MY DETECTIVE EXPERIENCES.
Novel-readers are well acquainted with the modern detective. He is almost as important a personage as the rich nabob, who was so lavishly utilised by our progenitors in cutting the Gordian knot of difficulties in their contemporary works of fiction. If ‘the good man struggling with the storms of Fate’ required instant rescue from his troubles, a rich uncle from India appeared upon the scene. So in our day the villain is run to earth by a supernaturally gifted detective. But making allowances for the fact that a great part of our fiction is the work of women, who cannot (presumably) have come in contact with the detective class, the sketches of these useful individuals by feminine pens are tolerably close to nature, although they are copies of pre-existing portraits; or evolved from their inner consciousness, in the same way as the most vivid description of Switzerland is said to be the work of Schiller, who had never seen the country.
My first professional experience of a detective was as follows. On a certain evening, I found, to my dismay, that the entrance-hall of my house had been practically cleared of its contents—a hat, two umbrellas, and a valuable sealskin cloak having disappeared. I gave information at the nearest police station, and was informed that a police-officer would wait upon me. On the following day, the servant announced that a man wanted to speak to me at the street-door. I found an herculean individual in the garb of a navvy, with large sandy whiskers and red hair, who informed me that he was a detective. I ushered him into the dining-room, where he seated himself, and listened very patiently to my story. He inquired as to the character of the girl who answered the door. ‘Tolerable,’ I replied. ‘But she is under notice to leave.’
He expressed his conviction that the servant was in collusion with the thief or thieves. At this moment I was again summoned to the door, where I beheld a somewhat diminutive individual, attired as a clergyman. He was an elderly man, with silver hair, a clear pink-and-white complexion, and wore a suit of superfine broadcloth, with a white cravat. His ‘get-up’ to the smallest detail was faultless, even to the gold-rimmed double eyeglass. ‘You have a detective here?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am a sergeant of the E division; can I speak to him?’
In another minute the pair were seated side by side, as great a contrast as it is possible to conceive.
Finding that my business alone was not the cause of his visit, I courteously left them to themselves. In a few minutes, the ‘clergyman’ left the house, expressing a hope that I should obtain some tidings of my lost property. The ‘navvy’ remained for about half an hour, relating some of his experiences. ‘You see, sir, we have different tools for different jobs. If there is to be any rough-and-tumble business, any work requiring strength and muscle, anything dangerous, they employ a man like me.’ The speaker stretched his powerful limbs as he spoke with some natural pride. ‘Our sergeant would be of no use at all in such work. He does the delicate work, the organising part of the affair—same as a general.’ The ‘navvy’ then went on to relate how he had lately been employed to detect the supposed defalcations of a barmaid at a small beershop in a low quarter of the town. The customary expedient of paying for supplies with marked coin was not deemed sufficient, as an opinion existed that the girl was a member of a gang, whom it was deemed prudent to discover. ‘So, for a fortnight, I haunted that public, as you see me now, passing for a navvy who was taking a holiday and spending his savings; sometimes sitting in the taproom, and sometimes in front of the bar, smoking and chatting with all comers. The suspicions formed proved to be correct; and the girl turned out to be an agent of a gang of area-sneaks and burglars.’
I am compelled to record that my loquacious friend was not equally successful in my case, no trace of the missing property ever having been discovered.
My next experience of detectives was on two occasions when I officiated as a grand-juryman. The reader is probably aware that the grand-jurymen sit in a room in the immediate proximity of the court, listening to evidence for the prosecution only, the prisoner not being produced; the object being to discover whether the prisoner shall be put on his trial or not. Sometimes there is a perfect procession of detectives, of every type, according to the nature of the case. One will appear habited as a workman, unshaven, and giving one the notion of being out of employment; to be followed by another dressed in the most faultless style. They are all remarkable for giving their evidence in an admirable manner, beginning at the beginning, never using a superfluous word, and leaving off when the end has arrived. This is in strong contrast to the ordinary witness, especially the female witness, whom it is difficult to keep to the point. One of the detectives made a lasting impression on me. He might have stepped on to the boards of a fashionable theatre as the exponent of Sir Frederick Blount in Lord Lytton’s play of Money—a very light overcoat, check trousers, patent leather boots, white gaiters and pearl buttons, lemon-coloured kid gloves, and a silver-headed Malacca cane. He was very pale, with flaxen hair parted down the middle, and a light fluffy moustache. The jury opened their eyes very wide when he commenced his business-like statement by saying that he was a sergeant in the detective force. He had been driving a swell dogcart in company with another detective, on the look-out for some noted horse-stealers in one of the Eastern Counties. He had met them driving a cart to which a stolen horse was attached. They obeyed his command for a while to follow him to the market town, but suddenly attempted flight across the fields, deserting their cart and horses; but were pursued and captured.
The following is a notable instance of shrewdness on the part of a detective. Some burglars had been disturbed in their work in a house near the Regent’s Park by a wakeful butler. He was armed with a gun, and he succeeded in capturing one burglar and wounding another, who escaped. There was no doubt of the latter fact, as spots of blood were plainly discernible on the snowy ground. When the day for the examination of the captured burglar arrived, a detective placed himself in the police court in a position whence he could watch the countenances of the general public. He wisely argued that some friend of the prisoner would attend in order to convey the earliest information to the wounded burglar of the result of the examination of his friend. For a while the detective scanned the grimy features of the audience in vain; at length he fancied that a woman betrayed more than ordinary interest in the evidence adduced. At the conclusion of the examination, he followed the woman to a humble lodging in the Borough; and there, stretched on a miserable pallet, lay the burglar with a bullet-wound in his leg.
A detective who had followed a felonious clerk from England to the United States, lost the scent at Buffalo, which is about twenty miles from the celebrated Falls of Niagara. The detective argued that no one would come so near to the Falls without paying a visit to them. He went accordingly, and the first person he saw was the runaway clerk absorbed in admiration of the Horse-shoe Fall.
With a singular occurrence, which happened to myself, I will conclude these rambling notes. On the 25th of January 1885, I was seated at tea with my family in my house, which is located in a very quiet street in West Kensington. The servant appeared and said a gentleman wished to speak to me. He had not inquired for any one in particular, but had said that ‘any gentleman would do.’ I must remind the reader that all London was at this time ringing with the details of the dynamite explosion at the House of Commons and the Tower on the preceding day. I found a tall gentlemanly individual about thirty, of the genus ‘swell,’ who spoke with all the tone and manner of a person accustomed to good society. After a momentary glance at me, he turned his head and kept his eyes intently fixed on the farther end of the street. He spoke in a low tone, and in somewhat hurried and excited accents. ‘I want you to assist me in arresting two Irish Americans. I have been following them for some time, and they have just discovered that fact.’
‘Are you a detective?’ I inquired.
‘I am,’ he replied with his gaze still concentrated on the somewhat foggy street. ‘I can see them still,’ he continued.
Now, I am afraid, when I record my reply, I shall be placed on the same pedestal with Sir John Falstaff at the battle of Shrewsbury, so far as physical courage is concerned. But I had only lately recovered from a prostrating illness, which had left me very weak, and had been confined to the house for a fortnight under medical certificate. I briefly stated these facts, and added, that I feared I was not at that moment qualified for an affair such as he alluded to. He sighed in response, and without removing his gaze from his quarry, said: ‘I wish I could see a policeman,’ and walked rapidly away in the direction of the two men.
Assuming his story to be a true one, the men must have purposely decoyed him into a quiet street, and there waited, in order to solve the point whether they were in reality being tracked. Reluctant to attempt their arrest single-handed, the detective rang at the first door he came to, to throw them off their guard, and cause them to suppose that he had friends in the street; also on the chance that he might obtain a stalwart assistant in his desperate adventure. I have never heard anything further of my mysterious visitor. My readers can easily imagine the diversified comments to which my cautious conduct has given rise—how I have missed a golden opportunity of immortalising myself, and of becoming the hero of the day! how I have probably escaped death by knife or revolver from two desperadoes, who, under the circumstances, could easily have effected their escape in a retired street and in the gray dusk of a Sabbath evening.