ten-year stretch in Sing Sing, Clever Charley is in hock
at Joliet, and Sweet William is the only one who is at large--it must be
William.' So he proceeds to locate William, and when they get him they
have the man who did the work."

As to those very interesting newspaper reports about how Detective
So-and-So, while strolling down Broadway, saw a suspicious-looking
individual whom he "piped" to the east side of the city, and eventually
arrested in possession of property supposed to have been the plunder
from a certain burglary, they are equally misleading. As the ex-officer,
quoted above, said:

"Ninety-nine out of a hundred cases are worked through the squeal of
some thief, or ex-thief, who keeps posted on the doings of others of his
class in the city. He knows some officer intimately; goes to him and
tells him that the night before One-Thumbed Charley turned a trick on
Church street, and the stuff is 'planted' at such and such a place.
Acting on this information, the officers visit the place indicated, and
just sit around and wait till their man shows up. Lots of ability about
that, isn't there? Some people have an idea, you know, that after a
burglary the detectives visit the house where it occurred, and, after
examining certain marks on the window where the man got in, immediately
say: 'This is the work of Slippery Sam; he is the only fellow who does
this sort of work in this particular style.' Nothing of the kind. It's
just as I've told you in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. In the
other cases, some citizen gives the officers information that leads to
the capture of the man."

If the foregoing illustrations serve no other purpose, they at least
emphasize the point which might have been made at the outset of this
chapter, that detectives are a recognized necessity of our civilization.
Crime and vice permeate every rank and every profession, and just as
surely as crime and vice will always exist, so will detectives be
employed to discover wrong-doers and hand them over to justice. Crime
and vice are two terms used for the infraction of different kinds of
laws--social and moral--and detectives may be conveniently classed in
the same way. The detectives who deal with the transgression of social
laws, including such crimes as counterfeiting coin and notes, railroad
bonds, scrip, etc., forgers, embezzlers, swindlers, and the wide class
of criminals generally, are exceedingly useful members of the community
wh