I once had a particularly dangerous and unfortunate case where a private client was being blackmailed by a half-crazy ruffian who had never seen him, but had selected him arbitrarily as a person likely to give up money.  The blackmailer was a German Socialist, who was out of employment—­a man of desperate character.  He had made up his mind that the world owed him a living, and he had decided that the easiest way to get it was to make some more prosperous person give him a thousand dollars under threat of being exposed as an enemy of society.

The charge was so absurd as to be almost ludicrous, but had my client caused the blackmailer’s arrest the matter would have been the subject of endless newspaper notoriety and comment.  It was therefore thought wise to make use of other means, and I procured the assistance of a young German-American of my acquaintance, who, in the guise of a vaudeville artist seeking a job, went to the blackmailer’s boarding-house and pretended to be looking for an actor friend with a name not unlike that of the criminal.

After two or three visits he managed to scrape an acquaintance with the blackmailer and thereafter spent much time with him.  Both were out of work, both were German, and both liked beer.  My friend had just enough money to satisfy this latter craving.  In a month or so they were intimate friends and used to go fishing together down the bay.  At last, after many months, the criminal disclosed to the detective his plan of blackmailing my client, and suggested that as two heads were better than one they had better make it a joint venture.  The detective pretended to balk at the idea at first, but was finally persuaded, and at the other’s request undertook the delivery of the blackmailing letters to my client!  Inside of three weeks he had in his possession enough evidence in the criminal’s own handwriting to send him to a prison for the rest of his life.  When at last the detective disclosed his identity the blackmailer at first refused to believe him, and then literally rolled on the floor in his agony and fear at discovering how he had been hoodwinked.  The next day he disappeared and has not been heard of since, but his letters are in my vault, ready to be used if he again puts in an appearance.

The records of the police and of the private agencies contain many instances where murderers have confessed their guilt long after the crime to supposed friends, who were in reality decoys placed there for that very purpose.  It is a peculiarity of criminals that they cannot keep their secrets locked in their own breasts.  The impulse to confession is universal, particularly in women.  Egotism has some part in this, but the chief element is the desire for companionship.  Criminals have a horror of dying under an alias.  The dignity of identity appeals even to the tramp.  This impulse leads oftentimes to the most unnecessary and suicidal disclosures.  The murderer who has