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Arthur Cheney Train
Courts and Criminals

CHAPTER V. Detectives and Others

A Detective, according to the dictionaries, is one "whose occupation it is to discover matters as to which information is desired, particularly wrong-doers, and to obtain evidence to be used against them." A private detective, by the same authority, is one "engaged unofficially in obtaining secret information for or guarding the private interests of those who employ him." The definition emphasizes the official character of detectives in general as contrasted with those whose services may be enlisted for hire by the individual citizen, but the distinction is of little importance, since it is based arbitrarily upon the character of the employer (whether the State or a private client) instead of upon the nature of the employment itself, which is the only thing which is likely to interest us about detectives at all.

The sanctified tradition that a detective was an agile person with a variety of side-whiskers no longer obtains even in light literature, and the most imaginative of us is frankly aware of the fact that a detective is just a common man earning (or pretending to earn) a common living by common and obvious means. Yet in spite of ourselves we are accustomed to attribute superhuman acuteness and a lightning-like rapidity of intellect to this vague and romantic class of fellow-citizens. The ordinary work of a detective, however, requires neither of these qualities. Honesty and obedience are his chief requirements, and if he have intelligence as well, so much the better, provided it be of the variety known as "horse" sense. A genuine candidate for the job of Sherlock Holmes would find little competition. In the first place, the usual work of a detective does not demand any extraordinary powers of deduction at all.

Leaving out of consideration those who are merely private policemen (often in uniform), and principally engaged in patrolling residential streets, preserving order at fairs, race-tracks, and political meetings, or in breaking strikes and preventing riots, the largest part of the work for which detectives are employed is not in the detection of crime and criminals, but in simply watching people, following them, and reporting as accurately as possible their movements. These functions are known in the vernacular as spotting, locating, and trailing. It requires patience, some powers of observation, and occasionally a little ingenuity. The real detective under such circumstances is the man to whom they hand in their reports. Yet much of the most dramatic and valuable work that is done involves no acuteness at all, but simply a willingness to act as a spy and to brave the dangers of being found out.

There is nothing more thrilling in the pages of modern history than the story of the man (James McPartland) who uncovered the conspiracies of the Molly McGuires. But the work of this man was that of a spy pure and simple.

Another highly specialized class of detectives is that engaged in police and banking work, who by experience (or even origin) have a wide and intimate acquaintance with criminals of various sorts, and by their familiarity with the latters' whereabouts, associates, work, and methods are able to recognize and run down the perpetrators of particular crimes.

Thus, for example, there are men in the detective bureau of New York City who know by name, and perhaps have a speaking acquaintance with, a large number of the pick-pockets and burglars of the East Side. They know their haunts and their ties of friendship or marriage. When any particular job is pulled off they have a pretty shrewd idea of who is responsible for it and lay their plans accordingly. If necessary, they run in the whole gang and put each of them through a course of interrogation, accusation, and browbeating until some one breaks down or makes a slip that involves him in a tangle. These men are special policemen whose knowledge makes them detectives by courtesy. But their work does not involve any particular superiority or quickness of intellect—the quality which we are wont to associate with the detection of crime.

Now, if the ordinary householder finds that his wife's necklace has mysteriously disappeared, his first impulse is to send for a detective of some sort or other. In general, he might just as well send for his mother-in-law. Of course, the police can and will watch the pawnshops for the missing baubles, but no crook who is not a fool is going to pawn a whole necklace on the Bowery the very next day after it has been "lifted." Or he can enlist a private detective who will question the servants and perhaps go through their trunks, if they will let him. Either sort will probably line up the inmates of the house for general scrutiny and try to bully them separately into a confession. This may save the master a disagreeable experience, but it is the simplest sort of police work and is done vicariously for the taxpayer, just as the public garbage man relieves you from the burden of taking out the ashes yourself, because he is paid for it, not on account of your own incapacity or his superiority.

The real detective is the one who, taking up the solution of a crime or other mystery, brings to bear upon it unusual powers of observation and deduction and an exceptional resourcefulness in acting upon his conclusions. Frankly, I have known very few such, although for some ten years I have made use of a large number of so-called detectives in both public and private matters. As I recall the long line of cases where these men have rendered service of great value, almost every one resolves itself into a successful piece of mere spying or trailing. Little ingenuity or powers of reason were required. Of course, there are a thousand tricks that an experienced man acquires as a matter of course, but which at first sight seem almost like inspiration. I shall not forget my delight when Jesse Blocher, who had been trailing Charles Foster Dodge through the South (when the latter was wanted as the chief witness against Abe Hummel on the charge of subornation of perjury of which he was finally convicted), told me how he instantly located his man, without disclosing his own identity, by unostentatiously leaving a note addressed to Dodge in a bright-red envelope upon the office counter of the Hotel St. Charles in New Orleans, where he knew his quarry to be staying. A few moments later the clerk saw it, picked it up, and, as a matter of course, thrust it promptly into box No. 420, thus involuntarily hanging, as it were, a red lantern on Dodge's door.

There is no more reason to look for superiority of intelligence or mental alertness among detectives of the ordinary class than there is to expect it from clerks, stationary engineers, plumbers, or firemen. While comparisons are invidious, I should be inclined to say that the ordinary chauffeur was probably a brighter man than the average detective. This is not to be taken in derogation of the latter, but as a compliment to the former. There are a great many detectives of ambiguous training. I remember in one case discovering that of the more important detectives employed by a well-known private Anti-Criminal Society in New York, one had been a street vender of frankfurters (otherwise yclept "hot dogs"), and another the keeper of a bird store, which last perhaps qualified him for the pursuit and capture of human game. There is a popular fiction that lawyers are shrewd and capable, similar to the prevailing one that detectives are astute and cunning. But, as the head of one of the biggest agencies in the country remarked to me the other day, when discussing the desirability of retaining local counsel in a distant city: "You know how hard it is to find a lawyer that isn't a dead one." I feel confident that he did not mean this in the sense that there was no good lawyer except a dead lawyer. What my detective friend probably had in mind was that it was difficult to find a lawyer who brought to bear on a new problem any originality of thought or action. It is even harder to find a detective who is not in this sense a dead one. I have the feeling, being a lawyer myself, that it is harder to find a live detective than a live lawyer. There are a few of both, however, if you know where to look for them. But it is easy to fall into the hands of the Philistines.

The fundamental reason why it is so hard to form any just opinion of detectives in general is that (except by their fruits) there is little opportunity to discriminate between the able and the incapable. Now, the more difficult and complicated his task the less likely is the sleuth (honest or otherwise) to succeed. The chances are a good deal more than even that he will never solve the mystery for which he is engaged. Thus at the end of three months you will have only his reports and his bill—which are poor comfort, to say the least. And yet he may have really worked eighteen hours a day in your service. But a dishonest detective has only to disappear (and take his ease for the same period) and send you his reports and his bill—and you will have only his word for how much work he has done and how much money he has spent. You are absolutely in his power—unless you hire another detective to watch HIM. Consequently there is no class in the world where the temptation to dishonesty is greater than among detectives. This, too, is, I fancy, the reason that the evidence of the police detective is received with so much suspicion by jurymen—they know that the only way for him to retain his position is by making a record and getting convictions, and hence they are always looking for jobs and frame-ups. If a police detective doesn't make arrests and send a man to jail every once in a while there is no conclusive way for his superiors to be sure he isn't loafing.

There are a very large number of persons who go into the detective business for the same reason that others enter the ministry—they can't make a living at anything else, Provided he has squint eyes and a dark complexion, almost anybody feels that he is qualified to unravel the tangled threads of crime. The first resource of the superannuated or discharged police detective is to start an agency. Of course, he may be first class in spite of these disqualifications, but the presumption in the first instance is that he is no longer alert or effective, and in the second that in one way or another he is not honest. Agencies recruited from deposed and other ex-policemen usually have all the faults of the police without any of their virtues. There are many small agencies which do reliable work, and there are a number of private detectives in all the big cities who work single-handed and achieve excellent results. However, if he expects to accomplish anything by hiring detectives, the layman or lawyer must first make sure of his agency or his man.

One other feature of the detective business should not be overlooked. In addition to charging for services not actually rendered and expenses not actually incurred, there is in many cases a strong temptation to betray the interests of the employer. A private detective may, and usually does, become possessed of information even more valuable to the person who is being watched than to the person to whom he owes his allegiance. Unreliable rascals constantly sell out to the other side and play both ends against the middle. In this they resemble some of the famous diplomatic agents of history. And police detectives employed to run down criminals and protect society have been known instead to act as stalls for bank burglars and (for a consideration) to assist them to dispose of their booty and protect them from arrest and capture. It has repeatedly happened that reliable private detectives have discovered that the police employed upon the same case have in reality been tipping off the criminals as to what was being done and coaching them as to their conduct. Of course the natural jealousy existing between official and unofficial agents of the law leads to many unfounded accusations of this character, but, on the other hand, the fact that much of the most effective police work is done by employing professional criminals to secure information and act as stool-pigeons often results in a definite understanding that the latter shall be themselves protected in the quiet enjoyment of their labors. The relations of the regular police to crime, however, and the general subject of police graft have little place in a chapter of this character.

The first question that usually arises is whether a detective shall or shall not be employed at all in any particular case. Usually the most important thing is to find out what the real character, past, and associations of some particular individual may be. Well-established detective agencies with offices throughout the country are naturally in a better position to acquire such information quickly than the private individual or lawyer, since they are on the spot and have an organized staff containing the right sort of men for the work. If the information lies in your own city you can probably hire some one to get it or ferret it out yourself quite as well, and much more cheaply, than by employing their services. The leads are few and generally simple. The subject's past employers and business associates, his landlords and landladies, his friends and enemies, and his milkman must be run down and interrogated. Perhaps his personal movements must be watched. Any intelligent fellow who is out of a job will do this for you for about $5 a day and expenses. The agencies usually charge from $6 to $8 (and up), and prefer two men to one, as a matter of convenience and to make sure that the subject is fully covered. If the suspect is on the move and trains or steamships must be met, you have practically no choice but to employ a national agency. It alone has the proper plant and equipment for the work. In an emergency, organization counts more than anything else. Where time is of the essence, the individual has no opportunity to hire his own men or start an organization of his own. But if the matter is one where there is plenty of leisure to act, you can usually do your own detective work better and cheaper than any one else.

Regarding the work of the detective as a spy (which probably constitutes seventy-five per cent of his employment to-day), few persons realize how widely such services are being utilized. The insignificant old Irishwoman who stumbles against you in the department store is possibly watching with her cloudy but eagle eye for shoplifters. The tired-looking man on the street-car may, in fact, be a professional "spotter." The stout youth with the pince nez who is examining the wedding presents is perhaps a central-office man. All this you know or may suspect. But you are not so likely to be aware that the floor-walker himself is the agent of a rival concern placed in the department store to keep track, not only of prices but of whether or not the wholesalers are living up to their agreements in regard to the furnishing of particular kinds of goods only to one house; or that the conductor on the car is a paid detective of the company, whose principal duty is not to collect fares, but to report the doings of the unions; or that the gentleman who is accidentally introduced to you at the wedding breakfast is employed by a board of directors to get a line on your host's business associates and social companions.

In the great struggle between capital and labor, each side has expended large sums of money in employing confederates to secure secret information as to the plans and doings of the enemy. Almost every labor union has its Judas, and less often a secretary to a capitalist is in the secret employment of a labor union. The railroads must be kept informed of what is going on, and, if necessary, they import a man from another part of the country to join the local organization. Often such men, on account of their force and intelligence, are elected to high office in the brotherhoods whose secrets they are hired to betray. Practically every big manufacturing plant in the United States has on its payrolls men acting as engineers, foremen, or laborers who are drawing from $80 to $100 per month as detectives either (1) to keep their employers informed as to the workings of the labor unions, (2) to report to the directors the actual conduct of the business by its salaried officers, superintendents, and overseers, or (3) to ascertain and report to outside competing concerns the methods and processes made use of, the materials utilized, and the exact cost of production.

There are detectives among the chambermaids and bellboys in the hotels, and also among the guests; there are detectives on the passenger lists and in the cardrooms of the Atlantic liners; the colored porter on the private car, the butler at your friend's house, the chorus girl on Broadway, the clerk in the law office, the employee in the commercial agency, may all be drawing pay in the interest of some one else, who may be either a transportation company, a stock-broker, a rival financier, a yellow newspaper, an injured or even an erring wife, a grievance committee, or a competing concern; and the duties of these persons may and will range from the theft of mailing lists, books, papers, and private letters, up to genuine detective work requiring some real ability.

Detective work of the sort which involves the betrayal of confidences and friendships naturally excites our aversion—yet in many cases the end undoubtedly justifies the means employed, and often there is no other way to avert disaster and prevent fiendish crimes. Sometimes, on the other hand, the information sought is purely for mercenary or even less worthy reasons, and those engaged in these undertakings range from rascals of the lowest type to men who are ready to risk death for the cause which they represent and who are really heroes of a high order. One of the latter with whom I happened to be thrown professionally was a young fellow of about twenty named Guthrie.

It was during a great strike, and outrages were being committed all over the city of New York by dynamiters supposed to be in the employ of the unions. Young Guthrie, who was a reckless daredevil, offered his services to the employers, and agreed to join one of the local unions and try to find out who were the men blowing up office buildings in process of construction and otherwise terrorizing the inhabitants of the city. Accordingly he applied for membership in the organization, and by giving evidence of his courage and fiber managed to secure a place as a volunteer in the dynamiting squad. So cleverly did he pass himself off as a bitter enemy of capital that he was entrusted with secrets of the utmost value and took part in making the plans and procuring the dynamite to execute them. The quality of his nerve (as well as his foolhardiness) is shown by the fact that he once carried a dress-suit case full of the explosive around the city, jumping on and off street cars, and dodging vehicles. When the proper moment came and the dynamite had been placed in an uncompleted building on Twenty-second Street, Guthrie gave the signal and the police arrested the dynamiters—all of them, including Guthrie, who was placed with the rest in a cell in the Tombs and continued to report to the district attorney all the information which he thus secured from his unsuspecting associates. Indeed, it was hard to convince the authorities that Guthrie was a spy and not a mere accomplice who had turned State's evidence, a distinction of far-reaching legal significance so far as his evidence was concerned.

The final episode in the drama was the unearthing by the police of Hoboken of the secret cache of the dynamiters, containing a large quantity of the explosive. Guthrie's instructions as to how they should find it read like a page from Poe's "Gold Bug." You had to go at night to a place where a lonely road crossed the Erie Railroad tracks in the Hackensack meadows, and mark the spot where the shadow of a telegraph pole (cast by an arc light) fell on a stone wall. This you must climb and walk so many paces north, turn and go so many feet west, and then north again. You then came to a white stone, from which you laid your course through more latitude and longitude until you were right over the spot. The police of Hoboken did as directed, and after tacking round and round the field, found the dynamite. Of course, the union said the whole thing was a plant, and that Guthrie had put the dynamite in the field himself at the instigation of his employers, but before the case came to trial both dynamiters pleaded guilty and went to Sing Sing. One of them turned out to be an ex-convict, a burglar. I often wonder where Guthrie is now. He certainly cared little for his life. Perhaps he is down in Venezuela or Mexico. He could never be aught than a soldier of fortune. But for a long time the employers thought that Guthrie was a detective sent by the unions to compromise THEM in the very dynamiting they were trying to stop!

I once had a particularly dangerous and unfortunate case where a private client was being blackmailed by a half-crazy ruffian who had never seen him, but had selected him arbitrarily as a person likely to give up money. The blackmailer was a German Socialist, who was out of employment—a man of desperate character. He had made up his mind that the world owed him a living, and he had decided that the easiest way to get it was to make some more prosperous person give him a thousand dollars under threat of being exposed as an enemy of society.

The charge was so absurd as to be almost ludicrous, but had my client caused the blackmailer's arrest the matter would have been the subject of endless newspaper notoriety and comment. It was therefore thought wise to make use of other means, and I procured the assistance of a young German-American of my acquaintance, who, in the guise of a vaudeville artist seeking a job, went to the blackmailer's boarding-house and pretended to be looking for an actor friend with a name not unlike that of the criminal.

After two or three visits he managed to scrape an acquaintance with the blackmailer and thereafter spent much time with him. Both were out of work, both were German, and both liked beer. My friend had just enough money to satisfy this latter craving. In a month or so they were intimate friends and used to go fishing together down the bay. At last, after many months, the criminal disclosed to the detective his plan of blackmailing my client, and suggested that as two heads were better than one they had better make it a joint venture. The detective pretended to balk at the idea at first, but was finally persuaded, and at the other's request undertook the delivery of the blackmailing letters to my client! Inside of three weeks he had in his possession enough evidence in the criminal's own handwriting to send him to a prison for the rest of his life. When at last the detective disclosed his identity the blackmailer at first refused to believe him, and then literally rolled on the floor in his agony and fear at discovering how he had been hoodwinked. The next day he disappeared and has not been heard of since, but his letters are in my vault, ready to be used if he again puts in an appearance.

The records of the police and of the private agencies contain many instances where murderers have confessed their guilt long after the crime to supposed friends, who were in reality decoys placed there for that very purpose. It is a peculiarity of criminals that they cannot keep their secrets locked in their own breasts. The impulse to confession is universal, particularly in women. Egotism has some part in this, but the chief element is the desire for companionship. Criminals have a horror of dying under an alias. The dignity of identity appeals even to the tramp. This impulse leads oftentimes to the most unnecessary and suicidal disclosures. The murderer who has planned and executed a diabolical homicide and who has retired to obscurity and safety will very likely in course of time make a clean breast of it to some one whom he believes to be his friend. He wants to "get it off his chest," to talk it over, to discuss its fine points, to boast of how clever he was, to ask for unnecessary advice about his conduct in the future, to have at least one other person in the world who has seen his soul's nakedness.

The interesting feature of such confessions from a legal point of view is that, no matter how circumstantial they may be, they are not usually of themselves sufficient under our law to warrant a conviction. The admission or confession of a defendant needs legal corroboration. This corroboration is often very difficult to find, and frequently cannot be secured at all. This provision of the statutes is doubtless a wise one to prevent hysterical, suicidal, egotistical, and semi-insane persons from meeting death in the electric chair or on the gallows, but it often results in the guilty going unpunished. Personally, I have never known a criminal to confess a crime of which he was innocent. The nearest thing to it in my experience is when one criminal, jointly guilty with another and sure of conviction, has drawn lots with his pal, lost, confessed, and in the confession exculpated his companion.

In the police organization of almost every large city there are a few men who are genuinely gifted for the work of detection. Such an one was Guiseppe Petrosino, a great detective, and an honest, unselfish, and heroic man, who united indefatigable patience and industry with reasoning powers of a high order. The most thrilling evening of my life was when I listened before a crackling fire in my library to Joe's story of the Van Cortlandt Park murder, the night before I was going to prosecute the case. Sitting stiffly in an arm-chair, his ugly moon-face expressionless save for an occasional flash from his black eyes, Petrosino recounted slowly and accurately how, by means of a single slip of paper bearing the penciled name "Sabbatto Gizzi, P.O. Box 239, Lambertville, N.J.," he had run down the unknown murderer of an unknown Italian stabbed to death in the park's shrubbery.

Petrosino's physical characteristics were so pronounced that he was probably as widely, if not more widely, known than any other Italian in New York. He was short and heavy, with enormous shoulders and a bull neck, on which was placed a great round head like a summer squash. His face was pock-marked, and he talked with a deliberation that was due to his desire for accuracy, but which at times might have been suspected to arise from some other cause. He rarely smiled and went methodically about his business, which was to drive the Italian criminals out of the city and country. Of course, being a marked man in more senses than one, it was practically impossible to disguise himself, and, accordingly, he had to rely upon his own investigations and detective powers, supplemented by the efforts of the trained men in the Italian branch, many of whom are detectives of a high order of ability. If the life of Petrosino were to be written, it would be a book unique in the history of criminology and crime, for this man was probably the only great detective of the world to find his career in a foreign country amid criminals of his own race.

I have instanced Petrosino as an example of a police detective of a very unusual type, but I have known several other men on the New York Police Force of real genius in their own particular lines of work. One of these is an Irishman who makes a specialty of get-rich-quick men, oil and mining stock operators, wire-tappers and their kin, and who knows the antecedents and history of most of them better than any other man in the country. He is ready to take the part of either a "sucker" or a fellow crook, as the exigencies of the case may demand.

There are detectives—real ones—on the police force of all the great cities of the world to-day, most of them specialists, a few of them geniuses capable of undertaking the ferreting out of any sort of mystery, but the last are rare. The police detective usually lacks the training, education, and social experience to make him effective in dealing with the class of elite criminals who make high society their field. Yet, of course, it is this class of crooks who most excite our interest and who fill the pages of popular detective fiction.

The headquarters man has no time nor inclination to follow the sporting duchess and the fictitious earl who accompanies her in their picturesque wanderings around the world. He is busy inside the confines of his own country. Parents or children may disappear, but the mere seeking of oblivion on their part is no crime and does not concern him except by special dispensation on the part of his superiors. Divorced couples may steal their own children back and forth, royalties may inadvertently involve themselves with undesirables, governmental information exude from State portals in a peculiar manner, business secrets pass into the hands of rivals, racehorses develop strange and untimely diseases, husbands take long and mysterious trips from home—a thousand exciting and worrying things may happen to the astonishment, distress, or intense interest of nations, governments, political parties, or private individuals, which from their very nature are outside the purview of the regular police. Here, then, is the field of the secret agent or private detective, and here, forsooth, is where the detective of genuine deductive powers and the polished address of the so-called "man of the world" is required.

There are two classes of cases where a private detective must needs be used, if indeed any professional assistance is to be called in: first, where the person whose identity is sought to be discovered or whose activities are sought to be terminated is not a criminal or has committed no crime, and second, where, though a crime has been committed, the injured parties cannot afford to undertake a public prosecution.