The Substitute Prisoner Part 14

Despite the soothing quality which he tried to inject into his tone, she started like a frightened deer.

"Arrest!" she echoed. "Then he didn't deliver--the woman, Julia Strong, didn't get the message?"

She s.h.i.+vered, as the chill breath of a new fear stole over her.

"Julia Strong is dead," said Britz, in the same calm, matter-of-fact voice.

But to the woman the words came like a destructive avalanche. She buried her face in her hands, while her frame shook with successive sobs. The last shreds of her outward composure vanished as before the wind, and she surrendered unresistingly to the turbulent emotions struggling within her. Several minutes pa.s.sed before the inward tumult subsided.

Then, lifting herself to her feet, she said with bitter emphasis:

"Four lives wrecked! Two dead!... Mr. Beard and I alive--but what a future! What a dastardly thing to bring all this about!"

Britz, eagerly drinking in her words, watched her in a fever of expectancy. But she checked her outburst before the fatal revelation for which he hoped, received utterance. With a new shock she recalled his presence, and, as if afraid of having incriminated herself, or someone whom she wanted to s.h.i.+eld, walked hastily toward the door.

"Please escort me to the automobile," she pleaded.

Britz recognized the futility of trying to obtain further admissions from a woman in her distressful state of mind. The fear that had seized her would prove a padlock on her lips. So he permitted her to lean heavily on his arm while she pa.s.sed through the door and descended the steps to the street. Then, helping her into the machine, he waited until the car vanished around the corner.

With a self-satisfied smile Britz slowly ascended the steps, intent on obtaining the doc.u.ments which he had left in the sitting-room.

"With those papers we'll soon wring admissions from somebody," he said to himself. "It's a good night's work--a most profitable night's work."

To his consternation he found that the servant had closed the door. Nor did his insistent pressure of the electric door-bell produce any effect on the butler. Then, for the first time, Britz realized that the lights in the sitting-room had been extinguished.

Consumed with sudden anger he climbed the low iron hand-rail that protected the stoop, and the next instant the broad toe of his boot had shattered the window leading to the front room. Reaching forward, he found it easy to displace sufficient gla.s.s to permit him to step safely into the room. Near the curtained doorway he found the electric switch which regulated the light. As the cl.u.s.ter of lamps flashed up, he looked for the doc.u.ments. They were gone.

His jaw snapped viciously as he leaped out of the room and groped his way to the head of the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs. By the aid of matches he achieved a safe pa.s.sage down the narrow steps, at the bottom of which he found the b.u.t.ton which switched on the bas.e.m.e.nt lights.

In the rear room he found precisely what he had expected. The door opening into the yard was unlatched. Through this door the butler had escaped with the papers.

CHAPTER IX

The development of crime detection in the last decade has followed closely along the line of industrial development. Just as no great commercial establishment can long survive without systematic management, so no great detective force can develop efficiency with chaos on the throne.

Centralization, through closer and ever more close systematization, has not only been the tendency, but the great phenomenon of the modern industrial world. The same condition obtains to-day in the police profession.

A detective force, like the New York Central Office, is managed much the same way as a big commercial enterprise. Under modern conditions every large mercantile establishment must depend for success on the wisdom of its directing genius combined with the intelligent cooperation of its army of subordinates. In similar manner, the head of a big detective bureau directs the efforts of his men to success or failure.

Moreover, the same qualities by which a man attains commercial eminence will win distinction for him as a detective. Intelligence, persistence, reliability, are the foremost essentials. But these qualities, while enabling one to achieve success in subordinate posts, seldom carry one to commercial or professional heights; to the all-commanding peaks of power and glory. The industrial king is monarch by reason of his ability to give efficient direction to the labor of others. The present-day detective king wields his scepter for precisely the same reason.

As great business campaigns are managed and directed from a desk in the office of the president or manager, so the ceaseless war against criminals is directed from the desk of the detective chief. For, be it remembered that the chief function of a detective force is to obtain evidence that will convict.

In ninety per cent. of all crimes which the police are called upon to investigate, the ident.i.ty of the guilty person is soon established. The baffling problem is to obtain evidence, admissible in a court of law, which will convince a jury of the defendant's guilt. Even though a person's guilt be apparent to all, the difficulties in shattering the protecting wall which the law erects around every accused man or woman, are frequently insuperable. Evidence which convinces the police or the prosecuting attorney of the defendant's culpability is as likely as not to be found incompetent in court and barred from the record. The result is a verdict of acquittal and all the work of the police goes for naught.

Unfortunately for the public at large, the Lecocq type of detective does not exist outside the pages of fiction. But even were there a thousand Lecocqs, reinforced by half a thousand Sherlock Holmeses, employed on the New York detective force, it is doubtful whether their peculiar ability would prove of much practical service. Their deductions, wonderful and convincing though they might be, would never be permitted to reach the ears of a jury.

So in the end, the great detective is the one who, seated at his desk, with the reports of his dozens of subordinates before him, is able to direct their collective efforts toward a single goal--the production of such evidence as is admissible in a court of law.

Since countless writers of detective fiction have provided the public with a most distorted notion of the methods of crime detection, it may not prove unprofitable to devote a moment or two to a peep behind the scenes at the Central Office.

Captain Manning is the t.i.tular head of the bureau. He finds on his desk eleven police slips, each bearing in succinct outline the story of a crime which requires the services of Central Office detectives.

Ordinarily he will a.s.sign two men to each crime and perhaps the same day, or the following one, the detectives will make a verbal or written report. Out of the eleven cases, perhaps ten will prove to be minor robberies of no especial significance, except to the victims. On the face of them, they are the work of professional house-breakers, or pickpockets or hold-up men.

Manning will deliver a list of the stolen articles to his "p.a.w.nshop men," who will inquire of all p.a.w.nbrokers whether anything on the list has been pledged. Duplicate lists will also be left with all p.a.w.nbrokers with the request that they notify the police if anyone offers to pledge any of the stolen articles.

Other detectives will drop casually into places suspected as being "fences," and closely question the proprietors as to what new articles he has purchased recently. Of course, the "fence" gives little or no information, but he thereby lays himself open to prosecution as a receiver of stolen goods should they be found on his premises subsequently.

Next, Manning starts in operation his most potent machinery for the apprehension of minor criminals. He is aware that about ninety per cent.

of his detectives have little or no detective ability. They are known as "stool pigeon" men, and it probably would be no exaggeration to say that they comprise ninety-five or ninety-eight per cent. of the entire active detective force. These men, through intimidation, or money, or the granting of protection for minor derelictions, are able to maintain a staff of "stool pigeons," or crooks, who keep them informed of the doings of other crooks. It is through this source that most of the professional criminals are apprehended.

"But where does the detective work come in?" the reader asks.

It is accomplished by the two or three per cent. of real detectives on the force.

For instance: A burglary has been committed. Part of the stolen articles have been traced to a p.a.w.nshop. The p.a.w.nbroker describes the man who pledged them, but the description might fit any one of a hundred professional crooks. He does not recognize any of the Rogues Gallery portraits as that of the man from whom he received the goods.

p.a.w.nbrokers seldom identify crooks, for it is to their interest to plead a bad memory in this respect.

But Detectives Burke and Duvaney ascertain from one of their "stool pigeons" that Michael Ribbs, alias Padlock Mike, is in funds--that he and his "moll," who may be his wife or his mistress, are enjoying the fruits of Mike's labors. And as Mike's specialty is burglary, Chief Manning rightfully decides that he is responsible for one or more of the recent robberies.

From this point the real detective work begins. The chief a.s.signs two of his really capable men, not to solve any one of the numerous burglaries that have been reported, but to ascertain the recent doings of Padlock Mike and to obtain evidence--legal evidence that will stand the test of the courts--with which to send the criminal to jail. And the chances are that in convicting Mike, half a dozen mysterious burglaries will have been solved.

This is the ordinary routine of detective work. Of course, there are innumerable variations, and yet not as many as most people imagine.

About eighty-five per cent. of the detective force is constantly employed at this routine business, while fifteen per cent., or even less, is engaged on work that is not in a large measure mechanical.

As for Chief Manning, his genius for directing his subordinates is inconspicuously employed all the time. But occasionally a more exacting demand will be made on it. It may be in a homicide case in which a wife has poisoned her husband.

Of course, in a case of this sort, "stool pigeon" men are useless, for no professional crooks are involved. So Manning a.s.signs six or seven of his best men to the case. They do not roam about promiscuously, treading on one another's toes. To each is given a phase of the case to develop and he reports as frequently as possible to the chief. At the end of four weeks Manning, surveying the reports of his men, finds himself in possession of the following:

The chemical a.n.a.lysis of the vital organs shows that the victim died of a.r.s.enic poisoning. Detectives have discovered the druggist who sold the poison to the wife. Other detectives have turned in competent evidence tending to establish the woman's dislike of her husband. Moreover, she was in love with another man in whose company she was frequently seen.

Then it is found that the husband's life was insured and his death not only released her from matrimonial ties which had become irksome, but also netted her a considerable sum in cash.

Sufficient motive for the crime has now been established. The poison of which the husband died has been traced directly to the wife. But a vital element of the case is still missing. It is necessary to prove that the wife had exclusive opportunity to administer the drug.

Manning now concentrates all his energies toward this end. Obviously, all the deductions of Messrs. Lecocq and Sherlock Holmes would be futile. But through shrewd questioning of the servants in the house he ascertains that the husband was taken violently ill after supper and that no guests were present at the meal.

An a.n.a.lysis of the sediment in the husband's coffee cup establishes the presence of a.r.s.enic. It must be inferred that the wife's cup contained none of the poison, for she developed no symptoms of poisoning after the meal.

The servants declare that the wife invariably made the after-dinner coffee in a percolator that stood on the sideboard. On the night in question, she had boiled the coffee, but none of the servants had seen her draw it from the percolator or serve it in the cups. But all of them a.s.sert that for a year or more it had been the wife's custom to do the serving, so it is a fair inference that the husband did not leave his seat at the table to help himself to coffee, on the occasion of his fatal illness. No one but the wife being in the room with him, and it having been ascertained that she purchased the a.r.s.enic, hers was the exclusive opportunity to drop it into the cup--and the evidence against her is complete.

A case of this nature is not established by the deductive methods of a Lecocq, but by the patient labor of a score or a half score of detectives intelligently guided by their chief. The druggist who sold the poison was found after a canvas of perhaps three or four hundred apothecaries. The domestic strife in the victim's home was disclosed to the police by relatives of the husband, whose interests naturally conflicted with those of the wife. Other evidence was furnished reluctantly by the servants, and, through the collective efforts of all the detectives, the woman's crime has been reconstructed in a way calculated to convince the ordinary juror.

It was because Detective-Lieutenant Britz was endowed with a rare combination of talents that enabled him to direct the work of others, even while partic.i.p.ating actively in the physical search for evidence, that he ranked as the foremost detective of the Central Office. Had he been merely a shrewd, capable, resourceful investigator, he could never have attained to his present eminence.

Britz occupied a position subordinate to Manning, but his reputation far exceeded that of the latter. And Manning, conscious of the value of his lieutenant, reserved his services for the more baffling mysteries which the Central Office from time to time was called upon to solve.