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.