Jules Ingram

—or—

A Race Down the St. Lawrence Rapids

A Thrilling Adventure

I was sitting in the office of my journal one evening, when Detective Ballagan came in. He had promised to notify me of the first good “case” of which he might have charge, and at present he was on the track of a notorious offender, by name Jules Ingram, a native of Martinique. This man had been chief clerk in the largest produce-house of the West India Islands, where he had swindled to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, and had escaped to New York. He brought with him blank bill-heads and drafts of every business firm in the tropics, and had deposited these at a hotel on the quay. After a year of prodigious success, he was caught in Missouri, and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. His discharge marks a singular adjustment of time to come. Within twelve hours after the forger recovered his documents, the place of deposit was in ashes. He renewed his guilty career immediately, obtained five thousand dollars within a week, and escaping to Canada, threatened to plunder every American banker from Portland to Galveston. He was an accomplished penman, scholar, and bookeeper, thoroughly conversant with business details, and had so mastered the secrets of the postal system, that he could operate by proxy, and ubiquitously. He was believed now to be dwelling on the frontier; and the bankers of all the Atlantic cities had subscribed funds for his apprehension and conviction at whatever cost. A woman to whom Ingram was much attached had been seen at Albany, going westward. It was probable that she and the forger were not far apart, and Ballagan wished me to proceed northward with him the same afternoon, that he might keep closely upon their trail.

We followed by rail the windings of the palisaded Hudson… Read More