n't you worry!
Why, a thousand other murders will have been committed in this county by
the time that happens. Bless your soul! You can't go on tryin' the same
man forever! Give the other fellers a chance. You shake your head? Well,
it's a fact. I've been doin' it for forty years. You'll see." And I
did. That may not be why men kill, but perhaps indirectly it may have
something to do with it.

CHAPTER V. Detectives and Others

A Detective, according to the dictionaries, is one "whose occupation it
is to discover matters as to which information is desired, particularly
wrong-doers, and to obtain evidence to be used against them." A private
detective, by the same authority, is one "engaged unofficially in
obtaining secret information for or guarding the private interests of
those who employ him." The definition emphasizes the official character
of detectives in general as contrasted with those whose services may be
enlisted for hire by the individual citizen, but the distinction is of
little importance, since it is based arbitrarily upon the character of
the employer (whether the State or a private client) instead of upon the
nature of the employment itself, which is the only thing which is likely
to interest us about detectives at all.

The sanctified tradition that a detective was an agile person with a
variety of side-whiskers no longer obtains even in light literature, and
the most imaginative of us is frankly aware of the fact that a detective
is just a common man earning (or pretending to earn) a common living by
common and obvious means. Yet in spite of ourselves we are accustomed
to attribute superhuman acuteness and a lightning-like rapidity of
intellect to this vague and romantic class of fellow-citizens. The
ordinary work of a detective, however, requires neither of these
qualities. Honesty and obedience are his chief requirements, and if he
have intelligence as well, so much the better, provided it be of the
variety known as "horse" sense. A genuine candidate for the job of
Sherlock Holmes would find little competition. In the first place, the
usual work of a detective does not demand any extraordinary powers of
deduction at all.

Leaving out of consideration those who are merely private policemen
(often in uniform), and principally engaged in patrolling residential
streets, preserving order at fairs, race-tracks, and political meetings,
or in breaking strikes and preventing riots, the largest part