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One of the brightest and most successful of our New York detectives is Mr. Samuel Kean, at present attached to Pinkerton’s Agency.

He was one of my pupils, and a better one I never had.

I have therefore selected a few of his early cases to illustrate the kind of work that a young detective has to engage in.

Let him tell about his first case himself. I thought it would be more interesting to let him do his own talking, and accordingly wrote him and asked that he would describe his first case in his own way. Here is the answer I received:

New York, March 20th, 1890.

My Dear Mr. Brady—You ask me to write you a letter and tell you all about my first case and how I became a detective.

Now it will be very easy for me to do this, for I have never forgotten a single thing that happened that night, and I don’t believe I ever shall forget, if I live to be a hundred years old; and yet, after all, it wasn’t much of a case. It would have been mere child’s play to you if you had been in my position, which, of course, you wouldn’t. For you wouldn’t have allowed yourself to be deceived the way I was—that’s one thing sure.

I was between eighteen and nineteen then, and had left school some six months before I got the idea of being a detective.

My father was dead against it from the start, and my mother wouldn’t let me even mention the subject, but you see I had been reading about you and your wonderful cases in the New York Detective Library, and I got an idea that I would like no better fun than to be a detective myself.

“Pooh! You haven’t got the courage to be a detective!” exclaimed my father one evening, when I broached the subject for the hundredth time. “You’d run at the first fire, Sam.”

“Did I get my cowardice from you, sir?” I asked mildly.

“Not much! You got it from——”

“Don’t say it came from my side of the house, Mr. Kean!” snapped my mother. “My father was all through the Mexican war, and you got a substitute when they drafted you time of the Southern rebellion. The boy is a plaguey sight braver than you are.”

Now I had my mother on my side from that moment.

The result of my father’s fling was a big family row, which ended in the old gentleman’s getting me a letter of introduction to you, Mr. Brady. I took the letter down to your office one morning, and that’s the way it began.

“I don’t know about this,” was the first thing you said. “Young men born with silver spoons in their mouths rarely make good detectives. Don’t you think you’d better try your hand at some other line of business, my friend?”

I told you that I meant to be a detective if I died for it, I believe, or something of that sort. I know I wanted very much to speak with you alone, and felt rather mad because there was another person in the office, a slim, freckled-faced, red-headed young chap of about my own age, whose cheap dress showed that he belonged to the working classes. I had rather a contempt for him, and was just wishing he’d get out, when you sent him out without my asking.

“Now that fellow has got the very kind of stuff in him that good detectives are made of,” you remarked, and I remember I inwardly laughed at you.

“Why, he’s nothing but an ordinary street boy,” I thought to myself. You know who I refer to—Dave Doyle.

Then you talked to me a long time, and asked me all about my education and my health, besides a whole lot of other questions, which at the time seemed to me were of no account, but which I now understand to be most important.

As almost every answer I gave seemed to be the very one you did not want, I had just about made up my mind that you were going to reject me entirely, when all at once you surprised me by saying that I could try it if I wanted to for two months, after which you would either pay me something regular in the way of wages, or tell me to get out.

I don’t suppose you know it, Mr. Brady, but when I left your office that morning I felt about nine feet high.

I was sure of success, and I firmly believe that it was the very certainty I felt that made me succeed.

I was to report next day, and I did so.

You put me in charge of a man named Mulligan, one of the lowest type of police detectives, who was looking for a pickpocket called Funeral Pete, a fellow who made a point of robbing people at funerals.

“Funeral Pete” had taken alarm, and was in hiding, and Mulligan and I undertook to find out where.

Well, we didn’t find out, but I learned a lot of other things, for Mulligan dragged me through nearly every dive in New York.

I was amazed and not a little startled.

Had I got to mix up with such dreadful people as these in order to make myself a detective?

It made me sick to think of it, still I had no notion of turning back.

This state of affairs kept up for a couple of weeks.

First I was sent out with one detective, then with another. There was no disguising, no shadowing, nor shooting. Everything seemed terribly commonplace.

One night I spoke to you about my disappointment. I told you this wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted, that I had expected to go about disguised with wigs and false mustaches, carrying revolvers, bowie-knives, dark lanterns and handcuffs in my pockets, and all that sort of thing.

How you laughed! I shall never forget it.

“Why, bless you, some one’s got to do the kind of work you’re doing,” you said, “and very often just such work becomes necessary in the most important cases. However, if you’re tired of it I’ll try you on another sort of a job and see how you make out.”

You took me into the office and began to talk.

“Did you ever study bookkeeping?” you asked.

“Yes,” said I.

“How good a bookkeeper are you?”

“I can do double entry.”

“As they teach it in schools?”

“Yes.”

“Humph. I’m afraid that won’t amount to much, still, you can try.”

“Try what?”

“Listen to me! To-morrow morning you go down to No. ——Broadway, office of the Eagle Steamship Line, and say I’m the bookkeeper Old King Brady spoke of. That will be enough. They’ll engage you.”

“What for?”

“To keep books, of course.”

“But I don’t want to be a book-keeper—I want to be a detective.”

“Hold on, hold on! A detective has got to be anything and everything. You will take the job and go to work. You will also keep your eyes open and try and find out who is robbing the safe every night or two, of small amounts—do you understand?”

“Ah! I’m going to be put on a case at last then?”

“Of course you are. There is no 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 me the key for an hour,” I said, “and I’ll have another made.”

“Great scheme!” cried Jim Gleason. “If you do that we may catch him in the very act. Look here, Hen, I may as well tell you a secret. Mr. Kean is a detective. He’s put in the office to watch us.”

“Shut up with your nonsense!” I cried. “I only want to help you fellows—that’s all.”

“Don’t deny it,” persisted Gleason.

“I might have guessed as much,” said Spencer. “I never seen a sharper fellow than you are, Sam Kean. Don’t you fret. I’ll snake the key out of old Buzby’s desk while he’s at lunch to-morrow. We’ll have him where the wool is short and don’t you forget it. It’ll serve him just right too, for all his impudence to me.”

“How much has he taken altogether?” I asked.

“Why he reports that $500 is missing so far,” was Spencer’s reply, “but as he’s doing the stealing himself, how is one going to tell?”

After that I did not attempt to deny to these two that I was in the office as a spy.

They got the key and I had the duplicate made.

Thursday night was set for the execution of our little plan, for the reason that Spencer pretended to have been told by the old bookkeeper that he was going out of town that night.

“I’ll bet you what you like it’s only a dodge,” he said. “That’s the night he intends to make his next haul.”

I was in high feather. I had no orders to go to the office and report to you so I didn’t go.

“Wait till I surprise Mr. Brady by dragging Buzby to the New Church street station,” I said to myself, for we three had agreed to do that very thing, provided we caught him in the store.

When the store closed that evening I slipped down-stairs to try my key in the lock of the freight-room door.

All hands had gone, or at least I supposed they had, so I was awfully startled at having a slim young fellow with black hair and determined-looking face suddenly pop up from behind some cases and ask me what the mischief I was doing there.

Really I forget what excuse I made, but I know I lit out as soon as I could, and made the best of my way up-stairs.

When I met Gleason and Spencer at a certain beer saloon in Greenwich street at eleven o’clock that night I told them about it, and could see that they looked worried.

“That’s the new hand, Jack Rody,” said Jim.

“I hope he ain’t one of Buzby’s pals,” added Hen, “but I wouldn’t be one mite surprised if he was.”

Now I thought this was nonsense, and I said so. We got to talking about other things, and there the matter dropped.

“Time’s up, boys,” said Jim at last, just as the clock struck twelve. “We’d better slip round there now. There’s just one thing that worries me though.”

“What’s that?” asked Hen.

“Suppose the cop catches us trying to enter the store.”

“Well,” replied Gleason. “Sam can fix that. He’s got his shield I suppose.”

“I’ve got no shield,” I answered, this disagreeable possibility occurring to me for the first time.

But I was a good deal worried. I felt that it would be simply sickening to be arrested for burglary and have to send for you to get me out.

No such trouble occurred, however.

We watched our chance and slipped in through the back door of the Eagle Line office without the slightest difficulty.

It was not until we got the door shut and locked that I began to wonder what we were going to do for a light.

“Oh, I looked out for that,” whispered Jim. “I’ve got a dark lantern.”

He pulled it out, lit it and flashed it round him. There was no sign of Jack Rody, though I must confess I half expected to see him spring up from behind the cases again.

“Old Buz ain’t here, that’s one thing sure,” whispered Gleason, when we got up-stairs into the office.

“We’ll lay for him an hour or so, anyhow,” replied Spencer.

“Mebbe he’s been here already,” suggested Jim.

“Suppose we open the safe and see if he’s taken anything?” said Spencer, after a moment.

Now I give you my word, Mr. Brady, that this was the first I began to suspect there was anything wrong.

“Open the safe!” I exclaimed. “How are you fellows going to open the safe? What do you mean?”

“We mean this,” hissed Jim, turning suddenly upon me, “we are tired of playing a dangerous game for small stakes. There’s a thousand dollars in that safe to-night and we intend to have it, and leave you here to be pulled in as the thief.”

I was thunderstruck. I saw it all.

“You’ve been playing me for a sucker,” I blurted out. “I’ll show you——”

“No you won’t!” breathed Spencer, drawing a revolver and thrusting it in my face. “We have been playing you for just what you are. You pretend to be a detective! Bah! you’re nothing but a little squirt, anyhow. We’ll fix you. Here, Jim, give him his drink.”

I fought like a tiger, never heeding the revolver, for I was sure they wouldn’t shoot. Still I did not dare to make any outcry, for that would be sure to bring matters to a crisis.

It was all over in a minute. They had me down, and, while Gleason held me, Spencer got a rope out of his desk and tied me. Then Jim forced my mouth open, while his companion poured a lot of whisky down my throat, almost strangling me. I seemed to be entirely powerless to help myself.

Then I yelled like a good fellow.

All it amounted to was to cause them to jam a handkerchief in my mouth.

Never before nor since have I been a prey to such terrible feelings as I endured while I lay there and watched those two scoundrels open that safe.

Spencer was the one who had the key—a ridiculous old thing made up of a number of steel prongs which fitted in a slot.

I thought then and I still think that it served Sandman just right to be robbed, for trusting his money in such an old-fashioned affair.

Well, they opened it and they took the money from the cash-drawer, shaking the bills in my face in triumph.

“They’ll find you here in the morning,” sneered Gleason. “Mebbe they’ll believe your story, and mebbe they won’t. Anyhow your goose on the detective force is cooked. Next time you try to pump a fellow, go at it in the right way.”

Of course I could say nothing—only stare helplessly.

I heard them laugh, I saw them move toward the basement door.

Then all of a sudden I saw the door fly open, and a determined voice shouted:

“Drop that money, gents, and the shooter along with it, or I’ll drop you!”

It was Jack Rody, the new freight clerk.

His face was pale, but determined, as he stood there covering those two rascals with a cocked revolver in each hand, and to my further surprise I saw that his hair was not black now, but red.

Then I knew him.

It was David Doyle, the young fellow I had met in your office the day I first called.

Did we capture them?

Well, we just did.

Rather, I should say, Dave Doyle did it.

He made them release me, and then we took them to the station together, and next day Jim Gleason confessed that he and Spencer had done all the stealing.

You remember the end of it. They turned out to be a couple of worthless fellows and went up to the Elmira Reformatory in the end.

You were not very hard on me for the ridiculous way in which I had managed the affair—not half as hard as you might have been.

That’s 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.