E-text prepared by Jeroen van Luin, Suzanne Shell,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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[Pg v]

PREFACE.

In the pages which follow I have narrated a story of actual occurrence.No touch of fiction obscures the truthful recital. The crime which ishere detailed was actually committed, and under the circumstances whichI have related. The four young men, whose real names are clothed withthe charitable mantle of fiction, deliberately perpetrated the deed forwhich they suffered and to-day are inmates of a prison. No tint orcoloring of the imagination has given a deeper touch to the action ofthe story, and the process of detection is detailed with all thefrankness and truthfulness of an active participant. As a revelation ofthe certain consequences which follow the perpetration of crime, I sendthis volume forth, in the fervent hope that those who may read its[Pg vi]pages, will glean from this history the lessons of virtue, of honor,and of the strictest integrity. If in the punishment of Eugene Pearson,Dr. Johnson, Newton Edwards and Thomas Duncan, the young men of to-day,tempted by folly or extravagance, will learn that their condemnation wasbut the natural and inevitable result of thoughtless crime, and if theirexperience shall be the means of deterring one young man from thecommission of a deed, which the repentance of years will not obliterate,I shall feel that I have not labored in vain. As a true story ofdetective experience, the actors in which are still living, I give thisvolume to the world, trusting that its perusal may not fail in itsobject of interesting and instructing the few or many who may read itspages.

ALLAN PINKERTON.

[Pg vii]

CONTENTS.