How to Be a Detective. James Brady
information to give you except that some one of your fellow employees is a thief, and I want to catch him. You must watch every man in the office and you mustn’t let one of them know that you are watching. As for further instructions, I haven’t got any to give. It is a case for you to show what you are made of. I will give you one week to accomplish something in. If you have nothing to report at the end of that time, I shall put on another man.”
Wasn’t that putting me on my mettle?
Well, I thought so then, and I haven’t changed my opinion since.
I resolved to show you what sort of stuff I was made of before the week had passed.
Of course, when I presented myself at the Eagle steamship office I was engaged at once.
The line ran down to South America somewhere—Brazil, if I remember rightly—and the proprietor’s name was Sandman, a bald-headed, snuffy old Scotchman who was terribly exercised about the robberies, but I felt very sure, from what I heard the other clerks say, that, even if I did succeed in catching the thief, I needn’t look for any big reward, for, with one voice, they pronounced Mr. Sandman “meaner than mud.”
Now the store occupied by Mr. Sandman was on the west side of Broadway and had a half-story opening on a level with the New Church street sidewalk in the rear, where the freight was kept and from which most of the shipping was done.
The clerks all had desks inside a big wire partition down near the door, and old man Sandman’s office was in the rear, while the safe which was being robbed stood between the last desk and the private office, with only the door leading down into the freight department between.
I was immediately put to work on the outward freight book.
It was simple enough. I hadn’t the least trouble in keeping the book, but how to worm myself into the secrets of my fellow clerks—there was the rub.
There were six of them altogether.
Jim Gleason, the “inward freight,” on my left; old Mr. Buzby, the head book-keeper, on my right; Hen Spencer, the foreign correspondent, stood nearest the safe all day, and then there was a fellow named Mann, another named Grady, and an office boy; besides these, there were the fellows in the freight department down-stairs.
Which out of all this crowd was the thief?
Never did I so fully realize my want of experience in the business as when I had been in the office of the Eagle Line a few days, without being able to accomplish anything more than to get every one down on me.
“He’s always snoopin’ about and listenin’ to what a feller says,” I overheard Grady say to Mr. Buzby one day.
“That’s so,” replied the book-keeper. “I seen him peekin’ into the safe the other day. I don’t see what old Sandman wants him for anyhow. He’s slower than death about his work and as thick-headed as a mule.”
I was in the closet blacking my boots at the time for it was near the hour to close.
Oh, how mad I was! for I knew they were talking about me.
I made up my mind then and there that old Buzby was the thief. “Anyway,” I reasoned when I left, soon after, “if it ain’t him, who is it? He’s the only one besides Mr. Sandman who has the key.”
Such was my theory at the end of the first week.
I pumped Jim Gleason next to me, the pleasantest fellow in the whole office, a little inclined to be fast, perhaps, if his everlasting chatter about girls, policy and horse races meant anything, but so kind, and seemed to take such a fancy to me, that I couldn’t help liking him better than any one else in the crowd for all that.
From him I learned that the robberies had been going on for a long time, even continued since I came there. This greatly surprised me. The safe was an old one, he said, and Sandman was too mean to buy a better. Somebody who had a key was doing the stealing, Gleason thought, and he openly hinted that Mr. Buzby was the thief.
Saturday night came, and according to orders I went up to your office to report.
“How are you getting on?” says you.
“Not at all,” says I, “except that I’m certain that old Buzby, the book-keeper, is doing the stealing.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Oh, no!”
“What makes you think so?”
“The clerks all think so.”
“When you say all which ones do you really mean?”
“Jim Gleason for one—Spencer for another.”
“Which one told you this?”
“Gleason.”
“How came he to tell you?”
“Well, he works next to me, and we got to talking.”
“Did you tell him you were a detective?” you asked, turning on me suddenly.
“Well, I’m afraid he guesses it,” I replied, turning red.
“Why?”
“From something he said.”
“After you had given yourself away?”
I grew redder still.
“I was asking him about the robbery, and he suddenly asked me what I wanted to know so much about it for.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said, ‘of nothing, just curiosity;’ then he asked me how much they paid me, and told me in a whisper that he’d caught on to my little racket, and knew I was a detective.”
“And you denied it?”
“Yes.”
“Be very sure he didn’t believe you,” you said. Then you told me that I was a fool to give myself away, and I expected to hear you say “don’t go there again. I’ll put another man on,” but you didn’t, and Monday morning I went back to the desk the same as usual. I had no instructions from you how to act, for we had been interrupted in our conversation, and I hadn’t seen you since.
Monday night Jim Gleason asked me out to have a drink, and I went and took a beer with him. While we were in the saloon Hen Spencer dropped in.
“So there’s another new man taken on,” he remarked.
“Who?” asked Gleason.
“Feller in the freight room down-stairs. Wouldn’t wonder if he was a detective, too. I seen him snooping round old Buzby’s desk. I only wish I wasn’t dependin’ on the old feller’s good opinion to keep me solid with Sandman, I could tell a thing or two, but there ain’t no use. The old man thinks the sun rises and sets in Buzby’s ear.”
“What could you tell?” I asked.
“Oh, no matter.”
“Have another drink?”
“Well, I don’t mind,” he said, and after that I treated to cigars and made myself as pleasant as possible, bound to work it out of him before I got through.
And I succeeded. We were seated at a table talking confidentially in a little while, and I was flattering myself on my shrewdness in drawing young Spencer out.
It happened that he had seen in old Buzby’s desk a false key to the outer door of the freight room, which was supposed to be entirely in charge of the freight superintendent.
“I tell you what it is, fellers,” he added, “if we could only manage to get that key and slip in there some night, I have a key what would open his desk, and I’m sure we’d find something among his papers to prove that he’s the one who is prigging money from the safe.”
I jumped at the idea.
“Get