to him; and on his second visit, the customer had left a piece of a check, carefuly torn out in circular form, which showed the certification which he desired copied.  This fragment the maker had retained, as well as a slip of paper, upon which the customer had written the address of the place to which he wished the stamp sent—­The Young Men’s Christian Association!  The face of the fragment showed a part of the maker’s signature.  The superintendent ran his eye over a list of brokers and picked out the name of the firm most like the hieroglyphics on the check.  Then he telephoned over and asked to be permitted to see their pay roll.  Carefully comparing the signature appearing thereon with the Y.M.C.A. slip, he picked his man in less than ten minutes.

The latter was carefully trailed to his home, and thence to the Young Men’s Christian Association, after which he called on his fiancee at her father’s house.  He spent the night at his own boarding place.  Next morning (Sunday) he was arrested on his way to church, and all the securities (except some that he later returned) were discovered in his room.  More quick work!  The amateur’s method had been very simple.  He knew that the loan had been made and the bonds sent to the bank.  So he forged a check, certified it himself, and collected the securities.  Of course, he was a bungler and took a hundred rash chances.

A good example of the value of the accumulated information —­documentary, pictorial, and otherwise—­in the possession of an agency was the capture of Charles Wells, more generally known as Charles Fisher, alias Henry Conrad, an old-time forger, who suddenly resumed his activities after being released from a six-year term in England.  A New York City bank had paid on a bogus two hundred and fifty dollar check and had reported its loss to the agency in question.  The superintendent examined the check (although Fisher had been in confinement for six years on the other side) spotted it as his work.  The next step was to find the forger.  Of course, no man who does the actual “scratching” attempts to “lay down” the paper.  That task is up to the “presenter.”  The cashier of the bank identified in the agency’s gallery the picture of the man who had brought in the two hundred and fifty dollar check, and he in turn proved to be another ex-convict well known in the business, whose whereabouts in New York were not difficult to ascertain.  He was “located” and “trailed” and all his associates noted and followed.  In due course he “connected up” (as they say) with Fisher.  Now, it is one thing to follow a man who has no idea that he is being followed and another to trail a man who is as suspicious and elusive as a fox.  A professional criminal’s daily business is to observe whether or not he is being followed, and he rarely if ever, makes a direct move.  If he wants a drink at the saloon across the street, he will, by preference, go out the back door, walk around the block and dodge in the side entrance under the tail of an ice wagon.  In this case the detectives followed the presenter for days before they reached Fisher, and when they did they had still to locate his “plant.”