spy, best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.Allan Pinkerton was born in the Gorbals, Glasgow, Scotland, to William Pinkerton and his wife Isobel McQueen on August 25, 1819. The location of the house he was born in is now occupied by the Glasgow Central Mosque. He left school at the age of 10 after his father's death. Pinkerton read voraciously and was largely self-educated. A cooper by trade, Pinkerton was active in the British Chartist movement as a young man. He secretly married Joan Carfrae, a singer, in Glasgow on 13 March 1842. Pinkerton emigrated to the United States in 1842. In 1843 Pinkerton heard of Dundee Township, Illinois, fifty miles northwest of Chicago on the Fox River. He built a cabin and started a cooperage, sending for his wife in Chicago when their cabin was complete. As early as 1844, Pinkerton worked for the Chicago abolitionist leaders, and his Dundee home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Pinkerton first got interested in criminal detective work while wandering through the wooded groves around Dundee, looking for trees to make barrel staves, when he came across a band of counterfeiters who may have been affiliated with the notorious Banditti of the Prairie. After observing their movements for sometime, he informed the local sheriff who arrested them. This later led to Pinkerton being appointed, in 1849, as the first police detective in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. In 1850, he partnered with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in forming the North-Western Police Agency, which later became Pinkerton & Co, and finally Pinkerton National Detective Agency, still in existence today as Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, a subsidiary of Securitas AB. Pinkerton's business insignia was a wide open eye with the caption "We never sleep." As the US expanded in territory, rail transport increased. Pinkerton's agency solved a series of train robberies during the 1850s, first bringing Pinkerton into contact with George McClellan, then Chief Engineer and Vice President of the Illinois Central Railroad, and Abraham Lincoln, the company's lawyer.