the latter, but as a compliment to
the former. There are a great many detectives of ambiguous training. I
remember in one case discovering that of the more important detectives
employed by a well-known private Anti-Criminal Society in New York, one
had been a street vender of frankfurters (otherwise yclept "hot dogs"),
and another the keeper of a bird store, which last perhaps qualified him
for the pursuit and capture of human game. There is a popular fiction
that lawyers are shrewd and capable, similar to the prevailing one
that detectives are astute and cunning. But, as the head of one of
the biggest agencies in the country remarked to me the other day, when
discussing the desirability of retaining local counsel in a distant
city: "You know how hard it is to find a lawyer that isn't a dead one."
I feel confident that he did not mean this in the sense that there was
no good lawyer except a dead lawyer. What my detective friend probably
had in mind was that it was difficult to find a lawyer who brought to
bear on a new problem any originality of thought or action. It is even
harder to find a detective who is not in this sense a dead one. I have
the feeling, being a lawyer myself, that it is harder to find a live
detective than a live lawyer. There are a few of both, however, if you
know where to look for them. But it is easy to fall into the hands of
the Philistines.

The fundamental reason why it is so hard to form any just opinion of
detectives in general is that (except by their fruits) there is little
opportunity to discriminate between the able and the incapable. Now, the
more difficult and complicated his task the less likely is the sleuth
(honest or otherwise) to succeed. The chances are a good deal more than
even that he will never solve the mystery for which he is engaged.
Thus at the end of three months you will have only his reports and his
bill--which are poor comfort, to say the least. And yet he may have
really worked eighteen hours a day in your service. But a dishonest
detective has only to disappear (and take his ease for the same period)
and send you his reports and his bill--and you will have only his word
for how much work he has done and how much money he has spent. You are
absolutely in his power--unless you hire another detective to watch
HIM. Consequently there is no class in the world where the temptation to
dishonesty is greater than among detectives. This, too, is, I fancy,
the reason that the