II.—THE HUNTERS AND THE HUNTED.
Society, weak, gullible, and defenceless, handicapped by a thousand conventions, would soon be devoured alive by its greedy parasites: but happily it has devised the shield and buckler of the police; not an entirely effective protector, perhaps, but earnest, devoted, unhesitating in the performance of its duties. The finer achievements of eminent police officers are as striking as the exploits of the enemies they continually pursue. In the endless warfare success inclines now to this side, now to that; but the forces of law and order have generally the preponderance in the end. Infinite pains, unwearied patience, abounding wit, sharp-edged intuition, promptitude in seizing the vaguest shadow of a clue, unerring sagacity in clinging to it and following it up to the end—these qualities make constantly in favour of the police. The fugitive is often equally alert, no less gifted, no less astute; his crime has often been cleverly planned so as to leave few, if any, traces easily or immediately apparent, but he is constantly overmatched, and the game will in consequence go against him. Now and again, no doubt he is inexplicably stupid and shortsighted, and will run his head straight into the noose. Yet the hunters are not always free from the same fault; they will show blindness, will overrun their quarry, sometimes indeed open a door for escape.
In measuring the means and the comparative advantages of the opponents, of hunted and hunters, it is generally believed that the police have much the best of it. The machinery, the organisation of modern life, favours the pursuers. The world’s “shrinkage,” the facilities for travel, the narrowing of neutral ground, of secure sanctuary for the fugitive, the universal, almost immediate, publicity that waits on startling crimes—all these are against the criminal. Electricity is his worst and bitterest foe, and next to it rank the post and the Press. Flight is checked by the wire, the first mail carries full particulars everywhere, both to the general public and to a ubiquitous international police, brimful of camaraderie and willing to help each other. It is not easy to disappear nowadays, although I have heard the contrary stoutly maintained. A well-known police officer once assured me that he could easily and effectually efface himself, given certain conditions, such as the possession of sufficient funds (not of a tainted origin that might draw down suspicion), or the knowledge of some honest wage-earning handicraft, or fluency in some foreign language, and, above all, a face and features not easily recognisable. Given any of these conditions, he declared he could hide himself completely in the East-End, or the Western Hebrides, or South America, or provincial France, or some Spanish mountain town. In proof of this he declared that he had lived for many months in an obscure French village, and, being well acquainted with French, passed quite unknown, while watching for someone; and he strengthened his argument by quoting the case of the perpetrator of a recent robbery of pearls, who baffled pursuit for months, and gave herself up voluntarily in the end.
On the other hand, it may be questioned whether this lady was altogether hidden, or whether she was so terribly “wanted” by the police. In any case, pursuit was not so keen as it would have been with more notorious criminals. Nor can the many well-established cases of men and women leading double lives be quoted in support of this view. Such people are not necessarily in request; there may be a secret reason for concealment, for dreading discovery, but it has generally been of a social, a domestic, not necessarily a criminal character. We have all heard of the crossing-sweeper who did so good a trade that he kept his brougham to bring him to business from a snug home at the other end of the town. A case was quoted in the American papers some years back where a merchant of large fortune traded under one name, and was widely known under it “down town,” yet lived under another “up town,” where he had a wife and large family. This remarkable dissembler kept up the fraud for more than half a century, and when he died his eldest son was fifty-one, the rest of his children were middle-aged, and none of them had the smallest idea of their father’s wealth, or of his other existence. The case is not singular, moreover. Another on all fours, and even more romantic, was that of two youths with different names, walking side by side in the streets of New York, who saluted the same man as father; a gentleman with two distinct personalities.
Such deception may be long undetected when it is no one’s business to expose it. Where crime complicates it, where the police are on the alert and have an object in hunting the wrong-doer down, disappearance is seldom entirely successful. Dr. Jekyll could not cover Mr. Hyde altogether when his homicidal mania became ungovernable. The clergyman who lived a life of sanctity and preached admirable sermons to an appreciative congregation for five full years was run down at last and exposed as a noted burglar in private life. “Sir Granville Temple,” as he called himself, when he had committed bigamy several times, was eventually uncloaked and shown up as an army deserter whose father was master of a workhouse. Criminals who seek effacement do not take into sufficient account the curiosity and inquisitiveness of mankind. At times, just after the perpetration of a great crime, when the criminal is missing and the pursuit at fault, every gossip, landlady, “slavey,” local tradesman, ’bus conductor, lounger on the cab rank, newsboy, railway guard, becomes an active amateur agent of the police, prying, watching, wondering, looking askance at every stranger and newcomer; ready to call in the constable on the slightest suspicion, or immediately report any unusual circumstance. The rapid dissemination of news to the four quarters of the land by our far-reaching, indefatigable, and wide-awake Press has undoubtedly secured many arrests. The judicious publication of certain details, of personal descriptions, of names, aliases, and the supposed movements of persons in request, has constantly borne fruit. In France police officials often deprecate the incautious utterances of the Press, but it is a common practice of theirs in Paris to give out fully prepared items to the newspapers with the express intention of deceiving their quarry; the missing man has been lulled into fancied security by hearing that the pursuers are on a wrong scent, and, issuing from concealment, “gives himself away.”
