Now, if the ordinary householder finds that his wife’s necklace has mysteriously disappeared, his first impulse is to send for a detective of some sort or other.  In general, he might just as well send for his mother-in-law.  Of course, the police can and will watch the pawnshops for the missing baubles, but no crook who is not a fool is going to pawn a whole necklace on the Bowery the very next day 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 the latter, but as a compliment to the former.  There are a great many detectives of ambiguous training.  I remember