Part 14 (1/2)
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.