Courts and Criminals Part 5

The National Bankers' a.s.sociation has eleven thousand members. "Pinkerton's Bank and Bankers' Protection" also has a large organization of subscribers. These devote themselves to identifying and running down all criminals whose activities are dangerous to them. Here the agency and the police work hand in hand, exchanging photographs of crooks and suspects and keeping closely informed as to each other's doings. Yet there is no official connection between any detective agency and the police of any city. It is an almost universal rule that a private detective shall not make an arrest. The reasons for this are manifold. In the first place, the private detective has neither the general authority nor the facilities for the manual detention of a criminal. A blue coat and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, to say nothing of a night stick, are often invaluable stage properties in the last act of the melodrama. And as the criminal authorities are eventually to deal with the defendant anyway, it is just as well if they come into the case as soon as may be. It goes without saying, of course, that a detective per se has no more right to make an arrest than any private citizen-nor has a policeman, for that matter, save in exceptional cases. The officer is valuable for his dignity, avoirdupois, "bracelets," and other accessories. The police thus get the credit of many arrests in difficult cases where all the work has been done by private detectives, and it is good business for the latter to let them know it.

One of the chief a.s.sets of the big agency is its acc.u.mulated information concerning all sorts of professional criminals. Its galleries are quite as complete as those of the local police headquarters, for a constant exchange of art objects is going on with the police throughout the world. And as the agency is protecting banks all over the United States it has greater interest in all bank burglars as a cla.s.s than the police of any particular city who are only concerned with the burglars who (as one might say) burgle in their particular burg. Thus, you are more likely to find a detective from a national agency than a sleuth from 300 Mulberry Street, New York, following a forger to Australasia or Polynesia.

The best agencies absolutely decline to touch divorce and matrimonial cases of any sort. It does not do a detective agency any good to have its men constantly upon the witness stand subject to attack, with a consequent possible reflection upon their probity of character or truthfulness. Moreover, a good detective is too valuable a person to be wasting his time in the court-room. In the ordinary divorce case the detective, having procured evidence, is obliged to remain on tap and subject to call as a witness for at least three or four months, during which time he cannot be sent away on distant work. Neither can the customer be charged ordinarily for waiting time, and apart from its malodorous character the business is not desirable from a financial point of view.

The national agencies prefer clean criminal work, murder cases, and general investigating. They no longer undertake any policing, strike-breaking, or guarding. The most ridiculous misinformation in regard to their partic.i.p.ation in this sort of work has been spread broadcast largely by jealous enemies and by the labor unions.

By way of ill.u.s.tration, one Thomas Beet, describing himself as an English detective, contributed an article to the 'New York Tribune' of September 16, 1906, in which he said:

"In one of the greatest of our strikes, that involving the steel industry, over two thousand armed detectives were employed supposedly to protect property, while several hundred men were scattered in the ranks of strikers as workmen. Many of the latter became officers in the labor bodies, helped to make laws for the organizations, made incendiary speeches, cast their votes for the most radical movements made by the strikers, partic.i.p.ated in and led bodies of the members in the acts of lawlessness that eventually caused the sending of State troops and the declaration of martial law. While doing this, these spies within the ranks were making daily reports of the plans and purposes of the strikers. To my knowledge, when lawlessness was at its height and murder ran riot, these men wore little patches of white on the lapels of their coats so that their fellow detectives of the two thousand would not shoot them down by mistake."

He, of course, referred to the great strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892. In point of fact, there were only six private detectives engaged on the side of the employers at that time, and these were there to a.s.sist the local authorities in taking charge of six hundred and fifty watchmen, and to help place the latter upon the property of the steel company. These watchmen were under the direction of the sheriff and sworn in as peace officers of the county. Mr. Beet seems to have confused his history and mixed up the white handkerchief of the Huguenots of Nantes with the strike-breakers of Pennsylvania. It is needless to repeat (as Mr. Robert A. Pinkerton stated at the time), that the white label story is ridiculously' untrue, and that it was the strikers who attacked the watchmen, and not the watchmen the strikers. One striker and one watchman were killed.

But this attack of Mr. Beet upon his own profession, under the guise of being an English detective (it developed that he was an ex-divorce detective from New York City), was not confined to his remarks about inciting wanton murder. On the contrary, he alleged (as one having authority and not merely as a scribe) that American detective agencies were practically nothing but blackmailing concerns, which used the information secured in a professional capacity to extort money from their own clients.

"Think of the so-called detective," says Mr. Beet, "whose agency pays him two dollars or two dollars and fifty cents a day, being engaged upon confidential work and in the possession of secrets that he knows are worth money! Is it any wonder that so many cases are sold out by employees, even when the agencies are honest?"

We are constrained to answer that it is no more wonderful than that any person earning the same sum should remain honest when he might so easily turn thief. As the writer has himself pointed out in these pages, there are hundreds of so-called detective agencies which are but traps for the guileless citizen who calls upon them for aid. But there are many which are as honestly conducted as any other variety of legitimate business. I do not know Mr. Beet's personal experience, but it appears to have been unfortunate. At any rate, his diatribe is unfounded and false, and the worst feature of it is his a.s.sertion that detective agencies make a business of manufacturing cases when there happen to be none on hand.

"Soon," says he, "there were not enough cases to go around, and then with the aid of spies and informers the unscrupulous detectives began to make cases. Agencies began to work up evidence against persons and then resorted to blackmail, or else approached those to whom the information might be valuable, and by careful manoeuvring had themselves retained to unravel the case. This brought into existence hordes of professional informers who secured the opening wedges for the fake agencies. Men and women, many of them of some social standing, made it a practice to pry around for secrets which might be valuable able; spies kept up their work in large business establishments and began to haunt the cafes and resorts of doubtful reputation, on the watch for persons of wealth and prominence who might be foolish enough to place themselves in compromising circ.u.mstances. Even the servants in wealthy families soon learned that certain secrets of the master and mistress could be turned to profitable account. We shudder when we hear of the system of espionage maintained in Russia, while in the large American cities, unnoticed, are organizations of spies and informers on every hand who spend their lives digging pitfalls for the unwary who can afford to pay."

One would think that we were living in the days of the Borgias! "Ninety per cent," says Mr. Beet, "of private detective agencies are rotten to the core and simply exist and thrive upon a foundation of dishonesty, deceit, conspiracy, and treachery to the public in general and their own patrons in particular. There are detectives at the heads of prominent agencies in this country whose pictures adorn the Rogues' Gallery; men who have served time in various prisons for almost every crime on the calendar."

This harrowing picture has the modic.u.m of truth that makes it insidiously dangerous. But this last extravagance betrays the denunciator. One would be interested to have this past-master of overstatement mention the names of these distinguished crooks that head the prominent agencies. Their exposure, if true, would not be libellous, and it would seem that he had performed but half his duty to the public in refraining from giving this important, if not vital, information.

I know several of these gentlemen whose pictures I feel confident do not appear in the Rogues' Gallery, and who have not been, as yet, convicted of crime. A client is as safe in the hands of a good detective agency as he is in the hands of a good attorney; he should know his agency, that is all-just as he should know his lawyer. The men at the head of the big agencies generally take the same pride in their work as the members of any other profession. They know that a first-cla.s.s reputation for honesty is essential to their financial success and that good will is their stock in trade. Take this away and they would have nothing.

In 1878 the founder of one of the most famous of our national agencies promulgated in printed form for the benefit of his employees what he called his general principles. One of these was the following:

"This agency only offers its services at a stated per diem for each detective employed on an operation, giving no guarantee of success, except in the reputation for reliability and efficiency; and any person in its service who shall, under any circ.u.mstances, permit himself or herself to receive a gift, reward, or bribe shall be instantly dismissed from the service."

Another:

"The profession of the detective is a high and honorable calling. Few professions excel it. He is an officer of justice, and must himself be pure and above reproach."

Again:

"It is an evidence of the unfitness of the detective for his profession when he is compelled to resort to the use of intoxicating liquors; and, indeed, the strongest kind of evidence, if he continually resorts to this evil practice. The detective must not do anything to farther sink the criminal in vice or debauchery, but, on the contrary, must seek to win his confidence by endeavoring to elevate him, etc."

"Kindness and justice should go hand in hand, whenever it is possible, in the dealings of the detective with the criminal. There is no human being so degraded but there is some little bright spark of conscience and of right still existing in him."

Last:

"The detective must, in every instance, report everything which is favorable to the suspected party, as well as everything which may be against him."

The man who penned these principles had had the safety of Abraham Lincoln in his keeping; and these simple statements are the best refutation of the baseless a.s.sertions above referred to.

It may be that in those days the detection of crime was a bit more elementary than at the present time. One can hardly picture a modern sleuth delaying long in an attempt to evangelize his quarry, but these general principles are the right stuff and shine like good deeds in a naughty world.

As one peruses this little pink pamphlet he is constantly struck by the repeated references to the detective as an actor. That was undoubtedly the ancient concept of a sleuth. "He must possess, also, the player's faculty of a.s.suming any character that his case may require, and of acting it out to the life with an ease and naturalness which shall not be questioned." This somewhat large order is, to our relief, qualified a little later on. "It is not to be expected, however," the author admits, "that every detective shall possess these rare qualifications, although the more talented and versatile he is, the higher will be the sphere of operation which he will command."

The modern detective agency is conducted on business principles and does not look for histrionic talent or general versatility. As one of the heads of a prominent agency said to me the other day:

"When we want a detective to take the part of a plumber we get a plumber, and when we need one to act as a boiler-maker we go out and get a real one-if we haven't one on our pay rolls."

"But," I replied, "when you need a man to go into a private family and pretend to be an English clergyman, or a French viscount, or a brilliant man of the world-who do you send?"

The "head" smiled.

"The case hasn't arisen yet," said he. "When it does I guess we'll get the real thing."

The national detective agency, with its thousands of employees who have, most of them, grown up and received their training in its service, is a powerful organization, highly centralized, and having an immense sinking fund of special knowledge and past experience. This is the product of decades of patient labor and minute record. The agency which offers you the services of a Sherlock Holmes is a fraud, but you can accept as genuine a proposition to run down any man whose picture you may be able to identify in the gallery. The day of the impersonator is over. The detective of this generation is a hard-headed business man with a stout pair of legs.

This acc.u.mulated fund of information is the heritage of an honest and long established industry. It is seventy-five per cent of its capital. It is entirely beyond the reach of the mushroom agency, which in consequence has to accept less desirable retainers involving no such requirements, or go to the wall. The collection of photographs is almost priceless and the clippings, letters, and memoranda in the filing cases only secondarily so. Very few of the "operators" pretend to anything but common-sense, with perhaps some special knowledge of the men they are after. They are not clairvoyants or mystery men, but they will tirelessly follow a crook until they get him. They are the regular troops who take their orders without question. The real "detective" is the "boss" who directs them.

The reader can easily see that in all cases where a crime, such as forgery, is concerned, once the ident.i.ty of the criminal is ascertained, half the work (or more than half) is done. The agencies know the face and record of practically every man who ever flew a bit of bad paper in the United States, in England, or on the Continent. If an old hand gets out of prison his movements are watched until it is obvious that he does not intend to resort to his old tricks. After the criminal is known or "located," the "trailing" begins and his "connections" are carefully studied. This may or may not require what might be called real detective work; that is to say, work requiring superior power of deducing conclusions from first-hand information, coupled with unusual skill in acting upon them. Mere trailing is often simple, yet sometimes very difficult. A great deal depends on the operator's own peculiar information as to his man's habits, haunts, and a.s.sociates. It is very hard to say in most cases just where mere knowledge ends and detective work proper begins. As for disguises, they are almost unknown, except such as are necessary to enable an operator to join a gang where his quarry may be working and "rope" him into a confession.

Detective agencies of the first-cla.s.s are engaged princ.i.p.ally in clean-cut criminal work, such as guarding banks from forgers and "yeggmen"-an original and dangerous variety of burglar peculiar to the United States and Canada. In other words, they have large a.s.sociations of clients who need more protection than the regular police can give them, and whose interest it is that the criminal shall not only be driven out of town, but run down (wherever he may be), captured, and put out of the way for as long a time as possible.

The work done for private individuals is no less important and effective, but it is secondary to the other. The great value of the "agency" to the victim of a theft is the speed with which it can disseminate its information-something quite impossible so far as the individual citizen is concerned. Let me give an ill.u.s.tration or two.

Between 10.30 P.M. Sat.u.r.day, February 25, 1911, and 9.30 A.M. Sunday, February 26, 1911, one hundred and thirty thousand dollars worth of pearls belonging to Mrs. Maldwin Drummond were stolen from a stateroom on the steamship 'Amerika' of the Hamburg-American line. The London underwriters cabled five thousand dollars reward and retained to investigate the case a well-known American agency, which before the 'Amerika' had reached Plymouth on her return trip had their notifications in the hands of all the jewelers and police officials of Europe and the United States, and had covered every avenue of disposal in North and South America. In addition, this agency investigated every human being on the Amerika from first cabin to forecastle.

Within a year or so an aged stock-broker, named Bancroft, was robbed on the street of one hundred thousand dollars in securities. Inside of fifty-five minutes after he had reported his loss a detective agency had notified all banks, brokers, and the police in fifty-six cities of the United States and Canada.

In the story books your detective scans with eagle eye the surface of the floor for microscopic evidences of crime. His mind leaps from a cigar ash to a piece of banana peel and thence to what the family had for dinner. His brain is working all the time. It is, of course, all quite wonderful and most excellent reading, and the old-style sleuth really thought he could do it! Nowadays, while the fake detective is snooping around the back piazza with a telescope, the real one is getting the "dope" from the village blacksmith or barber or the waitress at the station. He may not be highly intelligent, but he knows the country, and, what is more important, he knows the people. All the brains in the world cannot make up for the lack of an elementary knowledge of the place and the characters themselves. It stands to reason that no strange detective could form as good an opinion as to which of the members of your household would be most likely to steal a piece of jewelry as you could yourself. Yet the old-fashioned Sherlock knew and knows it all.

One of the best ill.u.s.trations of the practical necessity of some first-hand knowledge is that afforded by the recovery of a diamond necklace belonging to the wife of a gentleman in a Connecticut town. The facts that are given here are absolutely accurate. The gentleman in question was a retired business man of some means who lived not far from the town and who made frequent visits to New York City. He had made his wife a present of a fifteen thousand-dollar diamond necklace, which she kept in a box in a locked trunk in her bedroom. While she had owned the necklace for over a year she had never worn it. One evening having guests for dinner on the occasion of her wedding anniversary she decided to put it on and wear it for the first time. That night she replaced it in its box and enclosed this in another box, which she locked and placed in her bureau drawer. This she also locked. The following night she decided to replace the necklace in the trunk. She accordingly unlocked the bureau drawer, and also the larger box, which apparently was in exactly the same condition as when she had put it away. But the inner box was empty and the necklace had absolutely disappeared. Now, no one had seen the necklace for a year, and then only her husband, their servants, and two or three old friends. No outsider could have known of its existence. There was no evidence of the house or bureau having been disturbed.

A New York detective agency was at once retained, which sent one of its best men to the scene of the crime. He examined the servants, heard the story, and reported that it must have been an inside job-that there was no possibility of anything else. But there was nothing to implicate any one of the servants, and there seemed no hope of getting the necklace back. Two or three days later the husband turned up at the agency's office in New York, and after beating about the bush for a while, remarked:

"I want to tell you something. You have got this job wrong. There's one fact your man didn't understand. The truth is that I'm a pretty easy going sort, and every six months or so I take all the men and girls employed around my house down to Coney Island and give 'em a rip-roaring time. I make 'em my friends, and I dance with the girls and I jolly up the men, and we are all good pals together. Sort of unconventional, maybe, but it pays. I know-see?-that there isn't a single one of those people who would do me a mean trick. Not one of 'em but would lend me all the money he had. I don't care what your operator says, the person who took that necklace came from outside. You take that from me. The superintendent, who is wise in his generation, scratched his chin.

"Is that dead on the level?" he inquired.

"Gospel!" answered the other.

"I'll come up myself!" said the boss.

Next day the boss behind a broken-winded horse, in a dilapidated buggy, drove from another town to the place where his client lived. At the smithy on the crossroads he stopped and borrowed a match.

"Anybody have good hosses in this town?" asked the detective.

"Sure!" answered the smith. "Mr. --- up on the hill has the best in the county!"

"What sort of a feller is he?"

The smith chewed in silence for a moment.