Many of the best available detectives are men who work by themselves without any permanent staff, and who have their own regular clients, generally law firms and corporations.  Almost any attorney knows several such, and the chief advantage of employing one of them lies in the fact that you can learn just what their abilities are by personal experience.  They usually command a high rate of remuneration, but deductive ability and resourcefulness are so rare that they are at a premium and can only be secured by paying it.  These men are able, if necessary, to assume the character of a doctor, traveller, man-about-town, or business agent without wearing in their lapels a sign that they are detectives, and they will reason ahead of the other fellow and can sometimes calculate pretty closely what he will do.  Twenty-five dollars a day will generally hire the best of them, and they are well worth it.

The detective business swarms with men of doubtful honesty and morals, who are under a constant temptation to charge for services not rendered and expenses not incurred, who are accustomed to exaggeration if not to perjury, and who have neither the inclination nor the ability to do competent work.

Once they get their clutches on a wealthy client, they resemble the shyster lawyer in their efforts to bleed him by stimulating his fears of publicity and by holding out false hopes of success, and thus prolonging their period of service.  An unscrupulous detective will, almost as a matter of course, work on two jobs at once and charge all his time to each client.  He will constantly report progress when nothing has been accomplished, and his expenses will fill pages of his notebook.  Meantime his daily reports will fall like a shower of autumn leaves.  In no profession is it more essential to know the man who is working for you.  If you need a detective, get the best you can find, put a limit on the expense, and give him your absolute confidence.

CHAPTER VI

Detectives Who Detect

In the preceding chapter the writer discussed at some length the real, as distinguished from the fancied, attributes of detectives in general, and the weaknesses as well as the virtues of the so-called detective “agency.”  There are in the city of New York at the present time about one hundred and fifty licensed detectives.  Under the detective license laws each of these has been required to file with the State comptroller written evidences of his competency, and integrity, approved by five reputable freeholders of his county, and to give bond in the sum of two thousand dollars.  He also has to pay a license fee of one hundred dollars per annum, but this enables him to employ as many “operators” as he chooses.  In other words, the head of the agency may be of good character and his agents wholly undesirable citizens.  How often this is the case is known to none better than the heads themselves.