To his consternation he found that the servant had closed the door. Nor did his insistent pressure of the electric door-bell produce any effect on the butler. Then, for the first time, Britz realized that the lights in the sitting-room had been extinguished.
Consumed with sudden anger he climbed the low iron hand-rail that protected the stoop, and the next instant the broad toe of his boot had shattered the window leading to the front room. Reaching forward, he found it easy to displace sufficient glass to permit him to step safely into the room. Near the curtained doorway he found the electric switch which regulated the light. As the cluster of lamps flashed up, he looked for the documents. They were gone.
His jaw snapped viciously as he leaped out of the room and groped his way to the head of the basement stairs. By the aid of matches he achieved a safe passage down the narrow steps, at the bottom of which he found the button which switched on the basement lights.
In the rear room he found precisely what he had expected. The door opening into the yard was unlatched. Through this door the butler had escaped with the papers.
CHAPTER IX
The development of crime detection in the last decade has followed closely along the line of industrial development. Just as no great commercial establishment can long survive without systematic management, so no great detective force can develop efficiency with chaos on the throne.
Centralization, through closer and ever more close systematization, has not only been the tendency, but the great phenomenon of the modern industrial world. The same condition obtains to-day in the police profession.
A detective force, like the New York Central Office, is managed much the same way as a big commercial enterprise. Under modern conditions every large mercantile establishment must depend for success on the wisdom of its directing genius combined with the intelligent cooperation of its army of subordinates. In similar manner, the head of a big detective bureau directs the efforts of his men to success or failure.
Moreover, the same qualities by which a man attains commercial eminence will win distinction for him as a detective. Intelligence, persistence, reliability, are the foremost essentials. But these qualities, while enabling one to achieve success in subordinate posts, seldom carry one to commercial or professional heights; to the all-commanding peaks of power and glory. The industrial king is monarch by reason of his ability to give efficient direction to the labor of others. The present-day detective king wields his scepter for precisely the same reason.