Knots Untied; Or, Ways and By-ways in the Hidden Life of American Detectives

by George S. McWatters

It was quite evident to me that the thief must be some one or more of the clerks; and I could not, on inquiry into the habits of the clerks, so far as Mr. Redding understood them, or in any way, fix upon any one of the clerks as more likely than another to be the thief. These young men had been well selected; were smart fellows, each in his way. Indeed, Mr. Redding thought that, on the whole, his house had the best set of clerks of all the houses in the city, and although he was convinced that some one or more of them (and he as well as I inclined to the notion that there must be two at least) were guilty, yet he said he would gladly give a thousand dollars if the guilt could be fastened upon somebody without the store; for the house had always treated its clerks as if they were the partners' own children in many respects, and given the clerks rather better wages than they could get anywhere else, and some unusual privileges. They had nearly all been long with the house, and I thought that Mr. Redding seemed to suffer as much from the fear that some of the clerks would prove to be the guilty party, as from the loss of the goods themselves. In fact, he confessed that he felt "chicken-hearted" about the matter, as he expressed it; but his partners' interests as well as his own must be looked to, and so he was resolute.

I returned to my office, and set about immediate preparations on the work. I was going at it that night, and I saw that there was no other way than to take matters coolly, and work systematically. I sent for some of my men, having apprised Mr. Redding that it would "cost something" to work up the case, and that to do it within any conscionable time I must set several men at work. He had given me quite a wide range for expenses, saying that it would not do to be guilty of any laches in the business for want of means; because, at the rate they were losing property, with all their eyes open at that, they would soon have to give up business.

I set my men to keeping their eyes on certain of the clerks whose places of residence and names Mr. Redding had given me. He had not procured the streets and numbers of all of them, but was to do so next day. The clerks designated were carefully watched and followed, to find out how and where they spent their nights, for it was my conjecture, that whoever stole the goods was under the influence of some demon passion; that he either gambled, and was deeply in debt, and stole the goods and sold them, or that some wily woman had him in her power, or some fiend of a man was driving him on in crime; and it was necessary first to find out all about where these young men spent their time out of the store.

I took my own place in the work, and having been so much about the store that day, it was necessary that I disguise myself, as I did; and I took my station on Broadway, near the store, and waited for the young men to sally forth, directing my men to the boarding-places of some of the clerks, with as accurate descriptions of them as I could give.

I had not long to wait before some of the clerks passed me, and I selected two, whom I followed. Darkness was just coming on. They stopped on a corner to lay out their programme for the evening, and concluded to not go home to tea, but to go to a restaurant, where I followed them, and remained there till they left; and when they came out they went up Broadway, and stopping before a billiard saloon, seemed to be debating the question whether they would go up or not; but finally they went up the stairs, and I remained behind a few minutes, and then followed them. Somehow, as I entered the room, and my eye fell upon the face of one of them, something seemed to tell me that he was the guilty fellow. The young men had already commenced a game, and were busy with the bewitching balls. I lounged about, and finally got a partner for a single game. The young men did not bet—only played for sport, and at a seasonable hour left, not however, till I, having observed that they would soon depart, had gotten down on to the pavement before them. When they came down, they set off together, walked some distance together, turned down a side street, and on the corner of it and another street bade each other good night. One of them went on to his boarding-house, and so I suppose did the other.

The next night I gave my particular attentions to those same young men. They went over to the Bowery Theatre, and like sensible fellows, too, had seats in the pit, in which part of the house I also secured a place. They seemed to enjoy the play greatly, and one of them threw a quarter of a dollar on the stage in lieu of a bouquet, in testimony of his appreciation of the splendid representation of a mock Richard the Third by the leading actor, and I fancied that perhaps I had found out the young man's leading passion—his besetting sin.

When they left the theatre they proceeded to an alehouse, and after taking a mug apiece of somebody's "best pale ale," sallied out, and wended their way together homeward, till they came to the parting-place again; and I followed the one whom I did not pursue the night before, only to be led on a long distance up into Hudson Street, when the young man applying his night-key to the door of a very respectable-looking house, entered and vanished. I had begun to make up my mind that this sort of work would not do; that these clerks were but like ten thousand others, who, wearied by their day's work, sought recuperation in slight dissipations, and, perhaps, questionable pleasures, such as billiards, and comedies, and ales give. But I followed up some other of the clerks, reporting every day to Mr. Redding or to Mr. Phillips very ill success. The latter was particularly anxious to have me "go on, and make thorough work of it;" and as the days went on I became much attached to him.

My men, too, brought me their accounts daily, with as little success towards the desired end as I myself had, and we were frequently on the point of giving up the job. We concluded that perhaps several of the clerks were engaged in this robbery; that they might have formed a secret society among themselves, and that they probably had a safe place to send their goods to, and a skilful "receiver," who would pay them perhaps half price for the goods, but we could find nothing to sustain this hypothesis. Two or three of the clerks were quite literary in their tastes, and belonged to some debating club, I forget the name now, but it was quite an institution at the time, and thither my men had followed them, and quite fallen in love with the spirited manner and eloquent speech-making of one of the clerks. Of course they followed these wherever they went, and nothing could convince them that these young men were guilty. One of the clerks was an inveterate theatre-goer. He went every night to one theatre or another; but my men found out that he usually had passes, and was, to some extent, a dramatic critic, furnishing the reporters of sundry papers with notes, and that in this way he probably got his passes, and so did not in this way waste much of his slender salary. He neither smoked nor drank liquor, and seemed to be always alone, careless of companionship; so he was dropped as "not the man." Another of the clerks had, it was found, a strange fancy for old books and antique engravings. He spent, evidently, as little money on his person as would suffice to dress neatly and well enough for his position, and put all he could have into old books and engravings; and we found that he was well known by all those strange men, who in these days mostly collect in Nassau Street, and live among the rubbish and dirt of old, and for most part, worthless books, driving keen bargains, giving little, and asking much for some rare old folly of a book, or some worthless volume in which some lord of the blood, or some royal sovereign of literature, like Johnson or Addison, had chanced to write his name. The young clerk had a business man's as well as an artist's eye for these things, we found, and was said, by the old book-men, to make such excellent assortments of engravings, etc., which he bound together, as to be able to realize in their sale quite an advance on the original purchase. And so we found merit instead of crime in him, and felt very sure that he could be "counted out." But we had some singular experiences. One of the clerks, as did indeed three of them, boarded in Brooklyn. This one was a Sunday-school teacher, but he came over to New York one Sunday night to attend a religious meeting, and being particularly followed that night, he was found going into a disreputable "ladies' boarding-house." Some of the clerks were Sunday-school teachers, especially certain of them who were middle-aged, and married; but we discovered, in our scrutiny of these clerks, that these older ones especially, had a habit of taking their country customers and friends to see the sights of the city at night, and that in order to beguile these persons, in other words, to "show them proper attentions," they were not scrupulous about forgetting their Sunday-school teachings, and taking these customers into the most questionable dens in the city. In those days the vulgar phrase "seeing the elephant" was more common than now, and included participation in all sorts of small and impure vices. In my opinion, this greed for trade, which impells the competing clerks of different houses to show every possible attention of this kind to the young men (as well as old, for often the old are worse than the young) who come to the city to buy goods, has led to the downfall, the moral and financial ruin, of thousands who would otherwise have led honorable, and perhaps noble lives. But things in this respect are better now a days than they were many years ago in New York. The great advance which the fine arts have made in this country, even within the last ten years, has had much to do with this improvement. The theatre is "a thing of beauty" and attractive in comparison to what it used to be; and everywhere scattered throughout the city are many matters of the higher arts to attract and interest the stranger or frequent visitor even, and so in a measure keep him out of harm's way. The Central Park has been a great educator of the city people out of vices, and has an elevating influence upon country people coming to the city, many of whom "luxuriate" in a visit to it, instead of "dissipate," as in years ago, in the dens of the crowded city; for in winter even, when the cold is intense enough to make ice, joyous nights are spent in skating on the Park pond, or in beholding the witching gayeties of the accomplished skaters.

But the days went on,—I almost daily conferring with Mr. Redding, or his accomplished chief clerk, Mr. Phillips, whose sagacity and inventive genius pleased me greatly. He would have made—in fact was, in one sense—one of the most shrewd and capable of detectives. There was no avenue for the slightest suspicion which his keen brain could not discover when Mr. Redding seemed disposed to give up in despair, as from time to time I faithfully reported to him the empty results of my own and my men's constant watching, or drew on the house, on different occasions, for current expenses. Mr. Phillips stimulated him to further endeavor, feeling, as he said, and as an honest man, in his capacity, could not well but feel, that the responsibility on his part was morally as great as if he were the pecuniary sufferer, and he continued to bravely and nobly work in the interest of the house. But constantly the peculations went on; and so mysteriously were they conducted, that I believe it would have required no great amount of argument to convince Mr. Redding that invisible hands took part in the thefts; that the spirits of some old merchants, perhaps (not having forgotten their greed of gain in the other world), were the authors and doers of this wickedness; for he was half inclined to belief in modern spiritualism, and the partner who was in Europe was an avowed spiritualist, his daughter, a sickly young lady of eighteen or twenty years of age, being a "medium." It was partly for her health's sake that the father had taken her to Europe. Mr. Redding was confounded, as from time to time, something more of much value, often of great value, was missed. Finally he took up his lodgings for a few nights at the store, with an inside and an outside watchman, and with an ugly watch-dog for a companion; but this did no good, for valuables were still missed, and what was the most perplexing thing, were apparently taken in the night. Mr. Redding became sensibly weak, looked haggard, was restless and nervous, and his family physician ordered him to suspend work. Mr. Redding had great pride about this matter, and all the clerks were put under an injunction of secrecy in regard to the losses, and I have reason to think they faithfully respected the mandate. This secrecy was suggested as a matter of pride as well as prudence, for Mr. Redding would not have had his brother merchants in the city know of the troubles in his house for anything. It would have led, he thought, to the financial injury of the firm.

Finally, Mr. Redding was taken sick, and remained at home for three days. On the second day he sent for me, and showed me an advertisement he had caused to be put in the Herald, calling for twenty clerks of experience in the dry goods business, etc. "None need apply who cannot produce the best certificates of character, and come recommended by all parties in whose employ they may have ever been." He named a box in the Herald office as the place of address, and he already had sent his servant to the Herald office, and when I arrived was opening one of over fifty letters received. He showed me the advertisement and responses with an air of pride.