path: root/50902-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 50902 ***

Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text
enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

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HOW TO BE A DETECTIVE


  By OLD KING BRADY

  (The World Known Detective).

  In which he lays down some valuable and sensible rules for beginners,
  and also relates some adventures and experiences of well known
  detectives.

  NEW YORK:
  FRANK TOUSEY, Publisher,
  24 UNION SQUARE.

       *       *       *       *       *

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1902, by

FRANK TOUSEY,

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C.

       *       *       *       *       *

HOW TO BE A DETECTIVE

By OLD KING BRADY.




INTRODUCTORY. OLD KING BRADY TELLS WHY HE WROTE THE BOOK.


Some of my friends will no doubt wonder why I should leave the beaten
track and contrary to the course I have always adopted of furnishing
notes to my friend, the New York detective, write a book myself.

The fact of the matter is the number of boys who love to read my
adventures has grown to be so numerous--it is away up in the hundreds
of thousands Mr. Tousey tells me--that their wishes have got to be
respected.

For several years they have been asking for instructions from me which
will transform them from school-boys into full-fledged detectives, as
though touched by a magician’s wand.

The idea of such a thing!

But there are many who would like to become detectives if they could,
and are willing to take time to learn the business, which, believe me,
has to be learned like everything else.

Of course there may be some “smart Alecks” who have picked up the
business--doubtless there are--but like extra smart people in other
lines they do not often make it a success.

Therefore I say that to give a series of rules which, if followed, will
make a boy a detective, would only be to make a fool of myself and my
pupils too.

It can’t be done.

In our business no two situations are ever alike; the case you are
working on to-day is totally different from the case of to-morrow, and
the case of next week different again from either, and so it goes.

What I propose to do, therefore, is to tell how I made one boy--no,
two--detectives. Let their experiences serve for others to go by.

First, however, let me give a list of the particular qualities and
attainments necessary to make a good detective, and say also a few
words on the different kinds of detectives--the good and the bad.


QUALIFICATIONS OF A GOOD DETECTIVE.

1. Indomitable courage and good health.

2. Strict honesty.

3. A fair education. _Necessary._

4. A knowledge of languages. _Highly desirable._

5. The ability to read men readily. (This is a quality which will
improve by practice. It cannot be expected at first.)

6. Perseverance.

7. An agreeable disposition; the ability to make one’s self popular
among men.

8. An acquaintance with the methods of changing the facial appearance
and arranging disguises. (This is perhaps the hardest thing of all to
acquire. Most detectives will not disclose these secrets. The help of a
good theatrical costumer, or an actor should be sought. Practice makes
perfect--don’t forget that.)

9. Capability of careful thought and the ability to weigh evidence, and
not to allow yourself to be deceived by appearances.

10. Caution.

11. Control of the temper.

12. Last, and most important of all, Common Sense.

Now I say that unless a boy possesses to a certain degree these twelve
qualifications he better not think about becoming a detective.

The office is an important one and performs a great use in the world,
but it can easily be prevented and the detective degraded to the level
of a hired spy.

Never in my life have I undertaken a case where I have not at least
_believed_ that I was working on the right side.

I don’t propose to sell my services to bad men to work out bad ends.

Others are not so particular. Such are not true detectives--they are
simply spies.

As to the means of getting the opportunity to learn the business of
detective, I can only say that it is just like everything else; there
are all sorts of ways.

Application to some good private detective agency will give you that
information. If it is not convenient to do that, consult some honest
detective, either police or private, and he may be able to tell you how
to get a start.

For a boy to throw up his business and go a stranger to any of our
great cities with the idea of at once blooming out into a detective can
only bring disappointment.

You have got to start right to come out right.

There are hundreds of detectives, moreover, who barely make a living.
Only the experienced and the skillful grow rich, for it is in this
business precisely the same as in everything else.

Only hard work, patience, pluck and perseverance will win the fight.

  I remain, my dear readers,
  Your obedient servant,
  JAMES BRADY.

  _New York, April 1, 1890._




CHAPTER I. A LETTER FROM DETECTIVE KEAN.


One of the brightest and most successful of our New York detectives is
Mr. Samuel Kean, at present attached to Pinkerton’s Agency.

He was one of my pupils, and a better one I never had.

I have therefore selected a few of his early cases to illustrate the
kind of work that a young detective has to engage in.

Let him tell about his first case himself. I thought it would be more
interesting to let him do his own talking, and accordingly wrote him
and asked that he would describe his first case in his own way. Here is
the answer I received:

  NEW YORK, March 20th, 1890.

  MY DEAR MR. BRADY,--You ask me to write you a letter and tell you all
  about my first case and how I became a detective.

  Now it will be very easy for me to do this, for I have never
  forgotten a single thing that happened that night, and I don’t
  believe I ever shall forget, if I live to be a hundred years old; and
  yet, after all, it wasn’t much of a case. It would have been mere
  child’s play to you if you had been in my position, which, of course,
  you wouldn’t. For you wouldn’t have allowed yourself to be deceived
  the way I was--that’s one thing sure.

  I was between eighteen and nineteen then, and had left school some
  six months before I got the idea of being a detective.

  My father was dead against it from the start, and my mother wouldn’t
  let me even mention the subject, but you see I had been reading about
  you and your wonderful cases in the NEW YORK DETECTIVE LIBRARY, and
  I got an idea that I would like no better fun than to be a detective
  myself.

  “Pooh! You haven’t got the courage to be a detective!” exclaimed my
  father one evening, when I broached the subject for the hundredth
  time. “You’d run at the first fire, Sam.”

  “Did I get my cowardice from you, sir?” I asked mildly.

  “Not much! You got it from----”

  “Don’t say it came from my side of the house, Mr. Kean!” snapped my
  mother. “My father was all through the Mexican war, and you got a
  substitute when they drafted you time of the Southern rebellion. The
  boy is a plaguey sight braver than you are.”

  Now I had my mother on my side from that moment.

  The result of my father’s fling was a big family row, which ended in
  the old gentleman’s getting me a letter of introduction to you, Mr.
  Brady. I took the letter down to your office one morning, and that’s
  the way it began.

  “I don’t know about this,” was the first thing you said. “Young men
  born with silver spoons in their mouths rarely make good detectives.
  Don’t you think you’d better try your hand at some other line of
  business, my friend?”

  I told you that I meant to be a detective if I died for it, I
  believe, or something of that sort. I know I wanted very much to
  speak with you alone, and felt rather mad because there was another
  person in the office, a slim, freckled-faced, red-headed young chap
  of about my own age, whose cheap dress showed that he belonged to
  the working classes. I had rather a contempt for him, and was just
  wishing he’d get out, when you sent him out without my asking.

  “Now that fellow has got the very kind of stuff in him that good
  detectives are made of,” you remarked, and I remember I inwardly
  laughed at you.

  “Why, he’s nothing but an ordinary street boy,” I thought to myself.
  You know who I refer to--Dave Doyle.

  Then you talked to me a long time, and asked me all about my
  education and my health, besides a whole lot of other questions,
  which at the time seemed to me were of no account, but which I now
  understand to be most important.

  As almost every answer I gave seemed to be the very one you did not
  want, I had just about made up my mind that you were going to reject
  me entirely, when all at once you surprised me by saying that I could
  try it if I wanted to for two months, after which you would either
  pay me something regular in the way of wages, or tell me to get out.

  I don’t suppose you know it, Mr. Brady, but when I left your office
  that morning I felt about nine feet high.

  I was sure of success, and I firmly believe that it was the very
  certainty I felt that made me succeed.

  I was to report next day, and I did so.

  You put me in charge of a man named Mulligan, one of the lowest type
  of police detectives, who was looking for a pickpocket called Funeral
  Pete, a fellow who made a point of robbing people at funerals.

  “Funeral Pete” had taken alarm, and was in hiding, and Mulligan and I
  undertook to find out where.

  Well, we didn’t find out, but I learned a lot of other things, for
  Mulligan dragged me through nearly every dive in New York.

  I was amazed and not a little startled.

  Had I got to mix up with such dreadful people as these in order to
  make myself a detective?

  It made me sick to think of it, still I had no notion of turning back.

  This state of affairs kept up for a couple of weeks.

  First I was sent out with one detective, then with another. There was
  no disguising, no shadowing, nor shooting. Everything seemed terribly
  commonplace.

  One night I spoke to you about my disappointment. I told you this
  wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted, that I had expected to go about
  disguised with wigs and false mustaches, carrying revolvers,
  bowie-knives, dark lanterns and handcuffs in my pockets, and all that
  sort of thing.

  How you laughed! I shall never forget it.

  “Why, bless you, some one’s got to do the kind of work you’re doing,”
  you said, “and very often just such work becomes necessary in the
  most important cases. However, if you’re tired of it I’ll try you on
  another sort of a job and see how you make out.”

  You took me into the office and began to talk.

  “Did you ever study bookkeeping?” you asked.

  “Yes,” said I.

  “How good a bookkeeper are you?”

  “I can do double entry.”

  “As they teach it in schools?”

  “Yes.”

  “Humph. I’m afraid that won’t amount to much, still, you can try.”

  “Try what?”

  “Listen to me! To-morrow morning you go down to No. ---- Broadway,
  office of the Eagle Steamship Line, and say I’m the bookkeeper Old
  King Brady spoke of. That will be enough. They’ll engage you.”

  “What for?”

  “To keep books, of course.”

  “But I don’t want to be a book-keeper--I want to be a detective.”

  “Hold on, hold on! A detective has got to be anything and everything.
  You will take the job and go to work. You will also keep your eyes
  open and try and find out who is robbing the safe every night or two,
  of small amounts--do you understand?”

  “Ah! I’m going to be put on a case at last then?”

  “Of course you are. There is no information to give you except that
  some one of your fellow employees is a thief, and I want to catch
  him. You must watch every man in the office and you mustn’t let one
  of them know that you are watching. As for further instructions, I
  haven’t got any to give. It is a case for you to show what you are
  made of. I will give you one week to accomplish something in. If
  you have nothing to report at the end of that time, I shall put on
  another man.”

  Wasn’t that putting me on my mettle?

  Well, I thought so then, and I haven’t changed my opinion since.

  I resolved to show you what sort of stuff I was made of before the
  week had passed.

  Of course, when I presented myself at the Eagle steamship office I
  was engaged at once.

  The line ran down to South America somewhere--Brazil, if I remember
  rightly--and the proprietor’s name was Sandman, a bald-headed, snuffy
  old Scotchman who was terribly exercised about the robberies, but I
  felt very sure, from what I heard the other clerks say, that, even
  if I did succeed in catching the thief, I needn’t look for any big
  reward, for, with one voice, they pronounced Mr. Sandman “meaner than
  mud.”

  Now the store occupied by Mr. Sandman was on the west side of
  Broadway and had a half-story opening on a level with the New Church
  street sidewalk in the rear, where the freight was kept and from
  which most of the shipping was done.

  The clerks all had desks inside a big wire partition down near the
  door, and old man Sandman’s office was in the rear, while the safe
  which was being robbed stood between the last desk and the private
  office, with only the door leading down into the freight department
  between.

  I was immediately put to work on the outward freight book.

  It was simple enough. I hadn’t the least trouble in keeping the book,
  but how to worm myself into the secrets of my fellow clerks--there
  was the rub.

  There were six of them altogether.

  Jim Gleason, the “inward freight,” on my left; old Mr. Buzby,
  the head book-keeper, on my right; Hen Spencer, the foreign
  correspondent, stood nearest the safe all day, and then there was a
  fellow named Mann, another named Grady, and an office boy; besides
  these, there were the fellows in the freight department down-stairs.

  Which out of all this crowd was the thief?

  Never did I so fully realize my want of experience in the business as
  when I had been in the office of the Eagle Line a few days, without
  being able to accomplish anything more than to get every one down on
  me.

  “He’s always snoopin’ about and listenin’ to what a feller says,” I
  overheard Grady say to Mr. Buzby one day.

  “That’s so,” replied the book-keeper. “I seen him peekin’ into the
  safe the other day. I don’t see what old Sandman wants him for
  anyhow. He’s slower than death about his work and as thick-headed as
  a mule.”

  I was in the closet blacking my boots at the time for it was near the
  hour to close.

  Oh, how mad I was! for I knew they were talking about me.

  I made up my mind then and there that old Buzby was the thief.
  “Anyway,” I reasoned when I left, soon after, “if it ain’t him, who
  is it? He’s the only one besides Mr. Sandman who has the key.”

  Such was my theory at the end of the first week.

  I pumped Jim Gleason next to me, the pleasantest fellow in the whole
  office, a little inclined to be fast, perhaps, if his everlasting
  chatter about girls, policy and horse races meant anything, but so
  kind, and seemed to take such a fancy to me, that I couldn’t help
  liking him better than any one else in the crowd for all that.

  From him I learned that the robberies had been going on for a long
  time, even continued since I came there. This greatly surprised me.
  The safe was an old one, he said, and Sandman was too mean to buy
  a better. Somebody who had a key was doing the stealing, Gleason
  thought, and he openly hinted that Mr. Buzby was the thief.

  Saturday night came, and according to orders I went up to your office
  to report.

  “How are you getting on?” says you.

  “Not at all,” says I, “except that I’m certain that old Buzby, the
  book-keeper, is doing the stealing.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Oh, no!”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “The clerks all think so.”

  “When you say all which ones do you really mean?”

  “Jim Gleason for one--Spencer for another.”

  “Which one told you this?”

  “Gleason.”

  “How came he to tell you?”

  “Well, he works next to me, and we got to talking.”

  “Did you tell him you were a detective?” you asked, turning on me
  suddenly.

  “Well, I’m afraid he guesses it,” I replied, turning red.

  “Why?”

  “From something he said.”

  “After you had given yourself away?”

  I grew redder still.

  “I was asking him about the robbery, and he suddenly asked me what I
  wanted to know so much about it for.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said, ‘of nothing, just curiosity;’ then he asked me how much they
  paid me, and told me in a whisper that he’d caught on to my little
  racket, and knew I was a detective.”

  “And you denied it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be very sure he didn’t believe you,” you said. Then you told me that
  I was a fool to give myself away, and I expected to hear you say
  “don’t go there again. I’ll put another man on,” but you didn’t, and
  Monday morning I went back to the desk the same as usual. I had no
  instructions from you how to act, for we had been interrupted in our
  conversation, and I hadn’t seen you since.

  Monday night Jim Gleason asked me out to have a drink, and I went and
  took a beer with him. While we were in the saloon Hen Spencer dropped
  in.

  “So there’s another new man taken on,” he remarked.

  “Who?” asked Gleason.

  “Feller in the freight room down-stairs. Wouldn’t wonder if he was a
  detective, too. I seen him snooping round old Buzby’s desk. I only
  wish I wasn’t dependin’ on the old feller’s good opinion to keep me
  solid with Sandman, I could tell a thing or two, but there ain’t no
  use. The old man thinks the sun rises and sets in Buzby’s ear.”

  “What could you tell?” I asked.

  “Oh, no matter.”

  “Have another drink?”

  “Well, I don’t mind,” he said, and after that I treated to cigars
  and made myself as pleasant as possible, bound to work it out of him
  before I got through.

  And I succeeded. We were seated at a table talking confidentially
  in a little while, and I was flattering myself on my shrewdness in
  drawing young Spencer out.

  It happened that he had seen in old Buzby’s desk a false key to the
  outer door of the freight room, which was supposed to be entirely in
  charge of the freight superintendent.

  “I tell you what it is, fellers,” he added, “if we could only manage
  to get that key and slip in there some night, I have a key what would
  open his desk, and I’m sure we’d find something among his papers to
  prove that he’s the one who is prigging money from the safe.”

  I jumped at the idea.

  “Get me the key for an hour,” I said, “and I’ll have another made.”

  “Great scheme!” cried Jim Gleason. “If you do that we may catch him
  in the very act. Look here, Hen, I may as well tell you a secret. Mr.
  Kean is a detective. He’s put in the office to watch us.”

  “Shut up with your nonsense!” I cried. “I only want to help you
  fellows--that’s all.”

  “Don’t deny it,” persisted Gleason.

  “I might have guessed as much,” said Spencer. “I never seen a sharper
  fellow than you are, Sam Kean. Don’t you fret. I’ll snake the key out
  of old Buzby’s desk while he’s at lunch to-morrow. We’ll have him
  where the wool is short and don’t you forget it. It’ll serve him just
  right too, for all his impudence to me.”

  “How much has he taken altogether?” I asked.

  “Why he reports that $500 is missing so far,” was Spencer’s reply,
  “but as he’s doing the stealing himself, how is one going to tell?”

  After that I did not attempt to deny to these two that I was in the
  office as a spy.

  They got the key and I had the duplicate made.

  Thursday night was set for the execution of our little plan, for the
  reason that Spencer pretended to have been told by the old bookkeeper
  that he was going out of town that night.

  “I’ll bet you what you like it’s only a dodge,” he said. “That’s the
  night he intends to make his next haul.”

  I was in high feather. I had no orders to go to the office and
  report to you so I didn’t go.

  “Wait till I surprise Mr. Brady by dragging Buzby to the New Church
  street station,” I said to myself, for we three had agreed to do that
  very thing, provided we caught him in the store.

  When the store closed that evening I slipped down-stairs to try my
  key in the lock of the freight-room door.

  All hands had gone, or at least I supposed they had, so I was
  awfully startled at having a slim young fellow with black hair and
  determined-looking face suddenly pop up from behind some cases and
  ask me what the mischief I was doing there.

  Really I forget what excuse I made, but I know I lit out as soon as I
  could, and made the best of my way up-stairs.

  When I met Gleason and Spencer at a certain beer saloon in Greenwich
  street at eleven o’clock that night I told them about it, and could
  see that they looked worried.

  “That’s the new hand, Jack Rody,” said Jim.

  “I hope he ain’t one of Buzby’s pals,” added Hen, “but I wouldn’t be
  one mite surprised if he was.”

  Now I thought this was nonsense, and I said so. We got to talking
  about other things, and there the matter dropped.

  “Time’s up, boys,” said Jim at last, just as the clock struck twelve.
  “We’d better slip round there now. There’s just one thing that
  worries me though.”

  “What’s that?” asked Hen.

  “Suppose the cop catches us trying to enter the store.”

  “Well,” replied Gleason. “Sam can fix that. He’s got his shield I
  suppose.”

  “I’ve got no shield,” I answered, this disagreeable possibility
  occurring to me for the first time.

  But I was a good deal worried. I felt that it would be simply
  sickening to be arrested for burglary and have to send for you to get
  me out.

  No such trouble occurred, however.

  We watched our chance and slipped in through the back door of the
  Eagle Line office without the slightest difficulty.

  It was not until we got the door shut and locked that I began to
  wonder what we were going to do for a light.

  “Oh, I looked out for that,” whispered Jim. “I’ve got a dark lantern.”

  He pulled it out, lit it and flashed it round him. There was no sign
  of Jack Rody, though I must confess I half expected to see him spring
  up from behind the cases again.

  “Old Buz ain’t here, that’s one thing sure,” whispered Gleason, when
  we got up-stairs into the office.

  “We’ll lay for him an hour or so, anyhow,” replied Spencer.

  “Mebbe he’s been here already,” suggested Jim.

  “Suppose we open the safe and see if he’s taken anything?” said
  Spencer, after a moment.

  Now I give you my word, Mr. Brady, that this was the first I began to
  suspect there was anything wrong.

  “Open the safe!” I exclaimed. “How are you fellows going to open the
  safe? What do you mean?”

  “We mean this,” hissed Jim, turning suddenly upon me, “we are tired
  of playing a dangerous game for small stakes. There’s a thousand
  dollars in that safe to-night and we intend to have it, and leave you
  here to be pulled in as the thief.”

  I was thunderstruck. I saw it all.

  “You’ve been playing me for a sucker,” I blurted out. “I’ll show
  you----”

  “No you won’t!” breathed Spencer, drawing a revolver and thrusting
  it in my face. “We have been playing you for just what you are. You
  pretend to be a detective! Bah! you’re nothing but a little squirt,
  anyhow. We’ll fix you. Here, Jim, give him his drink.”

  I fought like a tiger, never heeding the revolver, for I was sure
  they wouldn’t shoot. Still I did not dare to make any outcry, for
  that would be sure to bring matters to a crisis.

  It was all over in a minute. They had me down, and, while Gleason
  held me, Spencer got a rope out of his desk and tied me. Then Jim
  forced my mouth open, while his companion poured a lot of whisky
  down my throat, almost strangling me. I seemed to be entirely
  powerless to help myself.

  Then I yelled like a good fellow.

  All it amounted to was to cause them to jam a handkerchief in my
  mouth.

  Never before nor since have I been a prey to such terrible feelings
  as I endured while I lay there and watched those two scoundrels open
  that safe.

  Spencer was the one who had the key--a ridiculous old thing made up
  of a number of steel prongs which fitted in a slot.

  I thought then and I still think that it served Sandman just right to
  be robbed, for trusting his money in such an old-fashioned affair.

  Well, they opened it and they took the money from the cash-drawer,
  shaking the bills in my face in triumph.

  “They’ll find you here in the morning,” sneered Gleason. “Mebbe
  they’ll believe your story, and mebbe they won’t. Anyhow your goose
  on the detective force is cooked. Next time you try to pump a fellow,
  go at it in the right way.”

  Of course I could say nothing--only stare helplessly.

  I heard them laugh, I saw them move toward the basement door.

  Then all of a sudden I saw the door fly open, and a determined voice
  shouted:

  “Drop that money, gents, and the shooter along with it, or I’ll drop
  you!”

  It was Jack Rody, the new freight clerk.

  His face was pale, but determined, as he stood there covering those
  two rascals with a cocked revolver in each hand, and to my further
  surprise I saw that his hair was not black now, but red.

  Then I knew him.

  It was David Doyle, the young fellow I had met in your office the day
  I first called.

  Did we capture them?

  Well, we just did.

  Rather, I should say, Dave Doyle did it.

  He made them release me, and then we took them to the station
  together, and next day Jim Gleason confessed that he and Spencer had
  done all the stealing.

  You remember the end of it. They turned out to be a couple of
  worthless fellows and went up to the Elmira Reformatory in the end.

  You were not very hard on me for the ridiculous way in which I had
  managed the affair--not half as hard as you might have been.

  That’s the story of my first case, Mr. Brady, and it taught me a
  lesson which I never forgot. Yours truly,

  SAM KEAN.

       *       *       *       *       *

NOTE.--I may as well add that I knew all about that midnight business
from the first.

No sooner had Sam Kean told me of the conversation he had had with Jim
Gleason than I suspected the fellow, and put an experienced man to
watch him nights.

I soon found that he and Spencer were inseparable companions; that they
were drunkards and gamblers, and capable of committing any crime.

Kean had made a blunder very common with beginners in the detective
business. He had not properly weighed the evidence, and had become a
cat’s-paw of the real criminal through allowing himself to be flattered.

I didn’t blame him a bit.

When I first began to go about as a detective, I fell into a similar
trap several times.

I was so sure Gleason and Spencer were doing the stealing, that I would
have arrested them on suspicion and forced a confession out of them,
had it not been that I wanted Sam Kean to understand just how foolish
he had really been.

Well, he found out--don’t make any mistake about that. A more
thoroughly taken down individual you never saw.

After that he was willing enough to receive all the instructions I had
a mind to give him.

You see I got Doyle into the freight-room at the end of the week, just
as I told him I would, but Dave’s appearance was altered by a black
wig, and Sam never guessed who it was. Besides that I was in the cellar
and came to the rescue at the proper moment.

It was Dave and I who took those two young scoundrels around to the New
Church street station, or rather I did the most of it, for Dave had all
he could do to take care of Sam.

Do you notice that my account of the end of the affair differs slightly
from his? You will observe that he don’t mention me at all?

Well, no wonder. The poor fellow was so drunk that he did not know
which end he was standing on that night.

He says they forced liquor down his throat after he was bound. I know
this to be true, for Dave saw them doing it through the key-hole; but
I’m afraid Sam had taken several drinks before, or the stuff would not
have had the effect upon him that it did.

Now this brings me to another and most important point--one that a
young man in starting upon the career of a detective has got to pay
more attention to than anything else.

As a detective you will often be thrown into positions where you have
got to drink.

Now a drinking detective is but a poor worthless creature, as a rule.
Then what are you going to do?

Here, again, no rule can be laid down. You must be guided by your
constitution, by your conscience, by circumstances.

If you allow liquor to get control of you be very sure you will not be
able to control your man. To think this is to make a great mistake.

Great criminals are seldom drunkards. If they lead you to drink, it is
only that they may get the best of you in some way or other.

Still, to refuse absolutely, would be to excite suspicion, which leaves
you between two fires, as it were.

I can only warn you--I cannot dictate.

The best way is to plead that liquor never agrees with you--too much
never agrees with any one--and stick to temperance drinks.

If you feel that you must drink, make your drinks as small as possible
and as few.

Some detectives have a knack of slyly turning their glass into the
cuspidore or on the floor; others make it a rule to call for gin and
then fill another glass with an equal amount of water; both the gin and
the water being white they drink the latter and pretend to taste the
gin.

These tricks may work satisfactorily if your man is under the influence
himself, but if he is sober you are pretty sure to get caught at it and
have your plans spoiled.

Whisky may have helped some detectives to make captures, and procure
information which could never have been obtained without its aid; but
on the other hand it has ruined thousands of young men who have set out
to follow our business, and sent them to a drunkard’s grave.




CHAPTER II. CAUGHT BY A HAT.


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.




CHAPTER III. SHADOWING.


The art of shadowing is perhaps one of the most difficult things a
detective has to learn.

I mean, of course, difficult to become a good shadow--of the ordinary
species, dogging the steps of the suspected criminal, giving themselves
away at every possible opportunity, we have plenty and to spare.

It is not an easy matter to shadow some men unsuspected, and yet there
are others whom one could follow half around the world and never a
suspicion aroused.

Thus the ease or difficulty in the case of shadowing depends as much on
the subject as upon the shadower; still a good shadower can accomplish
wonders even with a difficult subject if he only gives his mind to his
work.

The best shadows are men of common minds and insignificant appearance,
who will pass readily without special notice in a crowd.

Men with strong minds and intense will power are apt, by the very
intensity of their thought, to impress their subject with their
presence, which he soon detects and the usefulness of the detective is
gone.

Now for these very reasons I do not consider myself a good shadower,
although long experience has enabled me to become quite expert at the
business nevertheless.

I am too tall; my appearance is too marked.

I can, it is true, change my appearance by disguises, but I cannot add
to or take from my stature, and my victim soon falls to wondering why
so many tall men keep following him--from that moment my usefulness is
gone.

I always choose medium sized men with light brown hair and mild blue
eyes for shadows, when I can get them. A boy makes a splendid shadow.
I have used them a great deal, and often very successfully. A woman if
she is shrewd makes the very best of shadows for a man, but a very bad
one for another woman.

My experience has shown me that most men seldom notice plain women in
the street, although the contrary is generally believed to be the case.

Of course in all this I allude to city work. Out in the country it
is altogether different. There the shadow must worm himself into the
confidence of his subject and travel with him. He will surely lose him
if he don’t.

And this is often done, and most successfully.

I once sent a young man all over South America with a defaulting bank
cashier. It was necessary to inveigle the fellow upon United States
soil before he could be arrested.

To do this was difficult. My man first struck him in the city of
Mexico and made his acquaintance at a hotel, taking pains to get an
introduction to him which put him on a proper footing at the start.

For over a year he stuck to him and they grew to be like brothers.

They visited Brazil, Chili, Buenos Ayres and Peru; eating together,
sleeping together, and all that sort of thing.

Long before the year was over the defaulter confessed the whole story
to my man. He had taken $100,000 and had it all with him in gold and
bills of exchange except what had been spent in his wanderings.

One day while at Callao, Peru, my man induced him to visit an American
man-of-war then lying in the harbor.

This was the opportunity for which he had been so long seeking, and he
immediately revealed himself and placed the defaulter under arrest,
for to all intents and purposes they were then on American soil.

“My God! Jim, you can’t mean it!” the poor wretch exclaimed. “And I
loved you so!”

Then he covered his face with his hands and cried like a child.

He brought him back on the man-of-war and the bank recovered $60,000 by
the operation; the balance had been used up for expenses, and went to
pay me the cost of the detective’s trip, which I personally advanced.

Now this was a shrewd piece of work. I admired my man for it from a
business standpoint, but from a moral one I despised him.

I never could have done what he did in the world. It ain’t my nature.
It needs a consummate hypocrite to successfully play such a role as
that.

But such men are necessary to the detective force, and we must have
them. I suppose all my readers are aware that we make use of thieves,
gamblers and other hard characters very often to assist us in our work.

We have got to do this. We could not get along at all if we didn’t. Yet
we never trust them one inch further than our interests are concerned;
if we did we should get fooled every time.

So you see there are shadows and shadows, and the only rule I can lay
down is the rule of common sense.

In shadowing use your judgment. Employ such means as circumstances seem
to demand. Disguises will help you--are often entirely necessary, but
it don’t do to put too much dependence on them. Common sense, quickness
of thought, and a glib tongue will do more for the shadow than the best
disguise ever made.

I remember a very clever piece of double shadowing accomplished shortly
after Sam Kean began to study with me.

As I sent him west soon after it occurred it became necessary for
him to write out a deposition of the case to be used by the district
attorney in preparing the trial of this criminal. I happened to come
across a copy of that document in my desk the other day, and may as
well incorporate it here. I will call it


THE STORY OF THE JEWEL THIEF.

On a certain afternoon in February, I was sitting in Mr. Brady’s private
office, waiting to receive instructions, when the boy brought in two
cards. They bore the names of Mr. Marcus Welton and Mr. J. Denby Opdyke.

“Two high-toned ducks.” I immediately thought.

“Skip into that closet, Kean,” old King Brady whispered to me. “I want
you to have a good look at these fellows, and listen to what they say.
You know where the peep-hole is, or you ought to, for I showed you the
other day.”

I knew, and in a moment I had my eye glued against it.

I was not mistaken in my estimate of the visitors. They were a couple
of dudes of the most pronounced sort.

Welton was short and sallow, with big bulging eyes, a drawling voice.
He looked what he was--a society fool.

His companion, however, was quite different. He was a tall, handsome
fellow, with brown hair, shrewd gray eyes, and a determined mouth; yet
there was something about his face which repelled me at once.

Both men were dressed in the most pronounced fashion of the day, and
bore every evidence of possessing abundant means.

“Aw, Mr. Bwady, you got my note left here yestawday, I dessay,” drawled
Welton.

“I did, sir,” replied the detective in his usual quick way. “Be seated,
please.”

They accepted the invitation and Welton continued:

“What I want to see you about is a private mattaw. For some time past
there have been wobbowies of jewelry in some of our best society. These
wobbowies always take place on the occasion of parties or balls.”

“Yes, sir,” said Old King Brady as he paused.

“We want you to catch the thief,” said Mr. Welton. “My--aw--mother has
been wobbed of a lot of diamonds. They were taken when she gave her
ball a week ago. I want them--aw--wecovered. My fwiend, Mr. Opdyke,
has a fwiend who has been wobbed. Mrs. Porthouse, widow of Admirwal
Porthouse of the Navy. No doubt you knew the admiral. She has lost
diamonds too--she wants them wecovered.”

“And very valuable ones they were, I assure you, sir,” put in Mr.
Opdyke, who did not lisp.

“But have you no clew to the thief, gentlemen? Nothing to go by?” asked
the detective.

No, they had absolutely nothing to offer. They wanted the thief caught
and the diamonds recovered--they had no ideas beyond that.

Old King Brady thought a moment.

“When does society give its next ball, gentlemen?” he asked.

“To-night at Mrs. Lispenard’s,” answered Mr. Welton, promptly.

“Very good. To-night I will have a detective at Mrs. Lispenard’s, and
we will see what can be done.”

“Give him a letter to me and I’ll post him,” said Mr. Opdyke. “My
office is at No. -- Wall street. Let him come before three.”

“Very good,” replied Old King Brady, and they left.

Now I fully expected that I was going to be sent out on that case, but
I wasn’t.

When I came out of the closet Old King Brady had nothing to say about
it, and didn’t allude to the matter for nearly five weeks--in fact till
after Lent.

One day he called me aside and said, “You remember those two dudes who
called on me that day you hid in the closet?”

“Yes,” said I.

“I sent a man to Opdyke,” he said, “and just as I supposed there was
nothing taken that night.”

“Surely you don’t suspect Mr. Opdyke gave you away?” I exclaimed.

“I do. He may not have done it intentionally, but I’m certain he did
it. I also have other suspicions. I’ve been quietly looking into this
case.”

“And your suspicions are?”

“No matter. I want you to take a hand in it, Kean.”

“All right, sir,” I said, willing enough.

“To-night Mrs. Welton, the mother of that young squirt, gives a ball.
You are to be present. You will be admitted without question, for the
servant who tends the door will be one of my men.”

“And then, sir?”

“And then you’ll catch the jewel thief if you can,” he replied,
somewhat testily.

“But have you no instructions?” I asked.

“No, sir. How can I have instructions when I don’t know anything
about the matter? Do the best you can. I select you because you are a
gentleman and have moved in good society. I expect you to catch that
jewel thief to-night Mr. Kean.”

“But,” I protested, “ain’t you expecting too much?”

“That remains to be seen, sir.”

“I thought Mrs. Welton’s diamonds were stolen?”

“Bless my soul, sir!” he exclaimed, “the woman is worth four or five
millions--don’t you suppose she’s bought new ones? Go, now, and do your
very best.”

I left the office feeling that I had shouldered a big responsibility.

Hurrying home I dressed in my swallow tail and took a cab to Mrs.
Welton’s. I had cards with all sorts of names engraved on them then. I
remember the one I handed to the butler bore the name of Mr. Winfield
Went. I eyed the man and saw at a glance that he was disguised. I
thought I recognized him, but more on that matter later on.

Once by the door, of course I passed into the parlors unchallenged, my
assumed name was announced, and Mrs. Welton greeted me most effusively.
Whether she knew me or not for what I really was I cannot say.

Mr. Opdyke was there, and so was Marcus Welton, but I am sure neither
of these gentlemen had the faintest suspicion that I was not straight.

The parlors were a perfect blaze of light; beautiful women and
correctly attired men were moving in every direction; hidden behind a
bank of flowers a noted orchestra discussed Lanner, Strauss, Offenbach,
and other noted composers of that day.

Did I join in and dance?

Well, now, you may be very sure I did.

Fortunately there was no one present whom I knew, for Mrs. Welton’s was
several pegs higher than any house I had ever visited before.

“What in the world am I to do?” I kept thinking. “Where am I to begin?”
It was a puzzler, but I hadn’t learned the secret of patient waiting
then.

After supper I strolled into the smoking-room.

There were a lot of gentlemen there, Mr. Opdyke among the rest.

I had no more than crossed the threshold than I perceived that they
were talking about the jewel thief.

“He’s given you one call, hasn’t he, Welton?” asked a Mr. Dalledouze.

“Yaas,” drawled Welton. “He got away with a lot, too. But my mother
has weplaced them. She don’t wear diamonds to-night, because she’s
afraid to show them, but there’s ten thousand dollars’ worth in her
dressing-case up-stairs, all the same.”

“Gad! I wouldn’t blow about it if I was you then,” spoke up a Mr.
Partello. “Whoever the jewel thief is, be very sure he passes for a
gentleman. He may be right among us now for all we know.”

Then everybody looked at me because I was a stranger, and I haven’t the
least doubt that some of them put me down for the thief.

“He’s bound to be caught sooner or later, though!” said Mr. Opdyke.

“Sure,” replied Partello. “No balls given without detectives now,
gentlemen.”

“I’m surprised,” I put in, “not to see one here to-night.”

“How do you know there ain’t one?” demanded Opdyke, putting his single
glass into his eye, and staring at me.

“Is there one?” I asked, as innocent as you please.

“I know nothing about it,” he said, shortly. I turned away, and began
talking to a gentleman who stood near me. But I kept my eye upon
everybody in the room.

“If the thief is here, he heard Welton’s foolish boast about the
diamonds,” I reflected. “If he heard that he will try to get them, and
there’s no better chance than now, while the gentlemen are busy with
their cigars.”

I watched curiously to see who would be the first to leave the room,
and made up my mind that I had got to do a little shadowing. I was
right.

“Welton!” exclaimed Mr. Opdyke suddenly. “I don’t want to hurt your
feelings, old fellow, but these cigars of yours are not worth a
continental.”

“Bought ’em at Lark and Gilford’s anyhow!” retorted Welton. “They cawst
twenty dollars a hundred, by Jove, so they ought to be good.”

“Pshaw! Price has got nothing to do with it,” cried Opdyke. “Let me
give you a cigar that I’ve struck. It’s in my overcoat pocket. I’ll
fetch it in just one minute. You wait.”

Now I had made up my mind to follow the first man who left the room,
and consequently I started to follow Mr. Opdyke.

Of course I had to wait a moment for decency’s sake, then I hurried out
to the coat-room. I went straight, too.

Mr. Opdyke was not there.

“Where’s that gentleman who was here a second ago, Sam?” I asked of the
darky who had charge of the coats.

“Warn’t no gemplum here, sah!” replied the fellow grinning, for I had
tipped him a dollar.

“Sure?”

“Suah as death, sah.”

I retreated. But I had not gone two steps before I met Mr. Opdyke
coming along the hall.

“Got through smoking?” he asked, nodding pleasantly.

“Yes,” I replied. “You were right about those cigars.”

“Of course I was.”

“Did you get those of yours?”

“Oh, yes. Just got them from my top coat. Have one?”

“Thank you.”

I accepted the weed, but I knew that it didn’t come from his coat.

“Madame,” said I to Mrs. Welton, drawing her aside a few moments later.
“I have a confession to make!”

“What is it, Mr. Went?” She was all smiles as she put the question,
and when I informed her that I was a detective she didn’t look a bit
disturbed.

“Well, sir, what is it?” she asked. “I knew a detective was in the
house, but I confess I did not suspect you.”

“I want you to go immediately and look at your jewel case,” I whispered.

She turned pale, and yet she ought to have expected it.

“You don’t mean----” she began.

“But I do, though. Which is your room, madam?”

She told me.

It was close to the door of that room that I met Mr. Opdyke with his
cigars.

Mrs. Welton took my advice.

“I’ll wait for you at the foot of the stairs,” I whispered.

In a moment she came back, looking paler still.

“Every diamond has been taken,” she whispered, excitedly, “and you know
the thief?”

“Pardon me, madam; I only suspect.”

“Who?”

“No matter.”

“Not--not my son?”

“Thank God, no, Mrs. Welton.”

She looked relieved.

“Don’t you arrest him here!” she said, hurriedly. “I’d rather lose the
diamonds twice over than to have it occur in my house. I’ll reward
Mr. Brady handsomely if the jewels are recovered, but it must be done
somewhere else.”

She left me, and I at once got my hat and coat and hurried to the
street.

As I passed out I noticed that there was another doorkeeper now, but I
thought nothing of it at the time.

Did I suspect Opdyke then?

I did, and with reason.

When I started to go back to the smoking room he was in the coat room
getting ready to leave. I did not stop to speak or delay a moment, but
just tipped the darky a wink, got my coat and slid out ahead.

“I’ll shadow that man,” I thought. “It won’t do to arrest him and get
left.”

Candidly, I hardly cared to undertake the job, for he was a big,
powerful fellow and had Mr. Dalledouze with him.

I slipped across the street, changing my opera hat for a slouch felt,
and putting on a false mustache.

There I stood behind a tree peering out and watching the steps of the
Welton mansion with eager eyes.

I was disappointed when I saw them come out together, but it couldn’t
be helped.

It was then just one o’clock.

They passed me and never suspected, still talking about the cigars.

Then I glided after them and saw them enter the Brunswick. They went
into the bar-room and so did I, but I simply passed in one door and out
the other. They were drinking at the bar; that was enough to tell me
that they meant to come out soon.

Opdyke came out alone ten minutes later. Afterward I learned that his
companion lived at the hotel.

He started down Fifth avenue. I moved along on the other side of the
way.

Once he looked round, and I knew that he was looking at me.

Did he suspect?

Evidently, for he crossed right over and managed to get behind me. I
grew nervous, but there was no safe way but to keep straight on.

How keenly I listened to the ring of his footsteps I’ll never tell you.
I still heard them; he was coming toward me--not going back.

“He don’t suspect,” I muttered. “Perhaps, after all, I’m wrong.”

Soon he passed me, for I had slackened my pace. He never turned his
eyes, though, but just walked straight across the square, passed the
Fifth Avenue Hotel, and I saw him stop and speak to a hack driver on
the Twenty-third street side.

Now, here is where what Old King Brady called my fine work came in.[1]
I saw Mr. Opdyke enter that hack, and I saw the driver leap on the box
and whip up his horses, but I did not make the mistake of thinking that
my man was inside.

Why?

Positively I can’t tell. I was too far away to see the dodge, but I
felt sure that he had passed through the hack, paying the fellow to
drive off as he did.

Therefore, instead of running after the hack down Twenty-third street,
as a fool would have done, I shot over to lower Fifth avenue, and was
just in time to spy my man walking on ahead at a rapid pace.

He had crossed the street while I was watching the hack.

Now I felt that I had no ordinary person to deal with. He knew me, and
he knew that I knew him.

Twice he looked around, but I took care to remain as much as possible
in the shadow of the buildings, so he did not see me. While I walked I
changed my hat for another and put on English side whiskers--then I
was a different man.

Where was he going?

I had not long to wait without knowing.

He hurried down Fifth avenue to Waverly Place--along Waverly Place to a
certain side street, running up the stoop of the corner house. Before I
could reach the spot he had passed inside.

Had I lost him?

At first I thought so, and was wondering what I ought to do when a
policeman came along.

I showed him my shield and told him what I was after.

“What’s going on in there?” I asked, pointing to the house.

“Sure that’s Mike Reed’s,” said the officer. “You must be a new hand at
the business if you don’t know Big Mike.”

Now I didn’t know Big Mike, and I said so, whereupon I was informed
that the big one ran a little game. How well the fellow knew!

“Is it a tough place?” I asked.

“So, so,” replied the officer.

I was too proud to ask him to help me. I was resolved to capture that
man myself and take him to the station--something I had never done as
yet.

But I am willing to admit that I was all in a tremble when I pulled
Mike Reed’s bell.

There was no trouble in getting in.

One sharp look on the part of the darky door-tender, and I was admitted.

There were quite a few persons in the lower rooms, and among them Mr.
Opdyke. He was standing over the _rouge-et-noir_ table, and had already
taken a hand in the game.

I walked boldly up to the table and joined in.

Opdyke looked up at me as I bought the chips, but his glance was only
momentary. It was quite evident that he did not suspect.

We played out four rounds, and to my astonishment I won.

I could see that Opdyke was getting worked up, and I threw down the
cards and walked away.

I was deeply perplexed.

How could I accomplish my purpose without raising a scene?

There was one way which had suggested itself to me at the outset, and
for want of a better plan I resolved to try that.

Now before I entered Big Mike’s at all, I had walked around on the side
street and taken a careful survey of the ground.

There was a low brick wall dividing the yard from the street, and a
back piazza behind the house.

If I could only get him out into the back yard and through the side
gate I thought, I shall be all right.

I knew it was make or break with me. If he was an innocent man, my
detective career was as good as closed, for Opdyke was a lawyer and a
member of a good New York family. Nothing short of finding the jewels
in his possession would fill the bill.

Then I resolved to try the power of dollars and my official shield.

“Sam,” I said, button-holing the darky in the hall.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you want to make ten dollars?”

“Yes, sir, you bet, ef it won’t cost me my job.”

“Do you see that tall, black-haired man in there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Know him?”

“Yes, sir. He often come here.”

“Is he liberal to you?”

“Never give me a cent, sir.”

“Look here, I’ll give you ten dollars now if you do just as I say.
It shan’t cost you your job and I’ll give you ten more. Sam, I’m a
detective. I want that man, and I won’t get him out of here without a
row--see!”

Sam’s eyes rolled until only the whites could be seen. I had displayed
my shield.

“What can I do, sir?” he asked, pocketing the bill.

“That back door,” I whispered, “is it ever used?”

“Always, to go out of after midnight, sir.”

“And the gate?”

“The gate opens on the inside, sir, wif a spring latch.”

“Sam,” I continued, “you open that gate, let me out the back way, and
then call out that gentleman, and tell him quietly that some one is on
the back stoop who wants to see him. If he comes out, you’ll find a ten
dollar bill on the stoop just as soon as we’re gone. Be sure you lock
the door after he passes through.”

When I told Old King Brady about that scheme, he laughed, and said it
was a crazy one, and might have got me into a heap of trouble.

Very good. I’m willing he should think so. It succeeded all the same.

Sam opened the gate, let me out on the stoop, and there I waited, ten
dollar bill in hand.

It was only for a few moments I had to wait, but I just want you to
understand that I got nervous. I was all in a shake when the door
suddenly opened, and Mr. J. Dudley Opdyke, without a hat, stepped out.

“You!” he exclaimed. “What the devil do you want with me, sir, that you
couldn’t say inside?”

Bang went the door behind him, and the key was heard to turn in the
lock.

I think he suspected the moment the door closed, but I didn’t give him
the chance to do anything--not even to say a word.

“I want you!” I hissed, covering him with my revolver, and clutching
his arm with what Old King Brady calls my iron grip.

He never said a word, but just went for me.

In an instant my revolver was knocked out of my hand, and we, locked in
each other’s arms, went rolling down the stoop.

Then I thought he had me.

He was trying to get at his pistol--I had no other weapon than the one
I had lost.

Everything seemed to depend then upon who happened to be the under dog.

Well, the under dog that time happened to be my humble self.

“I’ll never be taken alive,” he breathed, half rising and planting his
knee on my breast.

I saw the glitter of his revolver. I saw him raise it--heard the cock
click, when suddenly a firm voice now grown familiar to me spoke.

“Don’t yer do it, boss. Drop that shooter or you’re a dead duck.
One--two----”

The revolver went ringing to the pavement, and through the gate a man
came dashing with a cocked revolver in each hand. By that I would have
known him if by nothing else.

It was Mrs. Welton’s butler, but it was also Dave Doyle!

“Grab him!” he breathed.

I had already grabbed him.

“Snake him through the gate before the house gets onto us!” he added.

Well, in spite of the fight he showed we “snaked” him through the gate.

“What do you want?” Opdyke stammered, now completely cowed.

“These!” I exclaimed, pulling a jewel-case out of his inner pocket. “I
haven’t been shadowing you for nothing, my friend.”

“Diamonds!” echoed Dave, holding him while I opened the case.

“I knowed we’d fetch him, Sam, soon as ever I seen you go out of the
house and started on the shadow myself.”

Well, we got him safely to the station-house, and then sent for Old
King Brady.

After that I--but I think I’ve told my story about to the end, so I may
just as well wind up right here.

       *       *       *       *       *

NOTE:--Now, this is a case of double shadowing, and it illustrates also
a great principle in detective science, (which is that when two men
are earnestly working in a case, both determined to succeed) they will
seemingly play into each other’s hands.

I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s almost always so.

Dave Doyle told me next morning that he was just as certain that Sam
Kean would try to get his man out by the back way as he ever was of
anything.

How did he know it?

Now that is something I can’t tell you--I can only say that the same
thing has often happened to me.

You see I was inclined to suspect Opdyke, because I had taken the
trouble to inquire into his habits, but I had no idea that Sam would
get anything more than a clew that night.

Yet to make sure I had Doyle put on the door as butler, Mrs. Welton was
perfectly informed of the whole plot.

As soon as Opdyke and his friend Dalledouze left the house, Dave, who
had been alive to what was going on, followed them.

He shadowed Sam all the way to Big Mike’s, and never gave himself away
once.

How did he do it?

Why by keeping at a considerable distance and always in the shadow.

Of course one runs a risk of losing the game by doing this, but Dave
took the chances and won.

If Sam’s shadowing work was good, then Dave’s was better, but if I had
told either that the other one was working on the case I doubt if the
result would have been so good.

You can’t act out your true nature if you know some one is watching you
all the time.

Sam had not the faintest idea that Dave Doyle was on the case until
he sprang through Big Mike’s back gate just in time to save his life,
while Dave, who had been in the house all the afternoon, never knew
that Sam was coming until he suddenly appeared at the door.

Before this Dave had selected Mr. Opdyke as the thief--I mean before
the night of the party, because he had shadowed him to Big Mike’s the
day previous, and there saw him exhibit a set of diamond jewelry--pin,
ear-rings, etc.--of great value, which Dave at once recognized as
stolen goods.

That is why I hoped Sam would trap him, and that it would be valuable
practice for him, I knew, so--but there I’ve said enough and need only
add that after a long and weary trial Opdyke was convicted and sent to
Sing Sing on a fifteen year sentence, which was all it amounted to,
for he had powerful friends possessed of that mysterious influence
“political pull.”

Would you believe it? In less than six months I met Opdyke walking down
Broadway with all the assurance you please.

“Hello!” I exclaimed, grabbing him by the arm unceremoniously, “how did
you get out?”

“Go to thunder and find out!” he retorted, pulling away.

I wasn’t to be put off that way, so I grabbed him again and let him
understand that I meant business. I ran him around to headquarters in
short order.

Well, what do you think it amounted to for me?

Confidentially, let me tell you, that it came pretty near depriving me
of my own position on the police force.

Next day I met Mr. Opdyke sailing down Wall street.

I didn’t arrest him that time. He is now a noted stock operator and is
believed to be a millionaire, but I know him to be a rascal from the
crown of his head to the soles of his feet.

That’s the way the efforts of the detective are often brought to
nought. It is an outrage and a shame that it should be so, but so it is.

“Didn’t I send you to the island for six months last week?” asked my
friend Judge Curtain of a seedy looking specimen who was brought before
him for petty larceny the other day.

“Yes, yer honor,” was the answer.

“Then how is it that you are here?”

“Dunno, yer honor,” grinned the thief.

Nor did any one else seem to know.

This time the judge gave him two years, but six months later I saw him
walking calmly down the Bowery one night.

That’s the way it goes in New York and always has.

If you are ever going to make a successful detective you have got to
mind your own business strictly and not attempt to correct the morals
of those over you. Nothing but trouble for yourself can ever result.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] It is to illustrate Sam Kean’s shrewdness at this particular point
that I cite the case, to show how easily we may be thrown off the scent
when the criminal suspects.--O. K. B.




CHAPTER IV. DISGUISES.


My chapter on shadowing was such a long one, that I am afraid I have
tired my reader out.

Still, shadowing is a very important feature of the detective business,
and must receive particular attention if you want to be a success.

Let us now discuss disguises, the most important thing of all, perhaps.

There is far less disguising done by detectives than most people
imagine.

It requires an artist to make a success in this line.

I flatter myself that I have been exceedingly successful as a
disguiser, and at one time in my life my great forte was disguising as
an old woman. I sometimes do that yet, but not very often, for it is a
terribly dangerous part to play.

Now I can’t be expected to expose my secret methods of changing my
appearance which it has taken me a life time to learn.

Nor can any other detective. They simply won’t do it. I’ll advise, but
further than that I cannot go.

A poorly arranged disguise is worse than none at all, for a sharp
criminal can almost always penetrate it, and the moment he does it’s
all up with you, of course.

For ordinary work full disguises are not necessary.

But a detective should keep a smooth-shaven face and closely-cropped
hair at all times, so that by slipping on a false mustache or a wig he
can alter his whole appearance. This is about as far as it usually is
necessary to go.

Suppose my man who went with the defaulter to South America had
depended on a disguise how far do you suppose he could have got without
being discovered?

You see the point. A calm exterior at all times and unbounded assurance
is better than the best disguise.

Of course if a man is a bit of a ventriloquist it is a great help, but
this is a rare gift, and not always to be depended upon even with those
who possess it.

Change of clothing will do much. I always carry several hats; they are
made expressly for me, and can be stowed away on my person. My usual
coat is reversible; so is my vest, but with the trousers you can do
nothing in a hurry, of course.

A stand-up collar in place of a turn-down, a colored necktie instead of
a black one, a few skillfully-placed lines about the eyes and mouth will
change your whole appearance more than you have any idea.

This is about all I’ve got to say on the subject of disguises. It is
something every man must learn for himself. The best detectives rarely
employ them, but they are sometimes an absolute necessity for all that.

Dave Doyle, at the very beginning of his career, began to show marked
ability in making up a disguise.

I remember one case in particular where I sent him after some green
goods men in which he did very clever work in that line. Let him tell
the story himself.


DAVE DOYLE AND THE GREEN GOODS MEN.

When Old King Brady gave me that circular of the green goods men, sent
to him from Bean Corners, Kentucky, by an honest store-keeper, and told
me that he expected I would bag the fellows, I own up I was kind of
stumped.

“You’ve got to get good evidence against them, Dave,” he said. “It
won’t be no use for you to pull ’em in without you can prove just what
they are.”

The first thing I did was to ask Old King Brady to give me
instructions, but he wouldn’t do nothing of the sort.

“Work it your own way,” he said. “I won’t promise that I shan’t put
another man on either. I want to see how you make out.”

Well, the first thing I did was to take a long walk up Broadway and
think. I can always think better on Broadway than anywhere else.

I had read the circular over two or three times and about knew it by
heart.

It was signed by a feller named Clancy and stated, as all them
green-goods circulars do, that he had some of the best counterfeit
money in the world--so good that no one could ever detect it--which he
was willing to sell at such a cheap price that a man could easy get
rich in a week or two if he could only work the stuff off.

Of course there was no address. The fellow what got the circular was
told to write to the New York post-office and make an appointment at
some hotel.

This is just what I done. I wrote a letter to Mr. Clancy and sent it
out to a cousin of mine in Wisconsin to mail. I didn’t tell any one I
done this.

After about ten days I got a letter from my cousin enclosing one from
Mr. Clancy.

He was very glad that I had sense enough to take in the greatest
opportunity of the age. He would meet me at Van Dyke’s hotel in the
Bowery, just as I said, and would soon show me the way to get rich.

I said in my answer that I’d be in front of the hotel on a certain
day at a certain hour, and would blow my nose twice with a red
handkerchief. He was to know me by that. The name I gave was Spalding.
I made out I kept a country store at Jim’s River--that’s the name of
the town where my cousin lived.

Of course I was on hand at the appointed time.

So was Mr. Clancy.

I was made up just a little--not much--but I wasn’t made up like Mr.
Spalding.

Not a bit of it. I got Sam Kean to do that, for I had told him all
about the case, and asked him to help me out, which of course he did,
for ever since that night I saved his life in that Broadway store, Sam
and me has been the best of friends.

Sam stood right in front of the Van Dyke just as the big clock behind
the bar was striking three.

I was just across Bayard street, standing in the doorway of the New
England, taking the whole business in.

No sooner had Sam pulled out his red handkerchief, and given a snort
that knocked the cornet fellow in the Dime Museum across the street
silly, than I saw a good-looking chap with black whiskers and very
respectable, come across the Bowery.

He walked right by me, so I got a good look at him. Next thing I knew
he was talking to Sam.

I watched ’em for near half an hour. He seen me watching, too, and got
nervous, but this was just what I wanted, so I never budged.

Bimeby he give it up, and Sam went back into the hotel, Mr. Clancy
making tracks down the Bowery as fast as ever he could go.

“That’s all right,” says I. “So far first-rate.”

I wanted to speak to Sam most awfully, but I didn’t dare, for you see I
couldn’t tell who might be watching, so I just scooted down the Bowery,
and catching up with man, gave him a tap on the shoulder.

You’d just orter seen him turn on me, but I was as cool as a cucumber,
you bet.

“What yer want?” he says.

“You,” says I, showing my shield.

He turned white and then began to bluff.

“Oh, you go to blazes!” he says. “You don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“Yes, I do,” I says. “I know well enough. I’m sent after Clancy, the
green goods man, and you’re the very fellow, but if you’ll jest keep
your shirt on we may fix the thing up.”

“Say, young feller,” he whispered, catching my arm, “say, I ain’t
Clancy. Clancy’s a friend of mine, but if they’re onto our racket mebbe
we might fix it up together for him.”

“Of course, if you’re only reasonable,” I says.

“Oh, I’m the most reasonablest feller you ever seen,” he says, “if you
only rub me the right way. Let’s come and have a drink. I seen you
watching me back there, and I know’d you was a detective. I know’d,
too, that you was one of the sensible kind.”

Well, we went and had a drink--in fact we had three or four.

“Are the police onto us?” he says.

“They are,” says I. “If they wasn’t, why would I be here? They know
all about you, and I advise you as a friend to change your quarters at
once.”

“To-day?” he says, looking kind of scared like.

“Yes, to-day.”

“Won’t to-morrow do?” he says, laying a twenty dollar bill down on the
table where we was sitting.

“Green goods?” says I, picking up the bill.

“Not much,” says he, laughing. “I guess you know what green goods
amounts to as well as I do, Reilly,”--Reilly was the name I give him
when we first began to talk.

“To-morrow won’t do. I’m on the case to-day,” I says, “but to-morrow
I’ve got to go to Boston, and they may put on another man when I tell
them I saw you trying to scoop in a sucker at the Van Dyke.”

“But you won’t tell ’em?” he says.

“Oh, I’ll have to,” says I. “How do I know that some other feller
wasn’t watching me same as I was watching you?”

He looked kind of nervous and bothered like, and I knew why.

“Look here, boss,” I says, “how long do you want?”

“Only about an hour,” he says eager like, “and then I’ll be ready to
move, and there’ll be a hundred dollars dropped anywheres you say.”

“It’s a go,” says I. “Is that sucker well lined?”

“Three thousand,” says he. “I seen a thousand of it meself, and I know
there’s more.”

I may as well mention that Old King Brady lent me a thousand to work
with--real green goods; not a good bill among the lot, I thought.

“When are you going to meet him?” I says.

“About five o’clock,” says he, “in front of the Astor House. He’s
afraid to move about in daylight for fear the police will go for him.
Ha--ha! the fool. He’s just about the greenest I ever seen, yet he
seems to be an intelligent kind of a chap, too.”

“You shall have the time,” says I. “I won’t report till six
o’clock--will that do?”

“Oh, elegantly! Where’ll you lay in the meanwhile?”

“Is there a back way out of this place?”

“You bet there is.”

“Then that’s enough. I’ll manage the rest.”

“An’ the hundred dollars?”

I gave him a fictitious address to which I told him to mail the
money--as though he would have done it in any case.

Then we separated, I going out the back way, he by the front.

So far my little scheme had worked to a charm.

When I got round into Chatham Square I looked in every direction for
Mr. Clancy without being able to get a sight of him. At last I slid
into a certain saloon just above the Atlantic Garden. I expected to
find Mr. Spalding of Jim’s River waiting for me there and I did.

I made for the wash-room, and presently he followed.

“What luck, Sam?” I whispered, as soon as I made sure that we were
alone.

“Bully--he bit.”

“I should say so. You showed him the green goods?”

“Yes: he was so struck with the bigness of the pile that he never
stopped to look at them particularly--he feels dead sure they’re all
straight.”

“You didn’t find out where his place is?”

“Ah, no, I’m to meet him at the Astor House at 5, and he’s to take me
there.”

“I know all that,” I answered hurriedly. “Off with your clothes, old
man.”

“Not here, Dave,” he says.

“Yes, here. We’ll change a piece at a time. Must do it. All would be
spoiled if we were to be seen together.”

It was ticklish changing, but we got through with it splendid.

There was a glass in the place, and when I looked at myself I declare
I could hardly believe it wasn’t Sam in his disguise what was standing
there, but of course Sam hadn’t red hair, so he didn’t look much like
me.

I didn’t want that, though--didn’t expect it. ’Twasn’t part of the game.

“Lay low now, young feller,” says I, “and don’t let ’em see you. If
there’s any sign of a row you just sail right in.”

“You bet I will!” says he. “I ain’t forgot, Dave, that you saved my
life twice,” which was all very well for him to say, and I had no
objection to his thinking so, though, between ourselves, I never felt
that that fellow Opdyke had the courage to shoot.

Well, I was at the Astor House at five o’clock, feeling a little bit
shaky I will admit.

I seen him coming across from the post office. He’d been to get more
green goods letters from country suckers, I s’pose.

First off I thought he was going past, but pretty soon he saw me and
steered straight for me.

I watched him close as he gave me one sharp look. Then I knew I was
safe.

“You’re on time,” he says, coming up close to me. “See, I’ve been
over to the post-office, look at this bunch of letters. They are all
from fellows who’ve tried my goods and want more. That’s the kind of
business I do.”

“Let me read one of the letters so I’ll know you ain’t foolin’ me,” I
says, doing Sam’s country voice as well as I could.

I saw him come the flim-flam and snake a letter out of his pocket and
work it into the bundle.

That was the letter he gave me to read, of course, and equally of
course it was a blooming fake.

It told how the writer had used up ten thousand dollars in green goods
in three months without ever having a complaint.

He was the slickest fellow with his hands ever I seen. He got another
out of his pocket somehow, pretending to get it out of the pile, and I
never seen him, although I was looking for that very thing.

“Seems to be a good business,” says I.

“You bet,” says he.

“Can we go now?” says I.

“We could have gone this afternoon if it hadn’t been for you,” says he.
“There’s nothing at all to fear. I’ve been doing this thing too long
not to know how to manage the racket, you bet.”

“Where’s your place?” says I.

“Come with me and I’ll show you,” says he.

I asked him if he was sure there wasn’t no one watching us, which gave
me an excuse to look ’round for Sam, who had stopped over by the post
office. I couldn’t see nothing of him, though, and I wondered where
he’d gone.

“Come on; it’s all safe,” says Clancy. “I’ve got the biggest pull with
the police of any man in New York. Why, I pay the commissioners their
little divvy. I don’t bother with no captains even. There isn’t an
officer of the force what would dare to touch me.”

I could hardly keep from laughing as I followed him around into Ann
street, where gamblers and green goods men used to be a big sight
plentier in them days than they are now.

We got to a door on the left hand side just beyond the alley.

I thought he was going up-stairs to Jack Bridge’s place, but no, he
made a dive down into a lager beer saloon in the basement, took me into
a back room and then, unlocking a door, we landed in a little box of a
place about four by five, where there was nothing but a stove, a desk
and a couple of chairs.

He locked the door first of all--then he turned on me.

I tell you now if I wasn’t measuring that man it’s a caution!

“I wonder which of us two’s got the most muscle,” thinks I.

“Let’s see your money, Mr. Spalding!” says he, handing me a cigar and
lighting one himself.

“Let’s see yours!” says I. “Gimme a light!”

“You’re a cool one,” says he. “D’yer ’spose I’m going to give up my
green goods and take my chances of getting my pay?”

“But you’ve seen my money once.”

“Oh, all right. You’re suspicious. You think I ain’t straight. That’s
what’s the matter with you, my boy.”

“Not at all. I only want to be on the safe side. I haven’t come all the
way from Wisconsin to be sucked in--let me tell you that.”

“You needn’t holler so,” he says. “I hain’t deef. Do you want every one
in the saloon to hear you?”

“You don’t think there’s no danger, do you?” I says.

“No, I guess nothing serious is done yet,” says he, “but to make all
sure I’ll just step out and look how the land lays.”

I knew his game. He’d gone to make ready to shift the bags--it was
the old dodge. I made up my mind to use the minute I had for all it
was worth. There was two doors to the place, the one leading into the
saloon we’d came in by. I wanted to see where the other led to and I
found out, for I opened it with one of my skeleton keys. Theater Alley
was outside.

I didn’t fasten the door, and had no more’n time to get back to the
desk where he’d left me than Mr. Clancy was in again.

“It’s all right,” he says. “Nobody tumbled. Don’t talk so loud
again--that’s all. Now I’ll show you the goods, and we’ll close this
little transaction in just about two seconds. I want you to understand,
my friend, that this is no saw-dust swindle. I know you think so, but
you are as much mistaken as though you’d lost your shirt. There’ll
be no sending the goods by express. No, sir. I shall give them to you
right in this room, and here they are.”

He opened a drawer in the desk and took out a big pile of new
greenbacks--straight money, mind you, every bit of it. It takes money
to run a green-goods business, I want you to understand.

“How much’ll you take?” says he, after I had examined one or two sample
bills till I told him I was satisfied.

“Guess I’ll strike in with a thousand dollars’ worth,” says I. “How
much’ll that buy?”

“Three thousand,” he says. “I’m going to be liberal with you, Spalding,
and give you three for one.”

“Wall,” says I as though I was thinking like, “if that’s the case you’d
better make it two thousand.”

“Say three?”

“Hain’t got so much.”

“But you said you had up at the Van Dyke.”

“Wall, letter go,” I says. “You see, three thousand in counterfeit
bills was just what I had.”

He counted out his money and I counted mine.

Then he counted mine and I counted his.

“How you going to carry it?” says he, kinder nervous like.

His eyes were fixed so sharp on his own money in my hands that he
hardly looked at mine, and as the place was kinder dark never seemed to
tumble to the fact that it wasn’t all O.K.

“Carry it in my pockets,” says I.

“That pile?” says he--“you see it was all ones and fives, while mine
was in fifties and hundreds and there was a slew of ’em. You can’t do
it. You’d be overhauled before you could get to the Herald office. I’ll
lend you my grip sack,” he says.

It was the old dodge--just what I’d been expecting. I felt kind of
nervous myself then, especially for Old King Brady’s counterfeit money,
for it’s against the law for any one to handle counterfeit money--even
detectives are not excepted, I want you to understand, and my boss had
told me he’d hold me responsible if it wasn’t got back.

He put his money in the bag and mine in the desk.

Then he put the bag on the desk and began jumping round all of a
sudden, whispering that there was a row in the saloon and he’d have to
go out and see what it was. There must have been a row if noise went
for anything, but I’ve no doubt it was a put up job.

He ran to the door, and I pretended to follow him, but all the same I
had my eye peeled for the bag, and saw it disappear through a panel in
the back of the desk just as I had expected, and another just like it
come in its place.

“It’s all right; only two fellers fighting,” he says, popping in next
minute. “Now, then, everything is all straight, and you’d better light
out as soon as you can, for that fight may draw the cops in.”

He picked up the bag and handed it to me.

“You’d better go out this way,” he says, pointing to the door.

Now the ticklish time had come.

Where was Sam? It had been arranged that he should follow me and be
ready to help in case I needed him, but I hadn’t seen nothing of him
when I looked out.

Clancy seemed surprised when he found the door unlocked.

“Slide right out,” he whispered. “I hear some one coming.”

“All right,” says I, “but you’ll come, too,” and I grabbed him by the
collar, and, before he knew what was coming, was dragging him up the
steps.

I’d dropped the bag and had yanked out my revolver, but I never got the
chance to use it--oh, no!

Quick as a wink he out with a knife and tried to get at me.

I saw the flash of the blade and managed to knock up his arm.

Then I went down right in the alley and he on top of me.

I tell you I was scared. Things began to dance before my eyes, and I
thought I was a goner when all at once two men jumped out from behind a
lot of ash barrels and pulled him over on his back.

“Old King Brady!” I heard him gasp, and there it ended as far as he was
concerned.

“Hold him, Dave!” hollered Old King Brady, diving through the door.

Me and the other fellow held on like grim death, you bet. Let’s see, I
forgot to say that the other fellow was Sam.

That was about the end of it altogether, for Old King Brady scooped in
his pal at the point of the revolver just as he was coming through the
door to find out what the row was all about.

It was a mighty lucky thing for me, too, that they happened to come
along just as they did, for if they hadn’t I honestly believe I’d been
a dead man in about one minute’s time.

We scooped ’em both, but we didn’t get their money, for of course the
bag was stuffed with old newspaper. What became of it we never knew.
Old King Brady found his in the drawer of the desk, though, and when I
began to talk about it as counterfeit he only laughed at me.

“I was fooling you about that, Dave,” he said. “It’s every dollar of it
good.”

       *       *       *       *       *

NOTE.--Of course I wouldn’t have dared to handle counterfeit money any
more for that purpose than any other, for it’s entirely against the law
even to have the stuff in your possession.

I own I let Dave believe that it was counterfeit, although I didn’t
actually tell him so, and I did this because I thought he’d be too
cautious with it and spoil the whole game if he thought it was good.

Of course I ran the risk of losing it--I knew that. I expected to lose
it, but I was willing to take the chances for the sake of accomplishing
my ends.

Now I must say that my pupil displayed considerable ingenuity in
handling the case, and as I had never asked him, and he had never told
me any of his plans from the moment he began to work, he was justly
surprised that I happened along as I did.

But it was no accident.

I knew all about it. I saw the meeting at the Van Dyke, I overheard the
conversation in the saloon, I followed them from the Astor House to Ann
street, and was peering through the window when the transfer of the
money was made.

Dave told Sam Keen all about the business, and Sam, by my direction,
told me.

I had put the boy on his mettle, but I didn’t propose to see him
harmed, and he came precious near losing his life as it was.

Now there’s an example of how I can shadow. I’d say more about it, but
I don’t want to boast.

I changed my appearance three times that afternoon. Sam knew me, for
he helped me, but Dave never had the slightest suspicion that he was
under “Old King Brady’s” eye.

We sent those two rascals up for a long term, and so far as I know,
they served it out. I presume the saloon keeper got the money and kept
it. Of course he was one of the gang, and I closed up his place in a
hurry, but as I could prove nothing against him he was soon set free.

Dave, adopting Sam’s disguise, was as skillful a piece of business as I
ever did.

I don’t think Clancy--that wasn’t his name by the way--has the
slightest idea to this day that he was not dealing with the same person
from first to last.




CHAPTER V. RINGING IN.


Another very important duty that a detective often has to perform is to
“ring in with the gang.”

To arrest a criminal without having first obtained sufficient evidence
to convict him of his crimes, seldom leads to any good result.

Often gangs of thieves organize for business, and if you get one you
get all of them, as a rule, for thieves seldom have any honor among
themselves, the old saying to the contrary, nevertheless.

Now to catch a gang like this it is often necessary to select a man to
join them, a very ticklish business, by the way.

If the thieves are young men, you’ve got to get a young man to do the
job. I’d be no use at all in such a case.

I remember shortly after the green goods case that an order came to me
from the inspector to look into the matter of a gang of young toughs
who were believed to make their headquarters in an unused sewer away up
on First avenue.

For a long time these scoundrels had maintained a perfect reign of
terror in the neighborhood of East 66th street, knocking men down
and robbing them in broad daylight, breaking into stores, coming the
flim-flam game on women, and all that sort of business.

There’s just such a gang operating on the West side of New York now,
and the police seem quite powerless to do anything to put them down.

When the matter was placed in my hands I sent for Dave and told him
that he must join that gang, find out their secret hiding-place and
then betray them into my hands.

Dave heaved a sigh.

“Couldn’t you get somebody else to do that beside me, Mr. Brady?” he
asked.

“Why, Dave,” said I, “you have been selected because I think you just
the man for the job. What’s the matter with you going? Why do you
object?”

“Well, to tell the trute, Mr. Brady (Dave always dropped into his old
New York accent the moment he was the least excited), that gang is a
tough one.”

“You are afraid?”

“Oh, no!”

“I could hardly believe it after all the evidence I have had of your
courage. What, then?”

“Bad luck to it all, me first cousin, Patsey Malloy, is running that
gang,” he blurted out. “You wouldn’t have me go against my own flesh
and blood!”

“Now you look here, young man,” said I, going up to him and shaking my
finger in his face. “You just want to understand one thing, and that
is, if you are ever going to make a successful detective, you’ve got to
lay all personal considerations aside. This Patsey Malloy--is he a bad
one?”

“You’re right, he is!” replied Dave gloomily.

“Has he broken the law?”

“A t’ousand times!”

“And you are under your solemn oath to arrest all lawbreakers?”

Dave looked confused.

“Can’t we fix it no way so’s to save Patsy?” he asked.

“If that could be done I suppose you would just as soon see the rest
bagged as not?” said I.

“Why, of course!” he answered, hastily. “And I think it can be fixed.
I’ll see Patsy and let him know it’s either a question of his turning
State’s evidence and giving me the gang or having some one else put on
what’ll scoop ’em all in.”

“Would he do that?” I asked.

“Why, of course, rather than be took himself,” replied Dave, looking
surprised that I should ask such a question.

That settled it so far as Dave was concerned. I told him that I’d think
about it and let him know. I saw at once that he was not the man for
the work. Then I sent for Sam Kean.

As soon as he came I told him the whole story.

“Do you think you could ring in with that gang?” I asked.

“I’d like to try ever so much,” he said. “I’ve wanted this long time to
see what I could do with the roughest classes.”

“Ain’t you afraid?”

“Not a bit of it.”

“If they get an idea of the truth they’ll certainly kill you. Your life
wouldn’t be worth two cents.”

“I’ll take the risk, Mr. Brady,” he said, boldly.

“All right,” said I; “you shall do it; but you must work quick. I want
you to begin to-night.”

“I’ll do it, sir,” he said, and he did do it most effectually. Let him
tell the rest of the story himself.


JOINING THE GANG.

It was a cold night when I joined the sewer gang.

Old King Brady says I must make a short story of it, so I’ll just begin
in the middle and not tell how I located the gang--how I found that one
of their hanging out places was a certain gin mill on the corner of
First avenue and Seventy-third street; how I learned that they numbered
more than seventy, ranging in age from twelve years to thirty. Briefly
I found out all that and more.

It was a howling wilderness up in that neigborhood in those days,
though it’s all altered now; literally howling that night, for the
wind blew a perfect gale, as it is very apt to do in the month of March.

I knew all about the neighborhood, for during the week I had been
scouring it in every direction collecting evidence.

I heard of men being waylaid and knocked down in broad daylight, or
unwary drunkards being lured into those solitudes, robbed and thrown
over the rocks into the East River; of burglaries and all sorts of
outrages being committed. Yes, I want you to understand that gang was
tough.

So was I--in appearance.

I wore a pair of ragged trousers, old shoes with my frozen toes
almost on the ground. Overcoat I had none, and the coat I did have
was thin, dirty and ragged, buttoned up to the throat to conceal a
fearful-looking shirt, under which were three others, or I should
certainly have frozen to death. As for my hat, I need only say that I
picked it out of the ash scow at the Seventeenth street dump.

When I reached the lumber shed on the corner of Sixty-ninth street I
stopped and whistled, leaning up against the fence.

Presently I heard a voice speak through a knot-hole in the fence and
say:

“Is it you?”

“Yes,” said I.

“All O.K.?”

“Yes,” said I. “I’m to meet him in ten minutes. I had a long talk with
him last night and all is fixed.”

“Where is it?” asked the voice.

“Couldn’t find out,” I replied. “You’ll have to follow me and see.”

“All right. Be very careful,” said the voice--then all was quiet.

I had worked hard to get as far as I had got in the business. How I
managed to get acquainted with one of the leading spirits of the gang I
ain’t going to tell.

It is enough to say that I had got acquainted with him and that he had
promised to initiate me that night.

“Red McCann”--that was his name. I met him in the gin-mill ten minutes
later.

He and two other toughs were waiting for me by appointment. They
greeted me in the most friendly manner and we had several beers at my
expense.

It was a great night for me, and I was expected to treat. I was going
to “join the gang.”

Soon we started across lots working down toward the river. Just what
street we were near at last I can’t say, for but few were opened then,
and these being cut through the solid rock all looked alike. It was
terrible cold, and I want you to understand that I was glad to get to
the end of the journey at last.

“Ain’t we most there?” I asked of Red McCann. “I’m just about perished.”

“Oh, you’ll be there soon enough, cully,” he answered, winking at his
companion, a fellow called “Schnitz.” Whether it was really his name or
not, I’m sure I don’t know.

I saw the wink, and for the first time I began to wonder whether, after
all, I had not deceived myself in thinking that I had deceived these
fellows as to my true character.

But, no; I couldn’t believe it--I wouldn’t believe it.

I had worked so hard to accomplish my purpose. I had gone to lengths
that made me shudder to think of.

Beside, I knew if they even suspected me my life was scarce worth a
rush. I forced myself--absolutely forced myself--not to be afraid.

“Is it much further, Red?” I asked in my best “tough” dialect.

“Only a little way,” he answered. “Do you see that house right by the
river bank?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see de woods on de left?”

“The woods,” was a little clump of locust trees, once a shady grove in
some gentleman’s grounds in the days when the house would have been
called a mansion.

“I see,” I said.

“Well, we get into the sewer through that house by way of de cellar,”
answered Red. “We’ve got a underground passage cut jist like you read
about in dime novels. Oh, I tell you it’s bully! We’ve got feather beds
and eat off chiny dishes. We only take our beer out of silver mugs----”

“You lie,” broke in Schnitz laughing; “we keep our beer in silver kegs
and drink it outer gold steins.”

“You’re fooling me, boys,” said I, in dismay, an icy coldness striking
around my heart.

“Not much, you son of a gun!” cried Red. “It’s you who are trying to
fool us. Hey fellers! Here we are! Let’s initiate Detective Kean!”

Can you fancy my feelings at that moment?

If you can’t try and fancy them at the next, when I suddenly found
myself surrounded by twenty or thirty of the toughest-looking specimens
I ever laid my eyes on.

We had reached the grove now, and a man seemed to spring from behind
every tree.

I saw that my midnight mission was already accomplished.

Make no mistake--I had joined the gang!

It was no use to attempt to defend myself.

They were around me like a pack of wolves in an instant, a dozen
hands held me, a dozen more were going through my clothes, possessing
themselves of revolvers, knives, money--everything, even to my official
shield, which, like a fool, I had loose in my trousers’ pocket.

If ever I felt sick it was then, but I had hope.

The voice which talked to me through the lumber yard fence was Old King
Brady’s.

He ought to be on hand with a posse of police even now.

“Oh, you needn’t look for your friends,” cried Red McCann sneeringly.
“We seen you talking with them down by the lumber yard. We’ve fixed all
that--we’ve given ’em the proper steer.

“Hey fellers!” he added, “this is the bloke what tought he was goin’
ter ring in wid us. What’ll we do wid him! It’s for you to say.”

“Punch him! Slug him! Shoot him! Drown him?”

These and several other pleasing suggestions were offered by the crowd.

Where was Old King Brady?

Was it as Red claimed that he had been thrown off the scent.

I felt that I was lost then, and I am willing to admit that I gave
myself up to die, for they fell upon me like savages, kicking and
beating me, dragging me at last to the edge of the rocky bluffs which
overhung the East river, and pushing me over.

Before I knew what was coming I went whirling through the air with
frightful velocity, striking the water below with a resounding splash.

That is the way I joined the gang!

Never shall I forget the moment when I rose to the surface and began
struggling with that terrible current which sweeps through the narrow
channel between Blackwell’s Island the New York shore.

It seemed hours since I had fallen, yet it could scarce have been
seconds.

Up on the hill I could hear men shouting, and as I straggled toward the
rocks I saw Old King Brady and his policemen appear on the bluffs and
look down.

“Help! help! help!” I shouted, but the wind swept my voice over to the
island. To my despair I saw Old King Brady turn away and I knew that he
had not heard.

“Help! help! Help, Mr. Brady!” called another voice right before me as
if in echo of my own.

I raised my eyes and looked ahead.

I was near the rocks now, swimming as well at my bruised and frozen
limbs would permit.

There, crouching upon them, I saw the figure of one of the gang whom I
instantly recognized as a fellow who had been particularly active in
the attack upon myself.

Oh, how my heart sank!

I turned on my back and was about to strike out into the deep channel,
when suddenly I saw Old King Brady coming back to the edge of the bluff.

“Hold on, Sam. Hold on! Don’t go back for God’s sake!” called the
fellow on the rocks in a familiar voice.

He leaned forward, caught my foot, and began dragging me in shore.

Did I resist him?

Oh, no! I guess not.

I was so surprised, so overcome, that I think I must have fainted.

When I came to myself a moment later, I was lying on the rocks above
the reach of the tide, and bending over me were Old King Brady and the
young tough.

“Kean! Kean! rouse yourself!” exclaimed the detective. “I was just a
moment or two slow. Thank goodness! he’s coming round all right again!
You’ve been deceived, Kean; they’re on to you----”

“Well, I should think I might know it,” I answered, somewhat testily.
“I’ve been sucked in, fooled, played with--it’s a wonder I wasn’t
killed.”

“Which you might have been if it hadn’t been for our friend here,” he
answered, glancing at the young man who had appeared upon the rocks.
“It’s all right though. You’ve tracked ’em here, and that’s been the
means of bringing about just what we want, or will be. This young man
is going to show us the way into the sewer, he says.”

“To turn informer?” said I. “Why, he’s one of the gang, you know.”

“Yes, yes, and here come _my_ gang down the rocks at last. Now, then,
young man, pilot the way, and I’ll make it worth your while, you can be
very sure.”

He raised his lantern, which he had drawn from his pocket, and threw
its light before the villain’s face, starting back as he did so with an
exclamation of surprise.

“Dave! Dave Doyle! It can’t be,” he burst out.

“But it is, though, Mr. Brady,” was the quiet reply. “You wouldn’t
trust me, so I had to do this job myself. I’ve done it too. Call your
men, get ready your revolvers. I’m going to show you the secret way
into the sewer, and there’s nothing in the world to prevent you from
capturing the whole gang.”

       *       *       *       *       *

NOTE.--Well, I own I was surprised when my lantern suddenly revealed
Dave standing there upon the rocks.

You see, I hadn’t been thinking anything about the fellow, so why
should I expect to see him? I was taken all aback.

I presume my readers expected an entirely different termination to this
story.

Let me add, so did I.

I thought Sam was succeeding splendidly, I never dreamed that Dave had
moved in the matter till I saw through his carefully arranged disguise
as we three stood there on the rocks.

I have introduced this case simply to show you how detectives sometimes
get left as well as other folks.

It was Dave, not Sam who showed us the secret entrance to the sewer
in which the gang had their headquarters, and whither they had now
retreated in fancied security. I had not been deceived by the false
“steer.”

But I have not space enough left to tell how we captured them.

Let it suffice to say that we did capture them, that we scooped them
in completely, and during the brief fight none fought better than Dave
Doyle who captured his cousin with his own hands.

To this day I doubt if Mr. Patsy Malloy knows that it was Dave.

We broke up the sewer gang forever, and sent a lot of them over to the
island, and now for the point I want to bring out strong.

Every man to his own kind.

That’s the best rule a detective has to follow.

If it is hard to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, it is equally
hard to make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.

I tried to make a tough out of Sam Kean, and I failed.

Why, Dave, who had secretly joined the sewer gang a week before Sam got
ready to begin, told me that they saw through Sam from the very start.

“He couldn’t fool ’em, Mr. Brady,” he said. “I was awful sorry I
couldn’t warn him, and I would have done so if I’d knowed he was going
to come that night, but I didn’t until it was too late. I meant all
along to tell him in time.”

“Why couldn’t he fool ’em, Dave?” I asked.

“Can’t you tell a tough when you see one?”

“I rather think I can.”

“Then so can we tell a gentleman. I’m a tough myself, and I know.”

He was right, but be overstated the case in calling himself a tough.

Dave Doyle had been born among them and brought up among them, but he
never was a tough himself, but a thoroughly honest fellow from the word
go.

When I intimated that he was not the man for the sewer-gang job, on
account of his relationship with the leader, he resolved to show me
that he was the man, and he did.

Dave succeeded without an effort where Sam, with all his efforts,
failed, and came within an ace of losing his life.

Therefore, I say, every one to his place.

But Sam Kean made a splendid detective. I used him as my society man
for years, until he went off at last on his own hook.

So also with Dave. He remained my man for the work in the slums and a
better one I never had.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now then, boys, has all this taught you how to become a detective?

I’m afraid not.

I’m afraid that after all you feel disappointed that I have not laid
down some cast-iron rule which will throw you into the high tide of
success in our business like the touch of Aladdin’s lamp.

Let me say to the disappointed ones confidentially give up the idea of
ever becoming a detective.

It will be just as well, in fact, a great deal better.

If you can’t see the force of all my remarks, if you can’t learn the
lessons contained in the cases cited, believe the old man when he tells
that your genius runs in other channels, and you will do better to
leave the detective business severely alone.

As for the rest of you--you who have read this little book and enjoyed
it, I mean--there is at least reason to believe that you might make
successful detectives if you have a mind to persevere.

But is the game worth the candle?

Think what a detective’s life means.

Hard work, exposed to cold, hunger, thirst, great danger, and every
privation. I’ve been through all of these things, and just so sure as
you embark in the business you’ll find yourselves there too.

Another thing which I haven’t mentioned that shouldn’t be forgotten.
It is the social position which the detective occupies--always has and
always will.

By nine men out of ten he is looked upon as a spy, and regarded with
dislike and distrust.

A detective can have but few friends; many have none.

Men may flatter him and praise his shrewdness, but they will ever shun
him and keep him at arm’s length.

I have grown rich at the business--very rich--but let me say right here
that I am one in a thousand.

Most of our detectives work hard and suffer much, and in the end die
poor and despised.

If you don’t believe me hunt up some detective and ask him; he’ll tell
you the same thing.

Still if you must be a detective start right and be honest, and you
will always be able to respect yourself, no matter what others may
think.

[Illustration: THE END.]

       *       *       *       *       *

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301 Fred Fearnot’s Gun Club; or, Shooting for a Diamond Cup.

302 Fred Fearnot and the Braggart; or, Having Fun with an Egotist.

303 Fred Fearnot’s Fire Brigade; or, Beating the Insurance Frauds.

304 Fred Fearnot’s Temperance Lectures; or, Fighting Rum and Ruin.

305 Fred Fearnot and the “Cattle Queen”; or, A Desperate Woman’s Game.

306 Fred Fearnot and the Boomers; or, The Game that Failed.


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286 The Bradys in the Saddle; or, Chasing “Broncho Bill.”

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298 The Bradys’ Call to Kansas; or, The Matter of Marshal Mundy.

299 The Bradys and Old Bill Battle; or, After the Colorado Coiners.

_For sale by all newsdealers or sent to any address on receipt of
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35 How to Play Games.

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51 How to Do Tricks with Cards.

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53 How to Write Letters.

54 How to Keep and Manage Pets.

55 How to Collect Stamps and Coins.

56 How to Become an Engineer.

57 How to Make Musical Instruments.

58 How to Become a Detective.

59 How to Make a Magic Lantern.

60 How to Become a Photographer.

61 How to Become a Bowler.

62 How to Become a West Point Military Cadet.

63 How to Become a Naval Cadet.

64 How to Make Electrical Machines.

65 Muldoon’s Jokes.

66 How to Do Puzzles.

67 How to Do Electrical Tricks.

68 How to Do Chemical Tricks.

69 How to Do Sleight of Hand.

70 How to Make Magic Toys.

71 How to Do Mechanical Tricks.

72 How to Do Sixty Tricks with Cards.

73 How to Do Tricks with Numbers.

74 How to Write Letters Correctly.

75 How to Become a Conjuror.

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78 How to Do the Black Art.

79 How to Become an Actor.

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       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber’s Notes:

The one footnote has been moved to the end of its chapter and relabeled.

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typos have been corrected.

Changes have been made as follows:

p. 21: Greenpoint changed to Greenport (to Greenport and)

p. 27: statue changed to stature (my stature, and)





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Be a Detective, by Old King Brady

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 50902 ***