_The "Javerts," "Old Sleuths" and "Buckets" of Fiction as Contrasted with the Genuine Article--Popular Notions of Detective Work Altogether Erroneous--An Ex-Detective"s Views--The Divorce Detective_.
We are told that "all the world loves a lover," and it is, perhaps, equally true that most people like to read the details of clever detective exploits. The deeds of criminals naturally awaken the emotions of horror, fear, curiosity and awe in proportion to their heinousness and the mystery by which they are enveloped. Consequently the detective officer who pierces the mystery--unravels it thread by thread, and by unerring sagacity penetrates its innermost depths and lays his hand on the criminal--is at once invested, in the popular mind, with qualities approaching the preternatural. The vivid and fertile imagination of the literary romancist magnifies the illusion. The detective of the successful novel resembles the Deity in his attributes of ubiquity and omniscience. In whatever city his functions are exercised we may be sure that he knows every man-Jack of the criminal cla.s.ses, their past and present history, their occupation and their residence. He knows all their names, their aliases and their soubriquets, just as Julius Caesar, as tradition tells, knew all the soldiers of his army. Moreover, they are invariably individuals of remarkable personality. While endowed with a strong spice of the world, the flesh and the devil, they are at the same time clothed in a sort of white robe of social immaculacy. They are half lamb and half wolf, if such a paradoxical being were possible.
Take, for instance, the Inspector Javert of Victor Hugo: A tall man, dressed in an iron-grey great coat, armed with a thick cane, and wearing a hat with a turndown brim; grave with an almost menacing gravity, with a trick of folding his arms, shaking his head and raising his upper lip with the lower as high as his nose, in a sort of significant grimace. He had a stub nose with two enormous nostrils, toward which enormous whiskers mounted on his cheeks. His forehead could not be seen, for it was hidden by his hat; his eyes could not be seen because they were lost under his eyebrows; his chin was plunged into his cravat; his hands were covered by his cuffs, and his cane was carried under his coat. But when the opportunity arrived there could be seen suddenly emerging from all this shadow, as from an ambush, an angular, narrow forehead, a fatal glance, a menacing chin, an enormous hand, and a monstrous rattan. When he laughed, which was rare and terrible, his thin lips parted and displayed not only his teeth but his gums, and a savage, flat curl formed round his nose. When serious he was a bulldog, when he laughed he was a tiger. His guiding principles--or perhaps instincts is the more appropriate word--were respect for authority and hatred of rebellion. In his eyes all crimes were only forms of rebellion. Give a human face, writes Hugo, to the dog-son of a she-wolf and we shall have Javert. No wonder that his glance was a gimlet, or that his whole life was divided between watching and overlooking. And, as if all this a.n.a.lytic rodomontade was not enough, we are told in characteristic rhetorical vagueness that he was a pitiless watchman, a marble-hearted spy, a Brutus contained in a Vidocq.
Readers of d.i.c.kens will remember that Mr. Bucket appears on the scene in Bleak House in a weird and mysterious way, which suggests that Inspector Byrne, of New York, had been a student of lawyer Tulkinghorn"s methods when he undertook to pump Alderman Jaehne. The sly lawyer is plying Snagsby with rare old port in the dim twilight and evolving his story, when suddenly the victim becomes conscious of the presence of "a person with a hat and stick in his hand, who was not there when he himself came in, and has not since entered by either of the windows." This composed and quiet listener is "a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of about middle age," and he looks at Snagsby "as if he was going to take his portrait." When the poor, hen-pecked wretch, who has thus been drawn into the legal confessional, learns that Mr. Bucket is a detective officer, "there is a strong tendency in the clump of Snagsby"s hair to stand on end."
The method of Bucket consists partly of gross flattery and of being "all things to all men," as Saint Paul somewhere advises. "You"re a man of the world," he says to Snagsby; "a man of business and a man of sense.
That"s what you are, and therefore it is unnecessary to tell you to keep QUIET." He flatters the gorgeous flunkey at Chesney Wold by adroitly commending his statuesque proportions, and hinting that he has a friend--a Royal Academy sculptor--who may one of those days make a drawing of his proportions. Further, to elicit the confidence of the vain and empty-headed Jeames, Bucket declares that his own father was successively a page, a footman, a butler, a steward, and an innkeeper.
As Bucket moves along London streets, young men, with shining hats and sleek hair, evaporate at the monitory touch of his cane. When there is a big job on the tapis "Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this pressing interest under consideration the fat forefinger seems to rise to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears and it whispers information; he puts it to his lips and it enjoins him to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose and it sharpens his scent; he shakes it before a guilty man and it charms him to his destruction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple invariably predict that when Mr. Bucket and that finger are much in conference a terrible avenger will be heard of before long."
Furthermore we are told that "Mr. Bucket pervades a vast number of houses and strolls about an infinity of streets, to outward appearance rather languishing for want of an object. He is in the friendliest condition toward his species, and will drink with most of them. He is free with his money, affable in his manners, innocent in his conversation--but through the placid stream of his life there glides an undercurrent of forefinger."
Sergeant Cuff, of The Moonstone of Wilkie Collins, is "a grizzled, elderly man, so miserably lean that he looked as if he had not got an ounce of flesh on his bones. He was dressed in a decent black with a white cravat. His face was sharp as a hatchet, and the skin of it yellow and dry like a withered autumn leaf. His eyes, of a steely, light gray, had a very disconcerting trick, when they encountered your eyes, of looking as if they expected something more from you than you were aware of yourself. His walk was soft, his voice was melancholy, his long, lanky fingers were hooked like claws. He might have been a parson, or an undertaker, or anything else you like, except what he really was." Then as to Cuff"s methods: He is introduced to the reader with the usual air of mystery. He makes no allusion whatever to the business he had been hurriedly summoned to investigate, but "he admired the grounds, and remarked that he felt the sea air very brisk and refreshing." To the gardener"s astonishment Cuff proved to be quite a mine of learning on the trumpery subject of rose gardens. As in the case of Bucket, the effective armor of Cuff is flattery. "You have got a head on your shoulders and you understand what I mean," is his typical style of address.
It is unnecessary to remind the reader that the detective of the novelist cannot be foiled or turned aside by false scents from the unerring pursuit of his lawful prey. If by _malice prepense_ Javert or Cuff is temporarily beguiled, it is simply for the purpose of showing that the writer himself is in reality a very much more ingenious person than even the subtle detective he depicts for the delectation of his readers. These tricks resemble those feints of failure common to professional gymnasts and trapezists, purposely perpetrated with the object of magnifying in the mind of the excited spectator the difficulty or danger of the performance.
In our American literature the most popular detective stories are not composed of the imaginary performances of fict.i.tious characters. We have made a great advance on that unsatisfactory and _effete_ style. To satisfy the exacting palate of our reading people, we require a real flesh-and-blood detective, with a popular name and reputation, to pose as the figurehead, while an ingenious scribbler does the romancing.
There is something thrilling and realistic in this method, and it carries an air of veracity which is irresistibly attractive and convincing. The French people did something of the same kind for Vidocq and Lecocq; but, as in most everything else, there is a pervading breeziness and expansiveness of horizon about the American product that is totally lacking in the _blaze_, frouzy, over-geometrical, Gallic detective romance.
No doubt the popular conception of the detective has been derived from the flash literature in which the "Old Sleuths" have formed the pervading figure. Concerning them, a clever ex-member of that particular branch of the force recently said:
"Now that I"m out of the business I don"t mind telling you what you perhaps already know--that the usual stories of detective work are the veriest bosh. There is not one officer in ten thousand, for instance, who ever disguises himself for any work he may be bent upon. The successful detective is the man who has the largest and most accurate knowledge of a particular cla.s.s of criminals. For instance, in a counterfeiting case there are one or two United States officers who will look at a bill, and after a scrutiny will say, "Now, let"s see; there are three men in the country who are capable of such work as this. Bad Jack is doing a ten-year stretch in Sing Sing, Clever Charley is in hock at Joliet, and Sweet William is the only one who is at large--it must be William." So he proceeds to locate William, and when they get him they have the man who did the work."
As to those very interesting newspaper reports about how Detective So-and-So, while strolling down Broadway, saw a suspicious-looking individual whom he "piped" to the east side of the city, and eventually arrested in possession of property supposed to have been the plunder from a certain burglary, they are equally misleading. As the ex-officer, quoted above, said:
"Ninety-nine out of a hundred cases are worked through the squeal of some thief, or ex-thief, who keeps posted on the doings of others of his cla.s.s in the city. He knows some officer intimately; goes to him and tells him that the night before One-Thumbed Charley turned a trick on Church street, and the stuff is "planted" at such and such a place.
Acting on this information, the officers visit the place indicated, and just sit around and wait till their man shows up. Lots of ability about that, isn"t there? Some people have an idea, you know, that after a burglary the detectives visit the house where it occurred, and, after examining certain marks on the window where the man got in, immediately say: "This is the work of Slippery Sam; he is the only fellow who does this sort of work in this particular style." Nothing of the kind. It"s just as I"ve told you in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. In the other cases, some citizen gives the officers information that leads to the capture of the man."
If the foregoing ill.u.s.trations serve no other purpose, they at least emphasize the point which might have been made at the outset of this chapter, that detectives are a recognized necessity of our civilization.
Crime and vice permeate every rank and every profession, and just as surely as crime and vice will always exist, so will detectives be employed to discover wrong-doers and hand them over to justice. Crime and vice are two terms used for the infraction of different kinds of laws--social and moral--and detectives may be conveniently cla.s.sed in the same way. The detectives who deal with the transgression of social laws, including such crimes as counterfeiting coin and notes, railroad bonds, scrip, etc., forgers, embezzlers, swindlers, and the wide cla.s.s of criminals generally, are exceedingly useful members of the community when they are inspired by a high sense of duty, and guided by principles of truth and integrity. The other cla.s.s of detectives who enact the role of Paul Pry on breaches of the moral law, as, for example, the working up of testimony in divorce cases, is mostly a despicable, unreliable, corrupt being, whose methods are villainous, and whose existence is a misfortune.
Concerning our New York detectives, a writer of some note said, as recently as 1879:
"It is claimed that in about eight years the district attorney"s office in New York has not known of one conviction of a criminal through the instrumentality of their detective police. And in those years the city has been overwhelmed and startled over and over again by depredations of almost fabulous magnitude. Still, although the scoundrels are known, and their haunts familiar to what are called "the detectives," they are never brought to justice unless they stagger up against the representatives of some of the many detective organizations in New York.
Instead of surrounding the thieves with a net-work of evidence to convict them, the New York headquarters" detectives furnish them with all the facilities for escape known to modern criminal practice."
No doubt this deplorable condition of affairs was very largely due to the prevailing practice of the victims of robberies compromising with the felons. In this way detectives eagerly seize the opportunity of acting as go-betweens, and hence their relations with the criminal cla.s.ses are established and maintained. They are thus largely interested, not in the prevention and discovery of crime, but in its perpetration and concealment. By this method they thrive, and their large incomes and acc.u.mulated property are no doubt largely attributable to the success of these delicate negotiations.
We are glad to bear testimony to the fact, however, that there is a great improvement in the detective force of this city, noticeable during its present administration. The men now engaged on the local detective force are as a cla.s.s, those who have kept their eyes open, and have formed a wide acquaintance among criminals in the district, and are therefore able to obtain information from these crooks about the movements of those suspected of having been mixed up in certain criminal work. For when the reader reflects how easily criminals keep out of the reach of the police in St. Petersburg, Paris and Vienna, where every concierge, every porter, every storekeeper, every housekeeper, is required to report to the police at least once a week all the details of strangers with whom they may have come in contact, it should be no wonder that criminals can elude the police in New York and other American cities.
Concerning the private detective agencies, it has been said by one of their number:
"They are no better than the regular officers so far as skill is concerned. The only real difference is that there is a superior intelligence in the make-up--their disguise--of the agency people. They are first-rate at shadowing a man, but any man with ordinary good sense, who knows how to keep his mouth shut, will make a good shadow. If you will watch the private agency men carefully you will find that they a.s.sociate largely with the high-toned criminal cla.s.s. They are solid with one or two leaders and all the gamblers. All thieves of any prominence are gamblers, and as soon as they turn a big trick, they are sure to turn up here or in some other city and "play the bank" a little.
The agency men who are a.s.sociating with the gamblers hear of this as soon as the crook strikes town, and a little inquiry set on foot will show where the crook came from. If, then, in the course of a few days, a complaint is lodged with the agency people from the town where the suspected party has been that a big confidence game has been played, or that a forged or raised check has been worked on some bank or other inst.i.tution, it is not very hard to imagine that the thief who was recently so flush is the one who turned the trick."
There are a great many private detective organizations in New York City, some of which are located in elegant and commodious quarters, with a net-work of agencies covering the whole country and extending even to Europe. Between these reliable firms and the guttersnipe operator there are among detectives, as among other professions, every grade of reliability and respectability, some making a handsome living and some earning a bare existence. There are some thousands of them, and they all occasionally find something to do which pays. It may be watching some money-broker"s exchange down-town, for the dishonest boy of some establishment clandestinely selling the postage stamps of his firm. It may be shadowing a confidential clerk, whose blood-shot eyes and generally "used-up" air have attracted the notice of his employers, who thereupon desire to learn where and how his evenings are spent. It may be some bank clerk, hitherto enjoying the confidence of the directors, but who now, in consequence of certain rumors, desire to have him watched. Or it may be any of a thousand instances in which an employee ceases to retain the full confidence of his employer, and the convenient private detective"s services are at once put in requisition. Undoubtedly it would greatly surprise the army of clerks, cashiers and a.s.sistants of this and every great city to learn how many of them are thus under detective espionage. The young fellow may have fallen into the web of the siren. He may be down at Coney Island or at the races enjoying himself; utterly unconscious that a pair of watchful eyes is observing every motion and chronicling every act. Some fatal morning the reckoning comes. He may be a bank teller, and he is requested by the board of directors to show his books and give an account of the situation and prospects of the bank. Despite his proficiency in bookkeeping, he will be unable to figure up and cover the money he has squandered in gambling houses, on the street, or at the race-course. _"Crimine ab uno disce omnes,"_ says Virgil. From a single offense you may gather the nature of the whole.
The detective who accepts employment for the purpose of procuring testimony in divorce cases is undoubtedly at the nadir of his profession. No self-respecting member of the private detective organizations will undertake the service even when the pecuniary inducement, as is frequently the case, is large and tempting. For testimony so procured is regarded by the courts with suspicion. The veracity of a person who would crawl into a house, peer through a key-hole or crane his head through a transom window for the purpose of witnessing an act of immorality, can hardly be considered higher than his sense of honor, decency and self-respect. When he stoops to this kind of business he will hardly manifest any remarkable zeal for truth-telling, and he will be quite likely to offer to sell his evidence to the other side--a course which invariably transpires when the other side is willing to pay for the information.
Violations of conjugal faith are, unfortunately, not unknown, but in the majority of cases the intrigue progresses in secure secrecy until some wholly unforeseen accident brings it to sudden and relentless publicity.
The recent case of a Brooklyn lady, who was carried into the city-hospital of that city about the beginning of last June, with both legs broken, ill.u.s.trates this position with singular force and aptness.
To quote from the article of the New York _Sun_ of June 7, 1886:
"Mrs. Williams is young and pretty. "She is not bad," her melancholy husband said of her yesterday, "only gay like." She has been married about ten years, and two little children--a boy and a girl--are now longing for a mother"s care and tenderness, which she cannot give them perhaps ever again. The faithful husband of the unfortunate woman is a hard-working man, honest if not dashing, devoted to his home, fond of his wife and proud of his children. "I have been way down," he says, "but I am getting good wages now and getting on top again. But Lizzie wasn"t content with these things. She was full of life, and I ought to have watched her long ago. Then this wouldn"t have happened."
"What has happened is this: When Lizzie went down on Fulton street on Sat.u.r.day a week ago, ostensibly to make some purchases, she didn"t return that night. Her husband"s anxiety was increased when on Sunday he had no tidings of her. Day after day pa.s.sed without word, and he sent for a young woman friend of Mrs. Williams to come in and look after the children and the household.
"On Thursday a young man from East New York, a friend of Mrs. Williams and a relative of a certain young lady friend of hers, stuck his head in the bas.e.m.e.nt window of Fainter Williams" house and said:
""Lizzy is in the City Hospital. She was hurt by a runaway, and both her legs are broken."
"Mrs. Williams had first sent word to her East New York friend, who had thus taken the first tidings of his wayward wife to her anxious husband. Williams went at once to the hospital and found his Lizzie. She told him she had been driving with a friend in Fulton avenue and had been hurt.
""Who was he?" Williams asked eagerly, the suspicions which he had been putting away from him for a long time suddenly becoming convictions.
""None of your business," said pretty Lizzie, defiantly. This reply was calculated to satisfy her husband that all was not right. In fact, it convinced him that everything was wrong, and in his excitement and pain he upbraided his wife with such vehemence that she called upon the hospital attendants to put him out of the ward unless he quieted down.
"Superintendent of Police Campbell heard of the alleged runaway in Fulton street, and he wanted to know why it had never been reported to him officially. He began an investigation and learned that the mishap had occurred out on the Coney Island boulevard. Mrs. Williams was confronted with this report. She denied its truth vehemently and protested "before Almighty G.o.d" and in the presence of nurses and patients that she was run over and hurt in Fulton street. Nothing could move her from this statement, and when fifty witnesses to her accident sent word to the Police Superintendent of what they had seen, she was not discomfited, but repeated her false statements with determination.
"Mr. Williams says that his wife has for a long time nodded to sportive-looking men as they have pa.s.sed his Bergen street house, and her absences from home have been irregular and sometimes prolonged indiscreetly into the evening. He has felt that her love of attention and social excitement was leading her beyond the bounds of propriety, but he had no doubt until now of her faithfulness to him and her children.
"Who took Mrs. Williams to drive on this eventful Sat.u.r.day afternoon a week ago is her secret, shared only by her escort. Where they met is not known by anyone, but they started about four o"clock and drove through Prospect Park to the Coney Island boulevard. The day was fine and many fashionable turnouts and flashy rigs were on the road. Mrs. Williams, in her close-fitting and becoming dark habit, sat beside a young man not over twenty-five years old, in a road wagon of approved style, and behind a well-kept and fleet-footed horse. It was unmistakably a private rig. Her escort was of light hair and complexion, fashionably dressed, and of a style that is called "giddy."
"Down the level road they drove at a good pace toward the King"s Highway, which crosses the boulevard about two and a half miles from the Park, and just north of John Kelly"s hospitable road house. A short distance before this point was reached ex-Alderman Ruggles of Brooklyn came bowling along at a 2.40 gait, and he gave the young man who was driving Mrs. Williams a brush along an open stretch of road. As they were speeding on toward Coney Island a dog-cart suddenly loomed up, coming from the opposite direction, and bore down upon the racers.
"Mrs. Williams and her friend were on the right side of the road and Alderman Ruggles was in the middle. The dog-cart undertook to pa.s.s between them, and in doing so struck the wheel of the light road wagon, throwing Mrs. Williams" companion out. He was not hurt, and he held on to the reins just long enough to check his horse"s speed and change his course. The spirited animal turned short across the road right in front of Kelly"s and the wagon was upset, throwing Mrs. Williams out. She fell under the wagon and her left ankle and right thigh were fractured. A great many people saw the upset and ran to the injured woman"s a.s.sistance . . . . . .
"When Mr. Williams was told about the accident he said, "If that"s so, I give her up. If she has done that I am through with her. She cannot come back to me. As long as she lies to me, to shield this other fellow, she may go to him. She can"t come to me.""
This giddy Brooklyn woman reckoned too much on her influence over her husband, when she expected to soothe his resentment by holding her tongue. Those women who deceive good, indulgent husbands, frequently discover, to their sorrow, that the most unmerciful and inexorable of men are those who have been deceived by their idolized partners. Yet men of this kind would be far more likely to thrash a private detective, who had possessed himself of the particulars of the amour in a sneaking way, than to recompense him, and properly, while the courts would absolutely refuse to receive such testimony unless abundantly corroborated. For those and other considerations, which will readily occur to the thoughtful reader, the detective who engages to get up testimony in cases of marital unfaithfulness is regarded as quite ghoulish by his fellow-detectives, and looked upon as being entirely unworthy of credence by lawyers and courts.
After all that has been said the press is, on the whole, the best detective--the most reliable and efficient agent against evil-doers.
When a crime is committed the daily newspaper, with its Argus eyes, gives such minute and circ.u.mstantial details, together with such exhaustive particulars concerning its environment, and the details of its perpetration and supposed authors, that the public at large, so instructed and informed, become detectives. Hence "crooked" and wicked people are really more afraid of the thunderbolt exposure of the newspapers than of the slower and more uncertain action of the law.
CHAPTER XX.
GAMBLING AND GAMBLERS.