“I want to tell you something.  You have got this job wrong.  There’s one fact your man didn’t understand.  The truth is that I’m a pretty easy going sort, and every six months or so I take all the men and girls employed around my house down to Coney Island and give ’em a rip-roaring time.  I make ’em my friends, and I dance with the girls and I jolly up the men, and we are all good pals together.  Sort of unconventional, maybe, but it pays.  I know—­see?—­that there isn’t a single one of those people who would do me a mean trick.  Not one of ’em but would lend me all the money he had.  I don’t care what your operator says, the person who took that necklace came from outside.  You take that from me.  The superintendent, who is wise in his generation, scratched his chin.

“Is that dead on the level?” he inquired.

“Gospel!” answered the other.

“I’ll come up myself!” said the boss.

Next day the boss behind a broken-winded horse, in a dilapidated buggy, drove from another town to the place where his client lived.  At the smithy on the crossroads he stopped and borrowed a match.

“Anybody have good hosses in this town?” asked the detective.

“Sure!” answered the smith.   “Mr. ------ up on the hill has the
best in the county!”

“What sort of a feller is he?”

The smith chewed in silence for a moment.

“Don’t know him myself, but I tell you what, his help says he’s the best employer they ever had—­and they stay there forever!”

The boss drove on to the house, which he observed was situated at about an equal distance from three different railway stations and surrounded by a piazza with pillars.  He walked around it, examining the vines until his eye caught a torn creeper and a white scratch on the paint.  It had been an outside job after all, and two weeks had already been lost.  Deduction was responsible for a mistake which would not have occurred had a little knowledge been acquired first.  That is the lesson of this story.

The denouement, which has no lesson at all, is interesting.  The superintendent saw no prospect of getting back the necklace, but before so informing the client, decided to cogitate on the matter for a day or two.  During that time he met by accident a friend who made a hobby of studying yeggmen and criminals and occasionally doing a bit of the amateur tramp act himself.

“By the way,” said the friend, “do you ever hear of any `touches’ up the river or along the Sound?”

“Sometimes,” answered the boss, pricking up his ears.  “Why do you ask?”

“Why, the other night, replied the friend, “I happened to be meeting my wife up at the Grand Central about six o’clock and I saw two yeggs that I knew taking a train out.  I thought it was sort of funny.  Pittsburgh Ike and Denver Red.”

“When was it?”

“Two weeks ago,” said the friend.

“Thanks,” returned the boss.  “You must excuse me now; I’ve got an important engagement.”