How to Be a Detective. James Brady
the story of my first case, Mr. Brady, and it taught me a lesson which I never forgot. Yours truly,
Sam Kean.
Note.—I may as well add that I knew all about that midnight business from the first.
No sooner had Sam Kean told me of the conversation he had had with Jim Gleason than I suspected the fellow, and put an experienced man to watch him nights.
I soon found that he and Spencer were inseparable companions; that they were drunkards and gamblers, and capable of committing any crime.
Kean had made a blunder very common with beginners in the detective business. He had not properly weighed the evidence, and had become a cat’s-paw of the real criminal through allowing himself to be flattered.
I didn’t blame him a bit.
When I first began to go about as a detective, I fell into a similar trap several times.
I was so sure Gleason and Spencer were doing the stealing, that I would have arrested them on suspicion and forced a confession out of them, had it not been that I wanted Sam Kean to understand just how foolish he had really been.
Well, he found out—don’t make any mistake about that. A more thoroughly taken down individual you never saw.
After that he was willing enough to receive all the instructions I had a mind to give him.
You see I got Doyle into the freight-room at the end of the week, just as I told him I would, but Dave’s appearance was altered by a black wig, and Sam never guessed who it was. Besides that I was in the cellar and came to the rescue at the proper moment.
It was Dave and I who took those two young scoundrels around to the New Church street station, or rather I did the most of it, for Dave had all he could do to take care of Sam.
Do you notice that my account of the end of the affair differs slightly from his? You will observe that he don’t mention me at all?
Well, no wonder. The poor fellow was so drunk that he did not know which end he was standing on that night.
He says they forced liquor down his throat after he was bound. I know this to be true, for Dave saw them doing it through the key-hole; but I’m afraid Sam had taken several drinks before, or the stuff would not have had the effect upon him that it did.
Now this brings me to another and most important point—one that a young man in starting upon the career of a detective has got to pay more attention to than anything else.
As a detective you will often be thrown into positions where you have got to drink.
Now a drinking detective is but a poor worthless creature, as a rule. Then what are you going to do?
Here, again, no rule can be laid down. You must be guided by your constitution, by your conscience, by circumstances.
If you allow liquor to get control of you be very sure you will not be able to control your man. To think this is to make a great mistake.
Great criminals are seldom drunkards. If they lead you to drink, it is only that they may get the best of you in some way or other.
Still, to refuse absolutely, would be to excite suspicion, which leaves you between two fires, as it were.
I can only warn you—I cannot dictate.
The best way is to plead that liquor never agrees with you—too much never agrees with any one—and stick to temperance drinks.
If you feel that you must drink, make your drinks as small as possible and as few.
Some detectives have a knack of slyly turning their glass into the cuspidore or on the floor; others make it a rule to call for gin and then fill another glass with an equal amount of water; both the gin and the water being white they drink the latter and pretend to taste the gin.
These tricks may work satisfactorily if your man is under the influence himself, but if he is sober you are pretty sure to get caught at it and have your plans spoiled.
Whisky may have helped some detectives to make captures, and procure information which could never have been obtained without its aid; but on the other hand it has ruined thousands of young men who have set out to follow our business, and sent them to a drunkard’s grave.
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