We are constrained to answer that it is no more wonderful than that any person earning the same sum should remain honest when he might so easily turn thief.  As the writer has himself pointed out in these pages, there are hundreds of so-called detective agencies which are but traps for the guileless citizen who calls upon them for aid.  But there are many which are as honestly conducted as any other variety of legitimate business.  I do not know Mr. Beet’s personal experience, but it appears to have been unfortunate.  At any rate, his diatribe is unfounded and false, and the worst feature of it is his assertion that detective agencies make a business of manufacturing cases when there happen to be none on hand.

“Soon,” says he, “there were not enough cases to go around, and then with the aid of spies and informers the unscrupulous detectives began to make cases.  Agencies began to work up evidence against persons and then resorted to blackmail, or else approached those to whom the information might be valuable, and by careful manoeuvring had themselves retained to unravel the case.  This brought into existence hordes of professional informers who secured the opening wedges for the fake agencies.  Men and women, many of them of some social standing, made it a practice to pry around for secrets which might be valuable able; spies kept up their work in large business establishments and began to haunt the cafes and resorts of doubtful reputation, on the watch for persons of wealth and prominence who might be foolish enough to place themselves in compromising circumstances.  Even the servants in wealthy families soon learned that certain secrets of the master and mistress could be turned to profitable account.  We shudder when we hear of the system of espionage maintained in Russia, while in the large American cities, unnoticed, are organizations of spies and informers on every hand who spend their lives digging pitfalls for the unwary who can afford to pay.”

One would think that we were living in the days of the Borgias!  “Ninety per cent,” says Mr. Beet, “of private detective agencies are rotten to the core and simply exist and thrive upon a foundation of dishonesty, deceit, conspiracy, and treachery to the public in general and their own patrons in particular.  There are detectives at the heads of prominent agencies in this country whose pictures adorn the Rogues’ Gallery; men who have served time in various prisons for almost every crime on the calendar.”

This harrowing picture has the modicum of truth that makes it insidiously dangerous.  But this last extravagance betrays the denunciator.  One would be interested to have this past-master of overstatement mention the names of these distinguished crooks that head the prominent agencies.  Their exposure, if true, would not be libellous, and it would seem that he had performed but half his duty to the public in refraining from giving this important, if not vital, information.