NUMBER OF MURDERS AND HOMICIDES IN THE UNITED STATES EACHYEAR SINCE 1891, COMPARED WITH THE POPULATIONNUMBER OF NUMBER OFMURDERS AND ESTIMATED MURDERS ANDYEAR HOMICIDES IN POPULATION HOMICIDESTHE UNITED OF THE FOR EACHSTATES UNITED STATES MILLION OFPEOPLE1881......1,266..........51,316,000..........24.71882......1.467..........—————..........27.91883......1,697..........—————..........31.61884......1,465..........—————..........26.71885......1,808..........56,148,000..........32.21886......1,499..........—————..........26.11887......2,335..........—————..........39.81888......2,184..........————-...........36.41889......3,567..........————-...........58.01890......4,290.........62,622,250...........68.51891......5,906..........————-...........92.41892......6,791..........————-..........104.21893......6,615..........————-..........99.51894......9,800..........————-.........144.71895.....10,500.........69,043,000.........152.21896.....10,652..........————-.........151.31897......9,520..........————-.........132.81898......7,840..........————-.........107.21899......6,225..........————-..........83.61900......8,275.........75,994,575.........108.71901......7,852.........77,754,000.........100.91902......8,834.........79,117,000.........111.71903......8,976..........————-.........112.01904......8,482..........————-...............1905......9,212..........————-...............1906......9,350.........————-................1907......8,712..........————-...............1908......8,952..........————-...............1909......8,103..........————-...............1910......8,975.........91,972,266...........97.5Total......191,150
We are blood-thirsty enough, God knows, without making things out any worse than they are. Our murder rate per 100,000 unquestionably exceeds that of most of the countries of western Europe, but, as the saying is, "there's a reason." If our homicide statistics related only to the white population of even the second generation born in this country we should find, I am convinced, that we are no more homicidal than France and Belgium, and less so than Italy. It is to be expected that with our Chinese, "greaser," and half-breed population in the West, our Black Belt in the South, and our Sicilian and South Italian immigration in the North and East, our murder rate should exceed those of the continental nations, which are nothing if not well policed.
But of one thing we can be abundantly certain without any figures at all, and that is that our present method of administering justice (less the actions of juries than of judges)—the system taken as a whole—offers no deterrent to the embryonic or professional criminal. The administration of justice to-day is not the swift judgment of honest men upon a criminal act, but a clever game between judge and lawyer, in which the action of the jury is discounted entirely and the moves are made with a view to checkmating justice, not in the trial courtroom, but before the appellate tribunal two or three years later.
"My young feller," said a grizzled veteran of the criminal bar to me long years ago, after our jury had gone out, "there's lots of things in this game you ain't got on to yet. Do you think I care what this jury does? Not one mite. I got a nice little error into the case the very first day—and I've set back ever since. S'pose we are convicted? I'll get Jim here [the prisoner] out on a certificate and it'll be two years before the Court of Appeals will get around to the case. Meantime Jim'll be out makin' money to pay me my fee—won't you, Jim? Then your witnesses, will be gone, and nobody'll remember what on earth it's all about. You'll be down in Wall Street practicing real law yourself, and the indictment will kick around the office for a year or so, all covered with dust, and then some day I'll get a friend of mine to come in quietly and move to dismiss. And it'll be dismissed. Don't you worry! Why, a thousand other murders will have been committed in this county by the time that happens. Bless your soul! You can't go on tryin' the same man forever! Give the other fellers a chance. You shake your head? Well, it's a fact. I've been doin' it for forty years. You'll see." And I did. That may not be why men kill, but perhaps indirectly it may have something to do with it.
A Detective, according to the dictionaries, is one "whose occupation it is to discover matters as to which information is desired, particularly wrong-doers, and to obtain evidence to be used against them." A private detective, by the same authority, is one "engaged unofficially in obtaining secret information for or guarding the private interests of those who employ him." The definition emphasizes the official character of detectives in general as contrasted with those whose services may be enlisted for hire by the individual citizen, but the distinction is of little importance, since it is based arbitrarily upon the character of the employer (whether the State or a private client) instead of upon the nature of the employment itself, which is the only thing which is likely to interest us about detectives at all.
The sanctified tradition that a detective was an agile person with a variety of side-whiskers no longer obtains even in light literature, and the most imaginative of us is frankly aware of the fact that a detective is just a common man earning (or pretending to earn) a common living by common and obvious means. Yet in spite of ourselves we are accustomed to attribute superhuman acuteness and a lightning-like rapidity of intellect to this vague and romantic class of fellow-citizens. The ordinary work of a detective, however, requires neither of these qualities. Honesty and obedience are his chief requirements, and if he have intelligence as well, so much the better, provided it be of the variety known as "horse" sense. A genuine candidate for the job of Sherlock Holmes would find little competition. In the first place, the usual work of a detective does not demand any extraordinary powers of deduction at all.
Leaving out of consideration those who are merely private policemen (often in uniform), and principally engaged in patrolling residential streets, preserving order at fairs, race-tracks, and political meetings, or in breaking strikes and preventing riots, the largest part of the work for which detectives are employed is not in the detection of crime and criminals, but in simply watching people, following them, and reporting as accurately as possible their movements. These functions are known in the vernacular as spotting, locating, and trailing. It requires patience, some powers of observation, and occasionally a little ingenuity. The real detective under such circumstances is the man to whom they hand in their reports. Yet much of the most dramatic and valuable work that is done involves no acuteness at all, but simply a willingness to act as a spy and to brave the dangers of being found out.
There is nothing more thrilling in the pages of modern history than the story of the man (James McPartland) who uncovered the conspiracies of the Molly McGuires. But the work of this man was that of a spy pure and simple.
Another highly specialized class of detectives is that engaged in police and banking work, who by experience (or even origin) have a wide and intimate acquaintance with criminals of various sorts, and by their familiarity with the latters' whereabouts, associates, work, and methods are able to recognize and run down the perpetrators of particular crimes.
Thus, for example, there are men in the detective bureau of New York City who know by name, and perhaps have a speaking acquaintance with, a large number of the pick-pockets and burglars of the East Side. They know their haunts and their ties of friendship or marriage. When any particular job is pulled off they have a pretty shrewd idea of who is responsible for it and lay their plans accordingly. If necessary, they run in the whole gang and put each of them through a course of interrogation, accusation, and browbeating until some one breaks down or makes a slip that involves him in a tangle. These men are special policemen whose knowledge makes them detectives by courtesy. But their work does not involve any particular superiority or quickness of intellect—the quality which we are wont to associate with the detection of crime.
Now, if the ordinary householder finds that his wife's necklace has mysteriously disappeared, his first impulse is to send for a detective of some sort or other. In general, he might just as well send for his mother-in-law. Of course, the police can and will watch the pawnshops for the missing baubles, but no crook who is not a fool is going to pawn a whole necklace on the Bowery the very next day after it has been "lifted." Or he can enlist a private detective who will question the servants and perhaps go through their trunks, if they will let him. Either sort will probably line up the inmates of the house for general scrutiny and try to bully them separately into a confession. This may save the master a disagreeable experience, but it is the simplest sort of police work and is done vicariously for the taxpayer, just as the public garbage man relieves you from the burden of taking out the ashes yourself, because he is paid for it, not on account of your own incapacity or his superiority.
The real detective is the one who, taking up the solution of a crime or other mystery, brings to bear upon it unusual powers of observation and deduction and an exceptional resourcefulness in acting upon his conclusions. Frankly, I have known very few such, although for some ten years I have made use of a large number of so-called detectives in both public and private matters. As I recall the long line of cases where these men have rendered service of great value, almost every one resolves itself into a successful piece of mere spying or trailing. Little ingenuity or powers of reason were required. Of course, there are a thousand tricks that an experienced man acquires as a matter of course, but which at first sight seem almost like inspiration. I shall not forget my delight when Jesse Blocher, who had been trailing Charles Foster Dodge through the South (when the latter was wanted as the chief witness against Abe Hummel on the charge of subornation of perjury of which he was finally convicted), told me how he instantly located his man, without disclosing his own identity, by unostentatiously leaving a note addressed to Dodge in a bright-red envelope upon the office counter of the Hotel St. Charles in New Orleans, where he knew his quarry to be staying. A few moments later the clerk saw it, picked it up, and, as a matter of course, thrust it promptly into box No. 420, thus involuntarily hanging, as it were, a red lantern on Dodge's door.
There is no more reason to look for superiority of intelligence or mental alertness among detectives of the ordinary class than there is to expect it from clerks, stationary engineers, plumbers, or firemen. While comparisons are invidious, I should be inclined to say that the ordinary chauffeur was probably a brighter man than the average detective. This is not to be taken in derogation of the latter, but as a compliment to the former. There are a great many detectives of ambiguous training. I remember in one case discovering that of the more important detectives employed by a well-known private Anti-Criminal Society in New York, one had been a street vender of frankfurters (otherwise yclept "hot dogs"), and another the keeper of a bird store, which last perhaps qualified him for the pursuit and capture of human game. There is a popular fiction that lawyers are shrewd and capable, similar to the prevailing one that detectives are astute and cunning. But, as the head of one of the biggest agencies in the country remarked to me the other day, when discussing the desirability of retaining local counsel in a distant city: "You know how hard it is to find a lawyer that isn't a dead one." I feel confident that he did not mean this in the sense that there was no good lawyer except a dead lawyer. What my detective friend probably had in mind was that it was difficult to find a lawyer who brought to bear on a new problem any originality of thought or action. It is even harder to find a detective who is not in this sense a dead one. I have the feeling, being a lawyer myself, that it is harder to find a live detective than a live lawyer. There are a few of both, however, if you know where to look for them. But it is easy to fall into the hands of the Philistines.
The fundamental reason why it is so hard to form any just opinion of detectives in general is that (except by their fruits) there is little opportunity to discriminate between the able and the incapable. Now, the more difficult and complicated his task the less likely is the sleuth (honest or otherwise) to succeed. The chances are a good deal more than even that he will never solve the mystery for which he is engaged. Thus at the end of three months you will have only his reports and his bill—which are poor comfort, to say the least. And yet he may have really worked eighteen hours a day in your service. But a dishonest detective has only to disappear (and take his ease for the same period) and send you his reports and his bill—and you will have only his word for how much work he has done and how much money he has spent. You are absolutely in his power—unless you hire another detective to watch HIM. Consequently there is no class in the world where the temptation to dishonesty is greater than among detectives. This, too, is, I fancy, the reason that the evidence of the police detective is received with so much suspicion by jurymen—they know that the only way for him to retain his position is by making a record and getting convictions, and hence they are always looking for jobs and frame-ups. If a police detective doesn't make arrests and send a man to jail every once in a while there is no conclusive way for his superiors to be sure he isn't loafing.
There are a very large number of persons who go into the detective business for the same reason that others enter the ministry—they can't make a living at anything else, Provided he has squint eyes and a dark complexion, almost anybody feels that he is qualified to unravel the tangled threads of crime. The first resource of the superannuated or discharged police detective is to start an agency. Of course, he may be first class in spite of these disqualifications, but the presumption in the first instance is that he is no longer alert or effective, and in the second that in one way or another he is not honest. Agencies recruited from deposed and other ex-policemen usually have all the faults of the police without any of their virtues. There are many small agencies which do reliable work, and there are a number of private detectives in all the big cities who work single-handed and achieve excellent results. However, if he expects to accomplish anything by hiring detectives, the layman or lawyer must first make sure of his agency or his man.
One other feature of the detective business should not be overlooked. In addition to charging for services not actually rendered and expenses not actually incurred, there is in many cases a strong temptation to betray the interests of the employer. A private detective may, and usually does, become possessed of information even more valuable to the person who is being watched than to the person to whom he owes his allegiance. Unreliable rascals constantly sell out to the other side and play both ends against the middle. In this they resemble some of the famous diplomatic agents of history. And police detectives employed to run down criminals and protect society have been known instead to act as stalls for bank burglars and (for a consideration) to assist them to dispose of their booty and protect them from arrest and capture. It has repeatedly happened that reliable private detectives have discovered that the police employed upon the same case have in reality been tipping off the criminals as to what was being done and coaching them as to their conduct. Of course the natural jealousy existing between official and unofficial agents of the law leads to many unfounded accusations of this character, but, on the other hand, the fact that much of the most effective police work is done by employing professional criminals to secure information and act as stool-pigeons often results in a definite understanding that the latter shall be themselves protected in the quiet enjoyment of their labors. The relations of the regular police to crime, however, and the general subject of police graft have little place in a chapter of this character.
The first question that usually arises is whether a detective shall or shall not be employed at all in any particular case. Usually the most important thing is to find out what the real character, past, and associations of some particular individual may be. Well-established detective agencies with offices throughout the country are naturally in a better position to acquire such information quickly than the private individual or lawyer, since they are on the spot and have an organized staff containing the right sort of men for the work. If the information lies in your own city you can probably hire some one to get it or ferret it out yourself quite as well, and much more cheaply, than by employing their services. The leads are few and generally simple. The subject's past employers and business associates, his landlords and landladies, his friends and enemies, and his milkman must be run down and interrogated. Perhaps his personal movements must be watched. Any intelligent fellow who is out of a job will do this for you for about $5 a day and expenses. The agencies usually charge from $6 to $8 (and up), and prefer two men to one, as a matter of convenience and to make sure that the subject is fully covered. If the suspect is on the move and trains or steamships must be met, you have practically no choice but to employ a national agency. It alone has the proper plant and equipment for the work. In an emergency, organization counts more than anything else. Where time is of the essence, the individual has no opportunity to hire his own men or start an organization of his own. But if the matter is one where there is plenty of leisure to act, you can usually do your own detective work better and cheaper than any one else.
Regarding the work of the detective as a spy (which probably constitutes seventy-five per cent of his employment to-day), few persons realize how widely such services are being utilized. The insignificant old Irishwoman who stumbles against you in the department store is possibly watching with her cloudy but eagle eye for shoplifters. The tired-looking man on the street-car may, in fact, be a professional "spotter." The stout youth with the pince nez who is examining the wedding presents is perhaps a central-office man. All this you know or may suspect. But you are not so likely to be aware that the floor-walker himself is the agent of a rival concern placed in the department store to keep track, not only of prices but of whether or not the wholesalers are living up to their agreements in regard to the furnishing of particular kinds of goods only to one house; or that the conductor on the car is a paid detective of the company, whose principal duty is not to collect fares, but to report the doings of the unions; or that the gentleman who is accidentally introduced to you at the wedding breakfast is employed by a board of directors to get a line on your host's business associates and social companions.
In the great struggle between capital and labor, each side has expended large sums of money in employing confederates to secure secret information as to the plans and doings of the enemy. Almost every labor union has its Judas, and less often a secretary to a capitalist is in the secret employment of a labor union. The railroads must be kept informed of what is going on, and, if necessary, they import a man from another part of the country to join the local organization. Often such men, on account of their force and intelligence, are elected to high office in the brotherhoods whose secrets they are hired to betray. Practically every big manufacturing plant in the United States has on its payrolls men acting as engineers, foremen, or laborers who are drawing from $80 to $100 per month as detectives either (1) to keep their employers informed as to the workings of the labor unions, (2) to report to the directors the actual conduct of the business by its salaried officers, superintendents, and overseers, or (3) to ascertain and report to outside competing concerns the methods and processes made use of, the materials utilized, and the exact cost of production.
There are detectives among the chambermaids and bellboys in the hotels, and also among the guests; there are detectives on the passenger lists and in the cardrooms of the Atlantic liners; the colored porter on the private car, the butler at your friend's house, the chorus girl on Broadway, the clerk in the law office, the employee in the commercial agency, may all be drawing pay in the interest of some one else, who may be either a transportation company, a stock-broker, a rival financier, a yellow newspaper, an injured or even an erring wife, a grievance committee, or a competing concern; and the duties of these persons may and will range from the theft of mailing lists, books, papers, and private letters, up to genuine detective work requiring some real ability.
Detective work of the sort which involves the betrayal of confidences and friendships naturally excites our aversion—yet in many cases the end undoubtedly justifies the means employed, and often there is no other way to avert disaster and prevent fiendish crimes. Sometimes, on the other hand, the information sought is purely for mercenary or even less worthy reasons, and those engaged in these undertakings range from rascals of the lowest type to men who are ready to risk death for the cause which they represent and who are really heroes of a high order. One of the latter with whom I happened to be thrown professionally was a young fellow of about twenty named Guthrie.
It was during a great strike, and outrages were being committed all over the city of New York by dynamiters supposed to be in the employ of the unions. Young Guthrie, who was a reckless daredevil, offered his services to the employers, and agreed to join one of the local unions and try to find out who were the men blowing up office buildings in process of construction and otherwise terrorizing the inhabitants of the city. Accordingly he applied for membership in the organization, and by giving evidence of his courage and fiber managed to secure a place as a volunteer in the dynamiting squad. So cleverly did he pass himself off as a bitter enemy of capital that he was entrusted with secrets of the utmost value and took part in making the plans and procuring the dynamite to execute them. The quality of his nerve (as well as his foolhardiness) is shown by the fact that he once carried a dress-suit case full of the explosive around the city, jumping on and off street cars, and dodging vehicles. When the proper moment came and the dynamite had been placed in an uncompleted building on Twenty-second Street, Guthrie gave the signal and the police arrested the dynamiters—all of them, including Guthrie, who was placed with the rest in a cell in the Tombs and continued to report to the district attorney all the information which he thus secured from his unsuspecting associates. Indeed, it was hard to convince the authorities that Guthrie was a spy and not a mere accomplice who had turned State's evidence, a distinction of far-reaching legal significance so far as his evidence was concerned.
The final episode in the drama was the unearthing by the police of Hoboken of the secret cache of the dynamiters, containing a large quantity of the explosive. Guthrie's instructions as to how they should find it read like a page from Poe's "Gold Bug." You had to go at night to a place where a lonely road crossed the Erie Railroad tracks in the Hackensack meadows, and mark the spot where the shadow of a telegraph pole (cast by an arc light) fell on a stone wall. This you must climb and walk so many paces north, turn and go so many feet west, and then north again. You then came to a white stone, from which you laid your course through more latitude and longitude until you were right over the spot. The police of Hoboken did as directed, and after tacking round and round the field, found the dynamite. Of course, the union said the whole thing was a plant, and that Guthrie had put the dynamite in the field himself at the instigation of his employers, but before the case came to trial both dynamiters pleaded guilty and went to Sing Sing. One of them turned out to be an ex-convict, a burglar. I often wonder where Guthrie is now. He certainly cared little for his life. Perhaps he is down in Venezuela or Mexico. He could never be aught than a soldier of fortune. But for a long time the employers thought that Guthrie was a detective sent by the unions to compromise THEM in the very dynamiting they were trying to stop!
I once had a particularly dangerous and unfortunate case where a private client was being blackmailed by a half-crazy ruffian who had never seen him, but had selected him arbitrarily as a person likely to give up money. The blackmailer was a German Socialist, who was out of employment—a man of desperate character. He had made up his mind that the world owed him a living, and he had decided that the easiest way to get it was to make some more prosperous person give him a thousand dollars under threat of being exposed as an enemy of society.
The charge was so absurd as to be almost ludicrous, but had my client caused the blackmailer's arrest the matter would have been the subject of endless newspaper notoriety and comment. It was therefore thought wise to make use of other means, and I procured the assistance of a young German-American of my acquaintance, who, in the guise of a vaudeville artist seeking a job, went to the blackmailer's boarding-house and pretended to be looking for an actor friend with a name not unlike that of the criminal.
After two or three visits he managed to scrape an acquaintance with the blackmailer and thereafter spent much time with him. Both were out of work, both were German, and both liked beer. My friend had just enough money to satisfy this latter craving. In a month or so they were intimate friends and used to go fishing together down the bay. At last, after many months, the criminal disclosed to the detective his plan of blackmailing my client, and suggested that as two heads were better than one they had better make it a joint venture. The detective pretended to balk at the idea at first, but was finally persuaded, and at the other's request undertook the delivery of the blackmailing letters to my client! Inside of three weeks he had in his possession enough evidence in the criminal's own handwriting to send him to a prison for the rest of his life. When at last the detective disclosed his identity the blackmailer at first refused to believe him, and then literally rolled on the floor in his agony and fear at discovering how he had been hoodwinked. The next day he disappeared and has not been heard of since, but his letters are in my vault, ready to be used if he again puts in an appearance.
The records of the police and of the private agencies contain many instances where murderers have confessed their guilt long after the crime to supposed friends, who were in reality decoys placed there for that very purpose. It is a peculiarity of criminals that they cannot keep their secrets locked in their own breasts. The impulse to confession is universal, particularly in women. Egotism has some part in this, but the chief element is the desire for companionship. Criminals have a horror of dying under an alias. The dignity of identity appeals even to the tramp. This impulse leads oftentimes to the most unnecessary and suicidal disclosures. The murderer who has planned and executed a diabolical homicide and who has retired to obscurity and safety will very likely in course of time make a clean breast of it to some one whom he believes to be his friend. He wants to "get it off his chest," to talk it over, to discuss its fine points, to boast of how clever he was, to ask for unnecessary advice about his conduct in the future, to have at least one other person in the world who has seen his soul's nakedness.
The interesting feature of such confessions from a legal point of view is that, no matter how circumstantial they may be, they are not usually of themselves sufficient under our law to warrant a conviction. The admission or confession of a defendant needs legal corroboration. This corroboration is often very difficult to find, and frequently cannot be secured at all. This provision of the statutes is doubtless a wise one to prevent hysterical, suicidal, egotistical, and semi-insane persons from meeting death in the electric chair or on the gallows, but it often results in the guilty going unpunished. Personally, I have never known a criminal to confess a crime of which he was innocent. The nearest thing to it in my experience is when one criminal, jointly guilty with another and sure of conviction, has drawn lots with his pal, lost, confessed, and in the confession exculpated his companion.
In the police organization of almost every large city there are a few men who are genuinely gifted for the work of detection. Such an one was Guiseppe Petrosino, a great detective, and an honest, unselfish, and heroic man, who united indefatigable patience and industry with reasoning powers of a high order. The most thrilling evening of my life was when I listened before a crackling fire in my library to Joe's story of the Van Cortlandt Park murder, the night before I was going to prosecute the case. Sitting stiffly in an arm-chair, his ugly moon-face expressionless save for an occasional flash from his black eyes, Petrosino recounted slowly and accurately how, by means of a single slip of paper bearing the penciled name "Sabbatto Gizzi, P.O. Box 239, Lambertville, N.J.," he had run down the unknown murderer of an unknown Italian stabbed to death in the park's shrubbery.
Petrosino's physical characteristics were so pronounced that he was probably as widely, if not more widely, known than any other Italian in New York. He was short and heavy, with enormous shoulders and a bull neck, on which was placed a great round head like a summer squash. His face was pock-marked, and he talked with a deliberation that was due to his desire for accuracy, but which at times might have been suspected to arise from some other cause. He rarely smiled and went methodically about his business, which was to drive the Italian criminals out of the city and country. Of course, being a marked man in more senses than one, it was practically impossible to disguise himself, and, accordingly, he had to rely upon his own investigations and detective powers, supplemented by the efforts of the trained men in the Italian branch, many of whom are detectives of a high order of ability. If the life of Petrosino were to be written, it would be a book unique in the history of criminology and crime, for this man was probably the only great detective of the world to find his career in a foreign country amid criminals of his own race.
I have instanced Petrosino as an example of a police detective of a very unusual type, but I have known several other men on the New York Police Force of real genius in their own particular lines of work. One of these is an Irishman who makes a specialty of get-rich-quick men, oil and mining stock operators, wire-tappers and their kin, and who knows the antecedents and history of most of them better than any other man in the country. He is ready to take the part of either a "sucker" or a fellow crook, as the exigencies of the case may demand.
There are detectives—real ones—on the police force of all the great cities of the world to-day, most of them specialists, a few of them geniuses capable of undertaking the ferreting out of any sort of mystery, but the last are rare. The police detective usually lacks the training, education, and social experience to make him effective in dealing with the class of elite criminals who make high society their field. Yet, of course, it is this class of crooks who most excite our interest and who fill the pages of popular detective fiction.
The headquarters man has no time nor inclination to follow the sporting duchess and the fictitious earl who accompanies her in their picturesque wanderings around the world. He is busy inside the confines of his own country. Parents or children may disappear, but the mere seeking of oblivion on their part is no crime and does not concern him except by special dispensation on the part of his superiors. Divorced couples may steal their own children back and forth, royalties may inadvertently involve themselves with undesirables, governmental information exude from State portals in a peculiar manner, business secrets pass into the hands of rivals, racehorses develop strange and untimely diseases, husbands take long and mysterious trips from home—a thousand exciting and worrying things may happen to the astonishment, distress, or intense interest of nations, governments, political parties, or private individuals, which from their very nature are outside the purview of the regular police. Here, then, is the field of the secret agent or private detective, and here, forsooth, is where the detective of genuine deductive powers and the polished address of the so-called "man of the world" is required.
There are two classes of cases where a private detective must needs be used, if indeed any professional assistance is to be called in: first, where the person whose identity is sought to be discovered or whose activities are sought to be terminated is not a criminal or has committed no crime, and second, where, though a crime has been committed, the injured parties cannot afford to undertake a public prosecution.
For example, if you are receiving anonymous letters, the writer of which accuses you of all sorts of unpleasant things, you would, of course, much prefer to find out who it is and stop him quietly than to turn over the correspondence to the police and let the writer's attorneys publicly cross-examine you at his trial as to your past career. Even if a diamond necklace is stolen from a family living on Fifth Avenue, there is more than an even chance that the owner will prefer to conceal her loss rather than to have her picture in the morning paper. Yet she will wish to find the necklace if she can.
When the matter has no criminal side at all, the police cannot be availed of, although we sometimes read that the officers of the local precinct have spent many hours in trying to locate Mrs. So-and-So's lost Pomeranian, or in performing other functions of an essentially private nature—most generously. But if, for example, your daughter is made the recipient, almost daily, of anonymous gifts of jewelry which arrive by mail, express, or messenger, and you are anxious to discover the identity of her admirer and return them, you will probably wish to engage outside assistance.
Where will you seek it? You can do one of two things: go to a big agency and secure the services of the right man, or engage such a man outside who may or may not be a professional detective. I have frequently utilized with success in peculiar and difficult cases the services of men whom I knew to be common-sense persons, with a natural taste for ferreting out mysteries, but who were not detectives at all. Your head bookkeeper may have real talents in this direction—if he is not above using them. Naturally, the first essential is brains—and if you can give the time to the matter, your own head will probably be the best one for your purposes. If, then, you are willing to undertake the job yourself, all you need is some person or persons to carry out your instructions, and such are by no means difficult to find. I have had many a case run down by my own office force—clerks, lawyers, and stenographers, all taking a turn at it. Why not? Is the professional sleuth working on a fixed salary for a regular agency and doing a dozen different jobs each month as likely to bring to bear upon your own private problem as much intelligence as you yourself?
There is no mystery about such work, except what the detective himself sees fit to enshroud it with. Most of us do detective work all the time without being conscious of it. Simply because the matter concerns the theft of a pearl, or the betraying of a business or professional secret, or the disappearance of a friend, the opinion of a stranger becomes no more valuable. And the chances are equal that the stranger will make a bungle of it.
Many of the best available detectives are men who work by themselves without any permanent staff, and who have their own regular clients, generally law firms and corporations. Almost any attorney knows several such, and the chief advantage of employing one of them lies in the fact that you can learn just what their abilities are by personal experience. They usually command a high rate of remuneration, but deductive ability and resourcefulness are so rare that they are at a premium and can only be secured by paying it. These men are able, if necessary, to assume the character of a doctor, traveller, man-about-town, or business agent without wearing in their lapels a sign that they are detectives, and they will reason ahead of the other fellow and can sometimes calculate pretty closely what he will do. Twenty-five dollars a day will generally hire the best of them, and they are well worth it.
The detective business swarms with men of doubtful honesty and morals, who are under a constant temptation to charge for services not rendered and expenses not incurred, who are accustomed to exaggeration if not to perjury, and who have neither the inclination nor the ability to do competent work.
Once they get their clutches on a wealthy client, they resemble the shyster lawyer in their efforts to bleed him by stimulating his fears of publicity and by holding out false hopes of success, and thus prolonging their period of service. An unscrupulous detective will, almost as a matter of course, work on two jobs at once and charge all his time to each client. He will constantly report progress when nothing has been accomplished, and his expenses will fill pages of his notebook. Meantime his daily reports will fall like a shower of autumn leaves. In no profession is it more essential to know the man who is working for you. If you need a detective, get the best you can find, put a limit on the expense, and give him your absolute confidence.
In the preceding chapter the writer discussed at some length the real, as distinguished from the fancied, attributes of detectives in general, and the weaknesses as well as the virtues of the so-called detective "agency." There are in the city of New York at the present time about one hundred and fifty licensed detectives. Under the detective license laws each of these has been required to file with the State comptroller written evidences of his competency, and integrity, approved by five reputable freeholders of his county, and to give bond in the sum of two thousand dollars. He also has to pay a license fee of one hundred dollars per annum, but this enables him to employ as many "operators" as he chooses. In other words, the head of the agency may be of good character and his agents wholly undesirable citizens. How often this is the case is known to none better than the heads themselves. The strength and efficiency of a detective agency does not lie in the name at the top of its letter-paper, but in the unknown personnel of the men who are doing or shirking the work. I believe that most of the principals of the many agencies throughout the United States are animated by a serious desire to give their clients a full return for their money and loyal and honest service. But the best intentions in the world cannot make up for the lack of untiring vigilance in supervising the men who are being employed in the client's service.
It is the right here that the "national" has an immense advantage over the small agency which cannot afford to keep a large staff of men constantly on hand, but is forced to engage them temporarily as they may be needed. The "national" agency can shift its employees from place to place as their services are required, and the advantages of centralization are felt as much in this sort of work as in any other industry. The licensed detective who sends out a hurry call for assistants is apt to be able to get only men whom he would otherwise not employ. In this chapter, the word "national," as applied to a detective agency, refers not to the title under which such an agency may do its business, but to the fact that it is organized and equipped to render services all over the country.
In this connection it is worth noticing that the best detective agencies train their own operators, selecting them from picked material. The candidate must as rule be between twenty and thirty-five years of age, sound of body, and reasonably intelligent. He gets pretty good wages from the start. From the comparatively easy work of watching or "locating," he is advanced through the more difficult varieties of "shadowing" and "trailing," until eventually he may develop into a first-class man who will be set to unravel a murder mystery or to "rope" a professional criminal. But with years of training the best material makes few real detectives, and the real detective remains in fact the man who sits at the mahogany desk in the central office and presses the row of mother of pearl buttons in front of him.
If you know the heads or superintendents of the large agencies you will find that the "star" cases, of which they like to talk, are, for the most part, the pursuit and capture of forgers and murderers. The former, as a rule, are "spotted" and "trailed" to their haunts, and when sufficient evidence has been obtained the police are notified, and a raid takes place, or the arrest is made, by the State authorities. In the case of a murderer, in a majority of cases, his capture is the result of skilful "roping" by an astute detective who manages to get into his confidence. For example, a murder is committed by an Italian miner. Let us suppose he has killed his "boss," or even the superintendent or owner. He disappears. As the reader known, the Italians are so secretive that it is next to impossible to secure any information—even from the relatives of the murdered man.
The first thing is to locate the assassin. An Italian detective is sent into the mine as a laborer. Months may elapse before he gets on familiar or intimate terms with his fellows. All the time he is listening and watching. Presently he hears something that indicates that the murderer is communicating with one of his old friends either directly or through third parties. It is then generally only a question of time before his whereabouts are ascertained. Once he is "located" the same method is followed in securing additional evidence or material in the nature of a confession or admission tending to establish guilt. Having previously "roped" the murderer's friends, the detective now proceeds to the more difficult task of "roping" the murderer himself. Of course, the life of a detective in a Pennsylvania coal mine would be valueless if his identity were discovered, and yet the most daring pieces of detective work are constantly being performed under these and similar conditions. Where the criminal is not known, the task becomes far more difficult and at times exceedingly dangerous.
One of my own friends, an Italian gentleman, spent several months in the different mines of this country, where Italians are largely employed, investigating conditions and ascertaining for the benefit of his government the extent to which anarchy was prevalent. It was necessary for him to secure work as a miner at the lowest wages and to disguise himself in such a way that it would be impossible for anybody to detect his true character. Fortunately, the great diversity of Italian dialects facilitated his efforts and enabled him to pass himself off as from another part of the country than his comrades. Having made his preparations he came to New York as an immigrant and joined a party of newly arrived Italians on their way to the coal mines of West Virginia. Without following him further, it is enough to say that during his service in the mines he overheard much that was calculated to interest exceedingly the authorities at Rome. Had his disguise been penetrated the quick thrust of a five-inch blade would have ended his career. He would never have returned to New York. There would only have been another dead "Dago" miner. The local coroner would have driven up in his buggy, looked at the body, examined the clean, deep wound in the abdomen, shrugged his shoulders, and empanelled a hetrogeneous jury who would have returned a verdict to the effect that "deceased came to his death through a stab wound inflicted by some person to the jury unknown." My friend was not a professional detective, but the recital of his experiences was enough to fill me with new respect for those engaged in the "man hunt" business among the half civilized miners of the coal regions.
But the work of even the "national" agencies is not of the kind which the novel-reading public generally associates with detectives—that is to say, it rarely deals with the unravelling of "mysteries," except the identity of passers of fraudulent paper and occasional murderers. The protection of the banks is naturally the most important work that such an agency can perform.
The National Bankers' Association has eleven thousand members. "Pinkerton's Bank and Bankers' Protection" also has a large organization of subscribers. These devote themselves to identifying and running down all criminals whose activities are dangerous to them. Here the agency and the police work hand in hand, exchanging photographs of crooks and suspects and keeping closely informed as to each other's doings. Yet there is no official connection between any detective agency and the police of any city. It is an almost universal rule that a private detective shall not make an arrest. The reasons for this are manifold. In the first place, the private detective has neither the general authority nor the facilities for the manual detention of a criminal. A blue coat and brass buttons, to say nothing of a night stick, are often invaluable stage properties in the last act of the melodrama. And as the criminal authorities are eventually to deal with the defendant anyway, it is just as well if they come into the case as soon as may be. It goes without saying, of course, that a detective per se has no more right to make an arrest than any private citizen—nor has a policeman, for that matter, save in exceptional cases. The officer is valuable for his dignity, avoirdupois, "bracelets," and other accessories. The police thus get the credit of many arrests in difficult cases where all the work has been done by private detectives, and it is good business for the latter to let them know it.
One of the chief assets of the big agency is its accumulated information concerning all sorts of professional criminals. Its galleries are quite as complete as those of the local police headquarters, for a constant exchange of art objects is going on with the police throughout the world. And as the agency is protecting banks all over the United States it has greater interest in all bank burglars as a class than the police of any particular city who are only concerned with the burglars who (as one might say) burgle in their particular burg. Thus, you are more likely to find a detective from a national agency than a sleuth from 300 Mulberry Street, New York, following a forger to Australasia or Polynesia.
The best agencies absolutely decline to touch divorce and matrimonial cases of any sort. It does not do a detective agency any good to have its men constantly upon the witness stand subject to attack, with a consequent possible reflection upon their probity of character or truthfulness. Moreover, a good detective is too valuable a person to be wasting his time in the court-room. In the ordinary divorce case the detective, having procured evidence, is obliged to remain on tap and subject to call as a witness for at least three or four months, during which time he cannot be sent away on distant work. Neither can the customer be charged ordinarily for waiting time, and apart from its malodorous character the business is not desirable from a financial point of view.
The national agencies prefer clean criminal work, murder cases, and general investigating. They no longer undertake any policing, strike-breaking, or guarding. The most ridiculous misinformation in regard to their participation in this sort of work has been spread broadcast largely by jealous enemies and by the labor unions.
By way of illustration, one Thomas Beet, describing himself as an English detective, contributed an article to the 'New York Tribune' of September 16, 1906, in which he said:
"In one of the greatest of our strikes, that involving the steel industry, over two thousand armed detectives were employed supposedly to protect property, while several hundred men were scattered in the ranks of strikers as workmen. Many of the latter became officers in the labor bodies, helped to make laws for the organizations, made incendiary speeches, cast their votes for the most radical movements made by the strikers, participated in and led bodies of the members in the acts of lawlessness that eventually caused the sending of State troops and the declaration of martial law. While doing this, these spies within the ranks were making daily reports of the plans and purposes of the strikers. To my knowledge, when lawlessness was at its height and murder ran riot, these men wore little patches of white on the lapels of their coats so that their fellow detectives of the two thousand would not shoot them down by mistake."
He, of course, referred to the great strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892. In point of fact, there were only six private detectives engaged on the side of the employers at that time, and these were there to assist the local authorities in taking charge of six hundred and fifty watchmen, and to help place the latter upon the property of the steel company. These watchmen were under the direction of the sheriff and sworn in as peace officers of the county. Mr. Beet seems to have confused his history and mixed up the white handkerchief of the Huguenots of Nantes with the strike-breakers of Pennsylvania. It is needless to repeat (as Mr. Robert A. Pinkerton stated at the time), that the white label story is ridiculously' untrue, and that it was the strikers who attacked the watchmen, and not the watchmen the strikers. One striker and one watchman were killed.
But this attack of Mr. Beet upon his own profession, under the guise of being an English detective (it developed that he was an ex-divorce detective from New York City), was not confined to his remarks about inciting wanton murder. On the contrary, he alleged (as one having authority and not merely as a scribe) that American detective agencies were practically nothing but blackmailing concerns, which used the information secured in a professional capacity to extort money from their own clients.
"Think of the so-called detective," says Mr. Beet, "whose agency pays him two dollars or two dollars and fifty cents a day, being engaged upon confidential work and in the possession of secrets that he knows are worth money! Is it any wonder that so many cases are sold out by employees, even when the agencies are honest?"
We are constrained to answer that it is no more wonderful than that any person earning the same sum should remain honest when he might so easily turn thief. As the writer has himself pointed out in these pages, there are hundreds of so-called detective agencies which are but traps for the guileless citizen who calls upon them for aid. But there are many which are as honestly conducted as any other variety of legitimate business. I do not know Mr. Beet's personal experience, but it appears to have been unfortunate. At any rate, his diatribe is unfounded and false, and the worst feature of it is his assertion that detective agencies make a business of manufacturing cases when there happen to be none on hand.
"Soon," says he, "there were not enough cases to go around, and then with the aid of spies and informers the unscrupulous detectives began to make cases. Agencies began to work up evidence against persons and then resorted to blackmail, or else approached those to whom the information might be valuable, and by careful manoeuvring had themselves retained to unravel the case. This brought into existence hordes of professional informers who secured the opening wedges for the fake agencies. Men and women, many of them of some social standing, made it a practice to pry around for secrets which might be valuable able; spies kept up their work in large business establishments and began to haunt the cafes and resorts of doubtful reputation, on the watch for persons of wealth and prominence who might be foolish enough to place themselves in compromising circumstances. Even the servants in wealthy families soon learned that certain secrets of the master and mistress could be turned to profitable account. We shudder when we hear of the system of espionage maintained in Russia, while in the large American cities, unnoticed, are organizations of spies and informers on every hand who spend their lives digging pitfalls for the unwary who can afford to pay."
One would think that we were living in the days of the Borgias! "Ninety per cent," says Mr. Beet, "of private detective agencies are rotten to the core and simply exist and thrive upon a foundation of dishonesty, deceit, conspiracy, and treachery to the public in general and their own patrons in particular. There are detectives at the heads of prominent agencies in this country whose pictures adorn the Rogues' Gallery; men who have served time in various prisons for almost every crime on the calendar."
This harrowing picture has the modicum of truth that makes it insidiously dangerous. But this last extravagance betrays the denunciator. One would be interested to have this past-master of overstatement mention the names of these distinguished crooks that head the prominent agencies. Their exposure, if true, would not be libellous, and it would seem that he had performed but half his duty to the public in refraining from giving this important, if not vital, information.
I know several of these gentlemen whose pictures I feel confident do not appear in the Rogues' Gallery, and who have not been, as yet, convicted of crime. A client is as safe in the hands of a good detective agency as he is in the hands of a good attorney; he should know his agency, that is all—just as he should know his lawyer. The men at the head of the big agencies generally take the same pride in their work as the members of any other profession. They know that a first-class reputation for honesty is essential to their financial success and that good will is their stock in trade. Take this away and they would have nothing.
In 1878 the founder of one of the most famous of our national agencies promulgated in printed form for the benefit of his employees what he called his general principles. One of these was the following:
"This agency only offers its services at a stated per diem for each detective employed on an operation, giving no guarantee of success, except in the reputation for reliability and efficiency; and any person in its service who shall, under any circumstances, permit himself or herself to receive a gift, reward, or bribe shall be instantly dismissed from the service."
Another:
"The profession of the detective is a high and honorable calling. Few professions excel it. He is an officer of justice, and must himself be pure and above reproach."
Again:
"It is an evidence of the unfitness of the detective for his profession when he is compelled to resort to the use of intoxicating liquors; and, indeed, the strongest kind of evidence, if he continually resorts to this evil practice. The detective must not do anything to farther sink the criminal in vice or debauchery, but, on the contrary, must seek to win his confidence by endeavoring to elevate him, etc."
"Kindness and justice should go hand in hand, whenever it is possible, in the dealings of the detective with the criminal. There is no human being so degraded but there is some little bright spark of conscience and of right still existing in him."
Last:
"The detective must, in every instance, report everything which is favorable to the suspected party, as well as everything which may be against him."
The man who penned these principles had had the safety of Abraham Lincoln in his keeping; and these simple statements are the best refutation of the baseless assertions above referred to.
It may be that in those days the detection of crime was a bit more elementary than at the present time. One can hardly picture a modern sleuth delaying long in an attempt to evangelize his quarry, but these general principles are the right stuff and shine like good deeds in a naughty world.
As one peruses this little pink pamphlet he is constantly struck by the repeated references to the detective as an actor. That was undoubtedly the ancient concept of a sleuth. "He must possess, also, the player's faculty of assuming any character that his case may require, and of acting it out to the life with an ease and naturalness which shall not be questioned." This somewhat large order is, to our relief, qualified a little later on. "It is not to be expected, however," the author admits, "that every detective shall possess these rare qualifications, although the more talented and versatile he is, the higher will be the sphere of operation which he will command."
The modern detective agency is conducted on business principles and does not look for histrionic talent or general versatility. As one of the heads of a prominent agency said to me the other day:
"When we want a detective to take the part of a plumber we get a plumber, and when we need one to act as a boiler-maker we go out and get a real one—if we haven't one on our pay rolls."
"But," I replied, "when you need a man to go into a private family and pretend to be an English clergyman, or a French viscount, or a brilliant man of the world—who do you send?"
The "head" smiled.
"The case hasn't arisen yet," said he. "When it does I guess we'll get the real thing."
The national detective agency, with its thousands of employees who have, most of them, grown up and received their training in its service, is a powerful organization, highly centralized, and having an immense sinking fund of special knowledge and past experience. This is the product of decades of patient labor and minute record. The agency which offers you the services of a Sherlock Holmes is a fraud, but you can accept as genuine a proposition to run down any man whose picture you may be able to identify in the gallery. The day of the impersonator is over. The detective of this generation is a hard-headed business man with a stout pair of legs.
This accumulated fund of information is the heritage of an honest and long established industry. It is seventy-five per cent of its capital. It is entirely beyond the reach of the mushroom agency, which in consequence has to accept less desirable retainers involving no such requirements, or go to the wall. The collection of photographs is almost priceless and the clippings, letters, and memoranda in the filing cases only secondarily so. Very few of the "operators" pretend to anything but common-sense, with perhaps some special knowledge of the men they are after. They are not clairvoyants or mystery men, but they will tirelessly follow a crook until they get him. They are the regular troops who take their orders without question. The real "detective" is the "boss" who directs them.
The reader can easily see that in all cases where a crime, such as forgery, is concerned, once the identity of the criminal is ascertained, half the work (or more than half) is done. The agencies know the face and record of practically every man who ever flew a bit of bad paper in the United States, in England, or on the Continent. If an old hand gets out of prison his movements are watched until it is obvious that he does not intend to resort to his old tricks. After the criminal is known or "located," the "trailing" begins and his "connections" are carefully studied. This may or may not require what might be called real detective work; that is to say, work requiring superior power of deducing conclusions from first-hand information, coupled with unusual skill in acting upon them. Mere trailing is often simple, yet sometimes very difficult. A great deal depends on the operator's own peculiar information as to his man's habits, haunts, and associates. It is very hard to say in most cases just where mere knowledge ends and detective work proper begins. As for disguises, they are almost unknown, except such as are necessary to enable an operator to join a gang where his quarry may be working and "rope" him into a confession.
Detective agencies of the first-class are engaged principally in clean-cut criminal work, such as guarding banks from forgers and "yeggmen"—an original and dangerous variety of burglar peculiar to the United States and Canada. In other words, they have large associations of clients who need more protection than the regular police can give them, and whose interest it is that the criminal shall not only be driven out of town, but run down (wherever he may be), captured, and put out of the way for as long a time as possible.
The work done for private individuals is no less important and effective, but it is secondary to the other. The great value of the "agency" to the victim of a theft is the speed with which it can disseminate its information—something quite impossible so far as the individual citizen is concerned. Let me give an illustration or two.
Between 10.30 P.M. Saturday, February 25, 1911, and 9.30 A.M. Sunday, February 26, 1911, one hundred and thirty thousand dollars worth of pearls belonging to Mrs. Maldwin Drummond were stolen from a stateroom on the steamship 'Amerika' of the Hamburg-American line. The London underwriters cabled five thousand dollars reward and retained to investigate the case a well-known American agency, which before the 'Amerika' had reached Plymouth on her return trip had their notifications in the hands of all the jewelers and police officials of Europe and the United States, and had covered every avenue of disposal in North and South America. In addition, this agency investigated every human being on the Amerika from first cabin to forecastle.
Within a year or so an aged stock-broker, named Bancroft, was robbed on the street of one hundred thousand dollars in securities. Inside of fifty-five minutes after he had reported his loss a detective agency had notified all banks, brokers, and the police in fifty-six cities of the United States and Canada.
In the story books your detective scans with eagle eye the surface of the floor for microscopic evidences of crime. His mind leaps from a cigar ash to a piece of banana peel and thence to what the family had for dinner. His brain is working all the time. It is, of course, all quite wonderful and most excellent reading, and the old-style sleuth really thought he could do it! Nowadays, while the fake detective is snooping around the back piazza with a telescope, the real one is getting the "dope" from the village blacksmith or barber or the waitress at the station. He may not be highly intelligent, but he knows the country, and, what is more important, he knows the people. All the brains in the world cannot make up for the lack of an elementary knowledge of the place and the characters themselves. It stands to reason that no strange detective could form as good an opinion as to which of the members of your household would be most likely to steal a piece of jewelry as you could yourself. Yet the old-fashioned Sherlock knew and knows it all.
One of the best illustrations of the practical necessity of some first-hand knowledge is that afforded by the recovery of a diamond necklace belonging to the wife of a gentleman in a Connecticut town. The facts that are given here are absolutely accurate. The gentleman in question was a retired business man of some means who lived not far from the town and who made frequent visits to New York City. He had made his wife a present of a fifteen thousand-dollar diamond necklace, which she kept in a box in a locked trunk in her bedroom. While she had owned the necklace for over a year she had never worn it. One evening having guests for dinner on the occasion of her wedding anniversary she decided to put it on and wear it for the first time. That night she replaced it in its box and enclosed this in another box, which she locked and placed in her bureau drawer. This she also locked. The following night she decided to replace the necklace in the trunk. She accordingly unlocked the bureau drawer, and also the larger box, which apparently was in exactly the same condition as when she had put it away. But the inner box was empty and the necklace had absolutely disappeared. Now, no one had seen the necklace for a year, and then only her husband, their servants, and two or three old friends. No outsider could have known of its existence. There was no evidence of the house or bureau having been disturbed.
A New York detective agency was at once retained, which sent one of its best men to the scene of the crime. He examined the servants, heard the story, and reported that it must have been an inside job—that there was no possibility of anything else. But there was nothing to implicate any one of the servants, and there seemed no hope of getting the necklace back. Two or three days later the husband turned up at the agency's office in New York, and after beating about the bush for a while, remarked:
"I want to tell you something. You have got this job wrong. There's one fact your man didn't understand. The truth is that I'm a pretty easy going sort, and every six months or so I take all the men and girls employed around my house down to Coney Island and give 'em a rip-roaring time. I make 'em my friends, and I dance with the girls and I jolly up the men, and we are all good pals together. Sort of unconventional, maybe, but it pays. I know—see?—that there isn't a single one of those people who would do me a mean trick. Not one of 'em but would lend me all the money he had. I don't care what your operator says, the person who took that necklace came from outside. You take that from me. The superintendent, who is wise in his generation, scratched his chin.
"Is that dead on the level?" he inquired.
"Gospel!" answered the other.
"I'll come up myself!" said the boss.
Next day the boss behind a broken-winded horse, in a dilapidated buggy, drove from another town to the place where his client lived. At the smithy on the crossroads he stopped and borrowed a match.
"Anybody have good hosses in this town?" asked the detective.
"Sure!" answered the smith. "Mr. ——— up on the hill has the best in the county!"
"What sort of a feller is he?"
The smith chewed in silence for a moment.
"Don't know him myself, but I tell you what, his help says he's the best employer they ever had—and they stay there forever!"
The boss drove on to the house, which he observed was situated at about an equal distance from three different railway stations and surrounded by a piazza with pillars. He walked around it, examining the vines until his eye caught a torn creeper and a white scratch on the paint. It had been an outside job after all, and two weeks had already been lost. Deduction was responsible for a mistake which would not have occurred had a little knowledge been acquired first. That is the lesson of this story.
The denouement, which has no lesson at all, is interesting. The superintendent saw no prospect of getting back the necklace, but before so informing the client, decided to cogitate on the matter for a day or two. During that time he met by accident a friend who made a hobby of studying yeggmen and criminals and occasionally doing a bit of the amateur tramp act himself.