, and for the same
purpose--to make money for the proprietors. Mr. Edward Crapsey, to whom
I am indebted for much of the information contained in this chapter, thus
describes a well-known Agency of this kind:

"The visitor going up the broad stairs, finds himself in a large room,
which is plainly the main office of the concern. There is a desk with
the authoritative hedge of an iron railing, behind which sits a furrowed
man, who looks an animated cork-screw, and who, the inquiring visitor
soon discovers, can't speak above a whisper, or at least don't. This
mysterious person is always mistaken for the chief of the establishment,
but, in fact, he is nothing but the 'Secretary,' and holds his place by
reason of a marvellous capacity for drawing people out of themselves. A
mystery, he is surrounded with mysteries. The doors upon his right and
left--one of which is occasionally opened just far enough to permit a
very diminutive call-boy to be squeezed through--seem to lead to
unexplored regions. But stranger than even the clerk, or the undefined
but yet perfectly tangible weirdness of the doors is the tinkling of a
sepulchral bell, and the responsive tramp of a heavy-heeled boot. And
strangest of all is a huge black board whereon are marked the figures
from one to twenty, over some of which the word 'Out' is written; and the
visitor notices with ever-increasing wonder that the tinkling of the bell
and the heavy-heeled tramp are usually followed by the mysterious
secretary's scrawling 'Out' over another number, being apparently incited
thereto by a whisper of the ghostly call-boy who is squeezed through a
crack in the door for that purpose. The door which the call-boy abjures
is always slightly ajar, and at the aperture there is generally a wolfish
eye glaring so steadily and rapaciously into the office as to raise a
suspicion that beasts of prey are crouching behind that forbidding door.

"Nor is the resulting alarm entirely groundless, for that is the room
where the ferrets of the house who assume the name of Detectives, but are
more significantly called 'shadows,' are hidden from the prying eyes of
the world. A 'shadow' here is a mere numeral--No. 1, or something
higher--and obeys cabalistic calls conveyed by bells or speaking-tubes,
by which devices the stranger patron is convinced of the potency of the
Detective Agency which moves in such mysterious ways to perform its
wonders. If any doubt were left by all thi