One more anecdote, at the expense of the deductive detective.  A watchman was murdered, the safe of a brewery blown open and the contents stolen.  Local detectives worked on the case and satisfied themselves that the night engineer at the brewery had committed the crime.  He was a quiet and, apparently, a God-fearing man, but circumstances were conclusive against him.  In fact, he had been traced within ten minutes of the murder on the way to the scene of the homicide.  But some little link was lacking and the brewery officials called in the agency.  The first thing the superintendent did was to look over the engineer.  At first sight he recognized him as a famous crook who had served five years for a homicidal assault!  One would think that that would have settled the matter.  But it didn’t!  The detective said nothing to his associates or employers, but called on the engineer that evening and had a quiet talk with him in which he satisfied himself that the man was entirely innocent.  The man had served his time, turned over a new leaf, and was leading an honest, decent life.  Two months later the superintendent caused the arrest of four yeggmen, all of whom were convicted and are now serving fifteen years each for the crime.

Thus, the reader will observe that there are just a few more real detectives still left in the business-if you can find them.  Incidentally, they, one and all, take off their hats to Scotland Yard.  They will tell you that the Englishman may be slow (fancy an American inspector of police wearing gray suede gloves and brewing himself a dish of tea in his office at four o’clock), but that once he goes after a crook he is bound to get him—­it is merely a question of time.  I may add that in the opinion of the heads of the big agencies the percentage of ability in the New York Detective Bureau is high—­one of them going so far as to claim that fifty per cent of the men have real detective ability—­that is to say “brains.”  That is rather a higher average than one finds among clergymen and lawyers, yet it may be so.

CHAPTER VII

Women in the Courts

AS WITNESSES

Women appear in the criminal courts constantly as witnesses, although less frequently as complainants and defendants.  As complainants are always witnesses, and as defendants may, and in point of fact generally do become so, whatever generalizations are possible regarding women in courts of law can most easily be drawn from their characteristics as givers of testimony.  Roughly speaking, women exhibit about the same idiosyncrasies and limitations in the witness-chair as the opposite sex, and at first thought one would be apt to say that it would be fruitless and absurd to attempt to predicate any general principles in regard to their testimony, but a careful study of female witnesses as a whole will result in the inevitable conclusion that their evidence has virtues and limitations peculiar to itself.