Little things, sudden ideas which seize hold of your mind, often lead you to results which the best formed plans could never do. Such has ever been my experience, and such also is the experience of my old pupil, Dave Doyle, who began to study under me at about the same time as Sam Kean.
Dave was a smart fellow, and a born detective, although a young man of no education at all, and for this reason unfitted for certain kinds of detective work.
Let me introduce one case in particular where Dave succeeded by following a sudden idea which seized hold of me. Later on Dave began to get ideas of his own.
I will let him tell the story himself.
Dave Doyle’s First Case.
When Mr. Philander Camm defaulted and ran away with $100,000 of the funds of the Bakers’ Bank there was the biggest kind of a row.
A big reward was offered to any detective who would get him, and there seemed to be a chance that some one might earn it, for it was believed that the thief hadn’t left New York.
I had just gone to work for Old King Brady then, and when I read the account in the papers I says to myself:
“I wish I could scoop in that reward.”
I went up to the office that morning and spoke to Mr. Brady about it.