Both urged him to smoke, and while Marten lighted his cigar, Mary Sturtevant explained his connection with the case to Forrester.
"Mr. Marten was in the Government Secret Service for many years, and has had his own investigative service for some time.
"You probably noticed that the majority of the men victimized by this supposed band of extortioners were prominent in banking circles. That constituted a direct assault upon the banking fraternity. While people outside of banking circles did not know of it, this persecution was gradually bringing on an actual financial panic. When it was rumored that a banker had given up a large sum to this supposed society, or his murder was reported, a mild run resulted at the bank with which he was associated. If there had been only one or two cases this would have had little effect, but as numerous banks were brought into the matter there was a tendency to spread this fear and the germs of a panic were insidiously gripping financial circles. The matter was finally taken up at a special conference of the Midland Bankers' Association.
"Shortly before you were selected as a victim, the M. B. A. engaged Mr. Marten to solve the riddle of the 'Friends of the Poor,' and the secret toll which they were imposing upon bankers. Mr. Marten has been the invisible detective, working behind the scenes in this case. Just how he accomplished his great work I shall leave to Mr. Marten to tell you."
"Your story will certainly interest me," declared Forrester, smiling at Marten, and elated at the thought that Mary Sturtevant had been working in a good cause. "I had about lost faith in the supposed abilities of detectives."
"There are many able detectives," replied Marten. "You made your first mistake in not going to a high-class detective agency. You cannot judge the ability of all detectives by ex-policemen like Green, or by the average city men. To become a city detective, a man must put in long service as a policeman; and even then he has no guarantee that he will ever be promoted to the detective section. The peculiar type of brain, the scientific turn of mind, and the education which make an efficient detective, naturally render long preliminary service as a policeman abhorrent to the men who make the best detectives. Moreover, the physical requirements of the police department shut out many brilliant thinkers. Consequently, the best detective material seldom, if ever, reaches city police departments.
"The whole principle is wrong, and until some other system is established we will continue to see fine specimens of physical development, whose very appearance advertises their calling, trying to solve intricate criminal cases by muscle-power instead of brain-power. It is analogous to placing a prize fighter in the chair of higher mathematics at some university.
"Forgive me, Mr. Forrester, if I bore you with these extraneous comments, but it is a subject that takes up much of my leisure time. I hope, by educating influential men like you, that the system will be changed; that eventually we will have a great central department like Scotland Yard, or that the detective bureaus of large cities will be separate from the regular police departments."
"You do not bore me, Mr. Marten," returned Forrester. "On the contrary, I am deeply interested; especially because of what happened in the present case."
"Well, enough of that," said Marten. "Now for the story I came here to tell.