The system is absolutely necessary. After the commission of an offence supposed to be the work of a professional criminal, the detective department must know where it can obtain accurate information as to the latest movements of the men likely to have been concerned. It does know. There is scarcely a criminal on the police books who is not kept under observation by one of his own class who "for a consideration" will betray him.
CHAPTER XI—THE MYSTERY OF MONEY SPENT
Murder for a few shillings—living on their wits—The value of a handshake—Where the money came from—The mystery of a large income —Price of a lost letter—An unwelcome burglar
ONE half of the world does not know how the other half lives." That is a stock phrase which has been worn threadbare by over-use. And if you analyse it, it appears so self-evident that one wonders at the daring of the person who first put it forward as an original observation. Very few people really know how their next-door neighbours live. They may think they do, but they are often entirely wrong in the conclusion they have arrived at.
One of the great mysteries of a vast city is how all the people in it manage to get a living. If you take a day of London life, apart from its work, and consider the hundreds of thousands of people who are merely amusing themselves and spending collectively a sum of money in the process which, if put in round figures, would astound you, you are faced with a greater mystery still.
Who are the people who during the working hours of the day can assemble in their tens of thousands at the popular race-meetings, the great cricket-matches, the afternoon performances at the theatres, the Palaces of Variety, the concert-rooms, the exhibitions, and the side-shows?
I never see a great match at Lord's or at the Oval and look around at the packed masses of spectators without wondering how the great majority arrange to have the leisure on a working day, and how some of them manage to have the price of admission to spare.
It would be a wild flight of imagination to suppose that to get the money to attend a cricket match some of the spectators had committed a crime. And yet, a few years ago, two little boys paid their sixpence each at the pay-box at Lord's and passed in, enjoyed the game, applauded the big hits, and in the evening went back to the room in which their mother lay dead, and slept in it, tired out with the day's enjoyment.