Very often a little thing will furnish a clew and bring the criminal
into the hands of the law, where all the shrewdness and vigilance in
the world proves at fault.
The older I grow, the more firmly I believe that circumstances have a
great deal to do with the success of some detectives. You may call it
Providence, luck or whatever name you like.
You may lay out your plans in the most careful manner, but you seldom
follow them as you originally propose.
Indeed, a detective who cannot break one of his rules and change his
mind to suit the occasion, can never hope to be a success.
Little things, sudden ideas which seize hold of your mind, often lead
you to results which the best formed plans could never do. Such has
ever been my experience, and such also is the experience of my old
pupil, Dave Doyle, who began to study under me at about the same time
as Sam Kean.
Dave was a smart fellow, and a born detective, although a young man of
no education at all, and for this reason unfitted for certain kinds of
detective work.
Let me introduce one case in particular where Dave succeeded by
following a sudden idea which seized hold of me. Later on Dave began to
get ideas of his own.
I will let him tell the story himself.
DAVE DOYLE’S FIRST CASE.
When Mr. Philander Camm defaulted and ran away with $100,000 of the
funds of the Bakers’ Bank there was the biggest kind of a row.
A big reward was offered to any detective who would get him, and there
seemed to be a chance that some one might earn it, for it was believed
that the thief hadn’t left New York.
I had just gone to work for Old King Brady then, and when I read the
account in the papers I says to myself:
“I wish I could scoop in that reward.”
I went up to the office that morning and spoke to Mr. Brady about it.
“Well,” he says, “and if you did get him the reward wouldn’t be yours
by rights, but mine. Ain’t you working for me?”
Now I hadn’t looked at the thing that way, but I saw right off he was
right.
“I’d like to get it for you then,” I says.
“That’s another part of speech,” says he, “and maybe you can. I ain’t
got time to work up the case myself. Go ahead and see what you can do.
If anything comes out of it I won’t be mean.”
“Do you mean it?” says I.
“Of course I do,” says he. “You’ve got to take up a big case some time,
and this will be a good one to begin with. You’ll have every detective
of any account against you, though. There ain’t one chance in forty
that you’ll succeed.”
Wasn’t that encouraging?
But Old King Brady always did put things straight and call a spade a
spade.
“What shall I do?” I asked him.
“Don’t ask me,” he says. “Make up some plan for yourself.”
“I s’pose he’ll try and get away by some of the railroads?” I says. “I
might go and watch for him at the depot.”
“Can you watch all the depots at once, Doyle?” he says, laughing. “Then
there’s the steamboats, too, and you know he might take a notion to
walk.”
I saw at once that he was right; then I asked him again what he’d do if
he was in my place, and owned right up that I had no ideas.
He thought a few minutes, and then he said:
“Where does this man Camm live?”
“Don’t know,” I says. “The paper says he is a bachelor, and used to
live in Forty-sixth street, but he gave up his room three weeks ago.”
“Where did he come from?”
“Paper says he was born in Middlebury, Vermont,” I says.
Then he went and got a geography and looked on the map.
“If he came from Middlebury he knows all about Canada,” he says, “and
he’ll be sure to steer north if he hasn’t gone already. If I was you
I’d go up to the Grand Central Depot, and ask the man who sells the
sleeping car berths if any one of his description has engaged a berth
for to-night or last night. It’s most likely he’s gone.”
“But he was seen at one o’clock this morning in the Fifth Avenue
Hotel,” I says.
“How do you know?” he says. “Because the papers say so? That’s no
proof. Just like as not that was all a put up job. Go up to the depot
first of all, Doyle, and tell the fellow in the office I sent you. He
knows me.”
Well, I went.
I had a good description of the defaulter from the papers, but bless
you! I didn’t need it.
The fellow in the sleeping-car office was fly and right up to business.
He knew all about it before I got there, but the worst of it was he’d
told what he knew to two other fellows before he told me.
“That man engaged lower 10 for to-night,” he says, “in the Montreal
express. You won’t be able to do nothing about it though. There’s two
ahead of you watching already. They think his taking the berth is only
a blind, and that he’ll go up on one of the day trains.”
I was that disappointed that I could have cried when I left the office,
for there stood Ed Duffy and old man Pease a-laughing at me. You see
I’d been introduced to both of them by Mr. Brady, and they knew just
who I was.
“Say, young feller,” says Duffy, “you just go back and tell Old King
Brady that he’d better come himself instead of sending a kid like you.
’Twon’t make no difference, though. The fellow will be here in half an
hour. He’s going to take the ten o’clock train.”
Wasn’t I mad?
You’d just better believe I was.
When I went back to Mr. Brady, though, he only laughed at me.
“What do you ’spose them fellows do for a living?” he says. “They are
up to their business as well as you or me.”
“I ’spose I may as well give it up,” I says.
“Not at all,” says he. “Wouldn’t do nothing of the sort. I don’t
believe they’re going to get him just because they happen to be laying
for him, and if you do you’re a fool.”
“Why, don’t you think he’s off for Montreal?” I says.
“Yes,” says he, “of course, but not that way. The taking of that berth
in his own name is a dead give away. He’ll never go over the Central
road.”
“What way, then?” I says.
“How do I know?” says he, “but I’ve got an idea.”
I asked him what it was, and he told me to go down to the bank and try
and find out where Mr. Camm had been living for the last few weeks.
“But I can’t find out that,” I says. “Others have tried it and failed.
How can I hope to succeed?”
“Never you mind, Dave, you go,” he says. “Something tells me you will
succeed.”
So I went.
I had a note from Mr. Brady to the bank president, and he treated me
civil enough.
“I don’t know where he lived, and no one else don’t neither,” he says.
“He’s kept himself in hiding for more’n three weeks.”
“Ain’t there anything here what belongs to him?” I asked, for you see
I’d been figuring it all out on the way down to the bank and it come to
me somehow that this was what I wanted to say.
“Why there’s lots of things,” says the president. “There’s his old coat
and two or three old hats, and an umbrella and a couple of pair of old
shoes, but what does that amount to?”
“Let me see ’em?” says I.
He showed me a clothes closet where the things were along with a lot of
other rubbish. I couldn’t make nothing out of them, although I examined
everything carefully till I come to one hat--a plug--which looked to me
to be new.
Now you may laugh just as much as you please, but I knowed right away
as soon as I took the hat into my hands that I’d found what I was
looking for.
“This is a new one,” I says to the president, who stood right behind me.
“Maybe. I don’t know nothing at all about it,” he says.
“But it is,” says I. “It ain’t never been worn at all. Did it come to
the bank from the maker, or did he bring it?”
“You’ll have to ask Camm; I’ll never tell you,” he says.
Well, now I’d just like to have had the chance to ask Camm, you bet.
But there wasn’t any show then, so I asked the man whose name was in
the hat. It was Silverstein in the Bowery, a little dried-up Jew.
Now I expected nothing but to get fired out as soon as ever I went into
the store, so I just tried a little dodge.
I went in with a rush.
“Say!” I says. “Mr. Brady wants to know who you sold this hat to?”
Silverstein looked as though he’d like to eat me. They say he sells
policy slips as well as hats, and I reckoned on that to make him afraid.
“What Brady?” he says.
“Old King Brady, the detective,” says I.
“Mein freund, how I can be ogspeged to know efery hat vat I sells. Who
I sells him to--huh?”
“Mr. Brady don’t want to know who you sell all your hats to,” I say,
“he only wants to know who you sold this one to.”
Silverstein took the hat and examined it closely.
“Vell, I tells you,” he said, slowly. “I onderstand vat Mr. Brady
vants. Dis hat I sells to an old gustomer vat’s named Camm.”
“Yes, yes. But where did you deliver it; or did he take it with him
when he bought it?”
“I send him,” says Silverstein. It was like pulling teeth to get a word
out of him, but I saw that sooner or later he meant to tell.
“Where did you send the hat?”
“To Brooklyn.”
“Whereabouts in Brooklyn?”
He looked in his order book and told me it was a certain number on
Rockaway avenue, which, by the way, was in that part of Brooklyn then
known as East New York.
At that time it was all lots out there, with only a few straggling
houses and plenty of geese, goats and pigs. It’s a little better now,
but as it was then I wouldn’t have lived there if they’d given me a
house rent free.
I went out to East New York late that afternoon, for I wanted to talk
to Old King Brady first off, and I had to wait for him to come in.
“You’re on the right track,” he said. “Go, and good luck go with you.
Do you think you can arrest him if you happen to get the chance?”
“Well, now, there’ll be a rough fight if he gets away from me,” I says.
“Go on,” he says, “and don’t let me see you again till you have
something to report.”
Now that kind of worried me, for I didn’t feel at all sure that I was
going to find my man just because I’d got the number of the house where
he sent the hat.
On the way out to East New York I got to thinking suppose I was the
defaulter what would I do?
Would I come back to the city and run the risk of being taken if I was
hiding out there in the lots?
“Not much!” I says to myself. “I’d just keep right on by the Long
Island railroad, get to Greenport and cross over to New London, where I
could take the train on the Northern railroad straight to Montreal.”
Why, it was a splendid chance. The more I thought about it the more I
seemed to see how splendid it was.
“He’s done it! I’ll just bet a dollar he’s done it!” I thought. “The
taking of that berth on the Central was a blind just as Old King Brady
said. He’s gone already, I make no doubt.”
However, I kept right on.
You never seen such forlorn houses as these were in all your born days.
There was a whole row of them, many as a dozen altogether. The windows
were all broke and the doors bursted in, and in one or two places
the folks in the neighborhood had carried away a whole lot of the
weather-boards to burn.
There was only two houses in the whole row what had folks living into
them, and one of them was the very number I wanted.
I tell you I was all in a shake when I knocked on the door--there
wasn’t no bell.
When the woman came to the door I had my little story all ready.
“Here’s Mr. Camm’s hat, mum,” I says, “I came over from Mr.
Silverstein’s in the Bowery. There’s a dollar to pay.”
“No, there ain’t!” she blurted right out mad like, then she switched up
all of a sudden and looked scared like.
“I don’t know what yer talkin’ about,” she says. “There ain’t nobody of
that name here. You must have got the wrong house.”
I was half way through the door, and tried to get the whole way in, but
she sorter got in front of me and worked me out into the airy.
“You needn’t try to crowd in here,” she says. “Get off with your lies
and your hat.”
“Say, you don’t expect me to lug that hat-box all the way back to the
Bowery,” I says. “Mr. Silverstein has sent hats to this house before,
and I guess you can’t fool me if you try.”
But I want you to understand that she would slam the door in my face,
and she did.
Just as I was backing out of the yard I heard a slight rattle of the
blinds at one of the upper windows.
I looked up and caught a glimpse of a man’s face looking at me through
the slats.
“Say, is this your hat, mister?” I hollered.
The face disappeared.
“By thunder, I’ve a good mind to chuck the thing in the lot sooner than
lug it all the way back to New York,” I hollered again, loud enough for
any one to hear.
Then I walked off like I was mad.
“That’s him!” I thought to myself. “That’s Camm.”
Now, how did I know?
Couldn’t tell you if I was to try, but I did know. I never had no more
doubt about Camm being in that house from that minute than I have that
I’m Dave Doyle.
And I was right.
Wait till you hear what I did, and you’ll see.
I did chuck away the hat-box--I had no further use for it. I threw it
in a lot, and went over to the Howard House, where the train on the
Long Island Railroad used to start from and stop in them days, and
looked at a time-table. Right away I seen that there was a train for
Greenport at half past eight. It was then pretty near six o’clock.
Back I goes and lays around the lots a-watching.
Part of the time I was up at the end of the row, hiding in one of the
unoccupied houses. Part of the time I kept between them and the Howard
House, for I felt dead sure my man would come out sooner or later.
At quarter to eight I was round in front, hiding behind a tree and
watching the front door, when all at once it came flashing over me,
“What’s to hinder him from going out the back way and cutting across
lots?”
I run up the street to the end of the row, where I could get a view of
the lots in the rear.
Sure enough!
There was a man all muffled up to the eyes in a big ulster coat,
traveling across lots toward the Howard House, carrying a black leather
grip sack in his hand.
Was it Mr. Camm?
It might have been him, or, for that matter, anybody else. How did I
even know he came out of that house at all?
I cut after him, not running, of course, but walking fast enough to
gain on him some.
This I could see was making him nervous, and he began to walk all the
faster. I took it for a good sign that it was really Camm.
“If he buys a ticket for Greenport, I’ll grab him,” says I to myself.
I took a good look at him, wondering how much fight there was into him.
He wasn’t a very big feller, and I was considered a perfect terror down
in the fourth ward, so I wasn’t afraid.
“I’m good for two like him,” thinks I, and I pinned my shield on inside
my coat, so as to show if a crowd tried to hustle me. But, gracious!
you never know how things is going to come out.
We’d got pretty well over to the Howard House by this time, and right
ahead, between him and the station, was a lot of empty freight-cars
standing.
He struck around the cars on one side and me on the other. When I got
onto the platform there wasn’t nothing of him to be seen.
Thunderation, wasn’t I mad!
“He’s given me the slip,” I thought. “He’s tumbled to my little
racket,” and I ran around on the other side of the cars, thinking he
must have dodged back.
But he wasn’t there. I couldn’t see nothing of him no where. I bet you
I was just about the sickest fellow in East New York then.
Had he slipped into one of the freight cars?
I thought so, and I was just going to look when all of a sudden the
train came thundering in.
It was a sort of a switch train. It ran down from Jamaica and then went
right back again, passengers changing cars at Jamaica for the regular
trains on the Long Island road.
Now I hardly knew what to do.
The conductor was yelling all aboard, and there wasn’t a minute to lose.
The train, as it stood, was right close alongside these empty freight
cars, and it would have been an easy matter for a man to step from one
to the other.
“That’s what he means to do,” thinks I, and I jumped into the forward
car, which was nearest to where I stood, and began to hurry through the
train.
He wasn’t in that car, nor in the next.
Just as I crossed the platform to the car the train started, and I
began to think he’d given me the slip altogether, for he wasn’t in the
last car either, as far as I could see.
I ran through the car as fast as I could with my mind made up to jump
off the platform. When I got to the rear door and was just about to
open it, I suddenly saw my man jump from one of the empty freight cars
as we passed and land on the platform right before my eyes.
You oughter see me open that door!
I was out on the platform in a second. He gave one look at me and
seemed to know just what I wanted, too, for he out with a gun and
rammed it right in my face.
“Blast you! I’ll never be taken alive!” he hissed.
But I gave the shooter one clip and sent it flying off the train.
“Help! Murder!” he yelled as we went sweeping past the platform of the
Howard House.
I grabbed him by the throat and had him down in a minute. Two men
jumped into the car and grabbed me.
“He’s a thief! He’s trying to rob me!” he hollered.
“I’m a detective--he’s a defaulter! Help me, gents!” I said, as cool as
I could.
Well, we got him--that’s all there is to it.
More than that we got the boodle--a hundred thousand clear. It was all
in the bag.
They stopped the train and we took him off. One of the fellers what had
jumped on was a policeman, and he helped me take him to the East New
York station. We found a ticket for Greenport on him and a time-table
of the Northern New London Railroad. I never had the least doubt but
what he’d a-got through safe to Montreal if it hadn’t been for Mr.
Brady sending me out to East New York that night.
As for the reward, Old King Brady scooped it in, and a big laugh we had
on Detective Duffy and the old man Pease, who hung around the Grand
Central till midnight watching for their man who never came.
“But it was only guess work after all,” says Old King Brady, when he
gave me a big lump of money out of the reward a couple of weeks later
on.
Very true.
It was all guess work.
But there’s something funny about Old King Brady and his guesses.
Somehow or other he manages to guess right nine times out of ten.
* * * * *
NOTE.--Now this case is only a sample of a good many.
I don’t know why I got the impression that Mr. Camm would try to reach
Montreal by the Long Island road, but I had it as well as Dave Doyle. I
don’t know why I get half my impressions, but I always follow them, and
they don’t often lead me astray.
One thing in particular is very strongly illustrated by this case which
a young detective should always remember, and it is something which the
majority of our oldest hands are pretty apt to forget.
Don’t trust to appearances. They are pretty sure to lead you astray.
Put yourself in the place of the criminal. Try and fancy how you would
act if you were placed in his position, and be guided in what you do
thereby.
Now here is a rule and it is a good one--yet it is not always safe to
follow it.
There is another thing to be considered--the intelligence of the
criminal.
Mr. Camm was an intelligent man--emphatically so.
Was it to be supposed that an intelligent man making off with a hundred
thousand dollars would openly engage a berth in a sleeping car in his
own name?
Decidedly not. It was a blind on the face of it. If I had been in
his place I would never for an instant have expected any one to
be deceived by so transparent an action, but I took another thing
into consideration. Mr. Camm was not as well used to the methods of
criminals as I was, therefore I did not blame him for thinking that he
might deceive the detectives by his little game.
And was he so far out of the way either?
Evidently not, since he did fool Detective Duffy and my friend Mr.
Pease completely, and this brings me to another point.
Some detectives can never see beyond the length of their noses. They
seize upon the first clew offered and hold to it like grim death, never
stopping to think that what they consider a clew may be only a bait.
Such men can never make their mark in this business, no matter how long
they stick at it. They are constantly getting into hot water, and have
only themselves to blame.
Now a word more about my young friend Doyle.
He is sharp, shrewd and persevering, but in spite of it he is only
adapted to certain kinds of work, and can never hope to become a great
success.
Why?
Simply because he is not possessed of all the qualifications I have
laid down.
Dave lacks education. He has never in his life moved in good society.
Often it becomes necessary for a detective to disguise himself as a
high-toned gentleman and move in the best society of the land.
To send Dave Doyle on such a mission would be worse than nonsense. He
would fail before he had the chance to begin.
Take a case where it is necessary to track a man through the slums
and Dave hasn’t his equal. Take a case of shadowing where untiring
vigilance and bulldog pertinacity are the principal requirements, and
he is there, too, but in disguises he’s just nowhere. That freckled
face and red hair of his is a dead give away--you understand what I
mean.
To be a successful detective a man must be a thorough gentleman in
every sense of the word.
A gentleman can adapt himself to the lowest as well as those who are
higher in the social scale, but the case cannot be reversed.
There are many cases where even I would be useless.
Suppose, for instance, it were necessary to worm our way into the
confidence of a young lady. What could an old man like me hope to
accomplish in a case like that?
Nothing, of course.
It would be necessary to have an assistant, either a good-looking young
man or a woman.
So you see no detective can cover the whole ground, and you must not
only know how to choose your assistants, but how to use them to the
best advantage.
That’s where the all important qualification of good judgment and
common sense comes in.