y after it has been
"lifted." Or he can enlist a private detective who will question the
servants and perhaps go through their trunks, if they will let him.
Either sort will probably line up the inmates of the house for general
scrutiny and try to bully them separately into a confession. This may
save the master a disagreeable experience, but it is the simplest sort
of police work and is done vicariously for the taxpayer, just as the
public garbage man relieves you from the burden of taking out the
ashes yourself, because he is paid for it, not on account of your own
incapacity or his superiority.

The real detective is the one who, taking up the solution of a crime or
other mystery, brings to bear upon it unusual powers of observation
and deduction and an exceptional resourcefulness in acting upon his
conclusions. Frankly, I have known very few such, although for some ten
years I have made use of a large number of so-called detectives in both
public and private matters. As I recall the long line of cases where
these men have rendered service of great value, almost every one
resolves itself into a successful piece of mere spying or trailing.
Little ingenuity or powers of reason were required. Of course, there
are a thousand tricks that an experienced man acquires as a matter of
course, but which at first sight seem almost like inspiration. I shall
not forget my delight when Jesse Blocher, who had been trailing Charles
Foster Dodge through the South (when the latter was wanted as the chief
witness against Abe Hummel on the charge of subornation of perjury of
which he was finally convicted), told me how he instantly located his
man, without disclosing his own identity, by unostentatiously leaving a
note addressed to Dodge in a bright-red envelope upon the office counter
of the Hotel St. Charles in New Orleans, where he knew his quarry to be
staying. A few moments later the clerk saw it, picked it up, and, as
a matter of course, thrust it promptly into box No. 420, thus
involuntarily hanging, as it were, a red lantern on Dodge's door.

There is no more reason to look for superiority of intelligence or
mental alertness among detectives of the ordinary class than there is to
expect it from clerks, stationary engineers, plumbers, or firemen. While
comparisons are invidious, I should be inclined to say that the ordinary
chauffeur was probably a brighter man than the average detective. This
is not to be taken in derogation of