Quiet and unobtrusive men for the most part, dogged, tactful, and resourceful, they must always be ready to act at a moment's notice as individuals or as part of a machine. For it is the machinery of Scotland Yard that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred calls check to the criminal's move. It is long odds on law and order every time.
The administrative work of the department is carried out by the Assistant-Commissioner and the Chief Constable. It is on the shoulders of two superintendents--curiously enough, both Irishmen--at the head of the two main branches of the department that the executive work chiefly devolves.
Superintendent John McCarthy--who for several years has held the reins of the Central C.I.D., to which the main body of detectives are attached--is a blue-eyed, soft-voiced man who governs with no less tact and firmness than his predecessor, the famous Frank Froest. In a service extending for more than thirty years he has accumulated an unequalled experience of all classes of crime and criminals, and has travelled widely in many countries on dangerous and difficult missions. Tall and neat, he gives an impression of absolute competence. And competence is needed in the organisation he has to handle.
Nothing can ruffle him. He sits at a flat-topped desk in a soft-carpeted room, working quietly, methodically. By the window stands a big steel safe containing hundreds of pounds in gold, at hand for any emergency.
Ranged on shelves are reference books--"Who's Who," "The Law List,"
"Medical Directory," "A.B.C. Guide," "Continental Bradshaw," and others.
Behind the office table are half a dozen speaking tubes and a telephone.
It is for Mr. McCarthy to enlist the aid of the Press on occasion. It is sometimes necessary to give wide publicity to a description or a photograph. Then skilful diplomacy is necessary to avoid giving facts which, instead of helping, might hamper an investigation. Only of late years has this co-operation been sought--and credit is due to Mr. Froest for the manner in which he helped to initiate and apply the system.
Swift publicity has often helped to run down a criminal, notably in the case of the murderer Crippen.
Immediately associated with Mr. McCarthy at headquarters are four Chief Detective-Inspectors--Ward, Fowler, Hawkins, and Gough--all men of long experience and proved qualities. Most of their names are familiar to the public in connection with the unravelling of mysteries during the last decade. One Chief Detective-Inspector--Mr. Wensley--has his headquarters in the East End.
One or more of these is always available in an emergency. Is there an epidemic of burglary at some district in London? A chief-inspector is sent to organise a search for the culprits, taking with him a detachment from Scotland Yard to reinforce the divisional detectives. Problems of crime that affect London as a whole are dealt with by them.
Some have specialist knowledge of particular classes of crime or particular districts, though each must be competent to undertake any investigation, no matter what it may be. Or a provincial police force may ask for expert aid in, for instance, a baffling murder mystery. One may be sent by the authority of the Home Secretary to assist in its solution.
To each of the twenty-two divisions into which the Metropolitan Police is split up are assigned between twelve to thirty detectives, under a divisional inspector. In ten of the larger divisions there is a junior inspector to assist in the control of the staff. Except in a few of the outlying districts there are one, two, three or more detectives to every police station. They deal with local crime, make it their business to know local thieves, and reinforce other divisions or are reinforced as occasion demands. They have special duties allotted to them, and have to keep a record in their diaries of the manner in which their time is spent.
Yet individuality and initiative are not sacrificed by too rigid a discipline. If a man learnt, for instance, while watching for pickpockets in the Strand that a robbery was being planned at Kennington, it would be his duty to make at once for the scene. He would stay for nothing, gathering assistance, if possible, as he went, but, if not, going alone.
Usually, it is found that the divisional men can deal with any matter needing attention in their districts, but occasionally London is startled by some great mystery. It is then that the C.I.D. moves swiftly, with every nerve strained to achieve its ends.
There is no actual "murder commission," as there is in some foreign countries, but every person and device likely to be of assistance is quickly concentrated on the spot. Not a second of time is lost from the moment the crime is discovered. First on the spot are the divisional detective-inspector and his staff. Telephones and the chattering tape machines tell the details in ten score of police stations.
Mr. Basil Thompson, the Assistant-Commissioner, and Mr. McCarthy will probably motor in haste to the spot. Specialists are summoned from all quarters. Not a thing is moved until a minute inspection has been made, plans drawn, photographs taken, notes made, and finger-prints sought for. It may be necessary to get certain points settled by experts, by Dr. Wilcox, the Home Office analyst, Dr. Spilsbury, the pathologist, by a gunsmith, an expert in handwriting, or any one of a dozen others. The very best professional assistance is always sought.
The danger of amateur experts was exemplified some years ago, when a woman who committed suicide tried to destroy every mark of identity on her clothes. She missed one detail--a laundry mark worked in red thread on her dressing jacket. The mark was read as E.U.X.A.O.Z., and these letters were advertised far and wide. Then the President of the Laundry Association examined the garment, and conclusively showed that the marks really represented E.48992. It was, he declared, not a laundry mark at all, but a dyers and cleaners' mark. And this was what it proved to be.
While the experts are busy the divisional inspector and his men are no less so. They are making a kind of gigantic snowball enquiry, working backwards from the persons immediately available. A. has little to say himself, but there are B. and C. who, he knows, were connected with the murdered person. And B. and C. having been questioned speak of D. E. F.
and G.; and it may be that a score or more persons have been interviewed ere one is found who can supply some vital fact. I have known a murder investigation held up a couple of hours while search was being made for someone to supply the address of some other person who _might_ know something.
All very tedious this, and very different from the methods of the detectives we read about. But then the detectives of fiction somehow avoid the chance of the flaws in their deductions being sought out by astute cross-examining counsel.
If a description of the suspected murderer is available a telegraphist working at Scotland Yard will get it, with the letters "A.S." (all stations) attached. As he taps his instrument the message is automatically ticked out simultaneously at every station in the metropolis.
The great railway termini are watched, and men are thrown to the outlying stations as a second safeguard. Should the man slip through this net he will find England locked from port to port. The C.I.D. have their own men at many ports, and at others the co-operation of the provincial police is enlisted. He is lucky indeed if he gets away after the hue and cry has been raised.
There are no chances taken. Everything is put on record, whether it appears relevant or irrelevant to the enquiry. In the Registry--a kind of clerical bureau of the Criminal Investigation Department--every statement, every report is neatly typed, filed in a book with all relating to the case, and indexed. It remains available just so long as the crime is unsolved--ten days or ten years. The progress of the case is always shown to within an hour.
No effort is spared to get on the track of the murderer while the scent is still warm. Scores of men work on different aspects of the case. The Finger-print Department may be trying to identify a thumb-print from among their records; in another part of the building the photographers have made a lantern slide of certain charred pieces of paper, and are throwing a magnified reproduction on a screen for closer scrutiny; a score of men are seeking for a cabman who might have driven the murderer away.
It may be that these steps will go on for days and weeks with dogged persistence. This stage of investigation has been aptly likened to a jig-saw puzzle which may fall from chaos into a composite whole at any moment. Once the hounds have glimpsed their quarry it is almost hopeless for him to attempt to escape. His description, his photograph, specimens of his writing are spread broadcast for the aid of the public in identifying him wherever he may hide. Men watch the big railway stations, out-going ships are kept under surveillance, for the C.I.D.
has two or three staff men resident in many parts. They are also maintained at ports like Boulogne and Calais.
The co-operation of the provincial and foreign police is obtained, and the wide publicity of newspapers. The whole-heartedness with which the public throws itself into a hunt of this kind has disadvantages as well as advantages. A score of times a day people will report someone "very like" the wanted man as seen almost simultaneously in a score of different places. All these reports have to be immediately investigated.
And with the search for the culprit the ceaseless search for evidence goes on. It is no use to catch a murderer if you cannot adduce proof against him. The enthusiasm of the investigators is not called forth by a blood-hunt. It is all a part of the mechanism. The C.I.D. and its members are merely putting through a piece of business quite impersonally. "A murder has been committed," they say in effect. "We have caught the person we believe responsible, and this is the evidence.
It does not matter to us what happens now. The jury are responsible."
It once fell to the lot of the writer to see an arrest for a murder with which the world rang. The merest novice in stage management could have obtained a better dramatic effect; the arrest of a drunken man by an ordinary constable would have had more thrill. It was in a street thronged with people passing homewards from the city. A single detective waited on each pavement. Presently one of them lifted his hat and the other crossed over. They fell into step each side of a very ordinary young man. "Your name is so-and-so," said one. "We are police-officers, and we should like an explanation of one or two things. It may be necessary to detain you." A cab stopped, the three got into it, and as it drove away there were not two people among the thousands in the street who knew that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
That is typical of the way arrests for great crimes are effected if possible. Yet, sometimes circumstances force melodrama on the detectives. Another arrest which was watched by the writer took place at dead of night in a dirty lodging-house in an East End street. A house-to-house search had been instituted by forty or fifty armed detectives. They expected desperate resistance when they found their quarry. And at last they came upon the man they sought sleeping peacefully on a truckle bed. A giant detective lifted him bodily. A great coat was bundled over his night shirt, and he was sent off as he was, under escort, into the night.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Sir Howard Vincent, first and only "Director of Criminal Investigations," said, in 1883: "It has been urged more than once that better and more reliable detectives might be found among the retired officers of the army and younger sons of gentlemen than in the ranks of the police. Willing, as I hope I shall always be, to give every suggestion a fair trial, six such recruits have been enrolled in the Criminal Investigation Department with a result, I am sorry to say, eminently unsatisfactory. There is, I fear, little doubt that the gentlemen who have failed in one of the professions which they usually adopt are less trustworthy, less reliable, and more difficult to control than those who enter a calling such as the police in the ordinary course."
Sir Charles Warren, in the course of a magazine article which had tremendous effect on his reign as Commissioner, said, referring to the detective service: "Some few candidates have been admitted direct to a great number examined and rejected. Of those admitted, few, if any, have been found qualified to remain in the detective service. It seems, therefore, that although the Criminal Investigation Branch is open to receive any qualified person direct, as a general rule no persons, for some years past, have presented themselves sufficiently qualified to remain. And there are indications of the advantages of a previous police training in the uniform branch in the fact that the most successful private detectives at present in the country are those who have formerly been in, and originally trained in, the uniform branch...."
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE TRAIL.
Primarily, the great function of the police is to prevent crime; secondly, when it has happened, to bring the offender to justice. How do they work? Not by relying on spasmodic flashes of inspiration, like the detective of fiction, but by hard, painstaking work, and, of course, organisation.
Crime is divided into two classes--the habitual and the casual. Every habitual criminal is known. Numbers vary, but the latest available figures show that there are 957 habitual criminals in London, of whom 706 are thieves and 161 receivers. Now, each of these thieves has a distinctive method. A crime occurs. It is reported to the local police station, and a detective is sent to the scene. Perhaps he is able to say off-hand: "This job was done by so-and-so." Then, having fixed his man, he sets to work to accumulate evidence. Scotland Yard is reported to, and thence word is sent to every police station to keep a look-out for Brown, or Jones, or Smith--that is, if he has left his usual haunts.
Every detective--strange as it may seem--makes it a point to keep on good terms with thieves. It is his business. Sooner or later the man "wanted" is discovered, unless he is exceptionally astute.
There are, of course, a hundred ways of finding the author of the crime. The good detective chooses the simplest. Subtle analysis is all very well, but it is apt to lead to blind alleys. Imagine a case such as occurs every day:
A burglary has been committed and reported to the police. The first steps are automatic. The divisional detective-inspector in control of the district sets his staff to work. Men get descriptions of the stolen property, and within an hour the private telegraph and telephone wires have carried them to every police station in London. The great printing machine of Scotland Yard reels off "Informations" four times a day, and in the next edition the story of the crime is told, and each of the 650 detectives in London, as well as the 20,000 uniformed police, have it impressed upon their minds.
Swift, unobtrusive little green motor cars carry "Pawnbrokers' Lists" to every police station to be distributed by hand. The _Police Gazette_ goes out twice a week to the whole police forces of the British Empire.
Every honest market in which the booty can be disposed of is closed. If the thief has been unwary enough to leave a finger-print it is photographed, and should he be an old hand the records at Scotland Yard show his identity in less than half an hour.
All this is a matter of routine. It is "up to" the detectives still to find their man. Should there be nothing tangible to act upon the detectives--who know intimately the criminals in their district, and many out of it--will try a method of elimination. "This," they will say in effect, "is probably the work of one of half a dozen men. Let us see who could have done it, and then we shall have something to go on. A.
and B. are in prison; C. we know to be in Newcastle, and D. was at Southampton. Either E. or F. is the man."
The personal factor enters into the work here. A detective is expected to be on friendly terms with professional criminals, although he must not be too friendly. The principle can be illustrated by an anecdote of Mr. Froest, the famous detective.
Once or twice he had arrested a notorious American crook who was carrying on operations in this country, and whom I will call Smith. In one of his occasional spells of liberty, Smith, who was a reputed murderer in his own country, met Froest. "Say, chief," he drawled after a little conversation, "I'd just hate to hurt a man like you. I always carry a gun, and there are times when I'm a bit too handy with it. If ever you've got to take me _never do it after six in the evening_. I'm a bit lively then."
It is the business of a detective to know thieves. Without an acquaintance with their habits of thought and their social customs, he may be lost. The "informant" plays a great part in practical detective work, and the informant, it follows, is often a thief himself. Of the manner in which he is used, I shall have more to say later.
So it is among the friends (and enemies) of E. and F., that the detectives set to work. It is a task that calls for tact. E., we will suppose, is at home, and all his movements about the time of the crime are checked and counter-checked. F. has vanished from his usual haunts.
This is a circumstance suspicious in itself, but rendered more so by the fact that his wife is uncommonly flush of money.
Often it is harder to connect together legal evidence of guilt than to catch a criminal. The most positive moral certainty is not sufficient to convict a man, and English detectives may not avail themselves of methods in use abroad to bring home a crime to the right person.
Perhaps a detective pays a visit to F.'s wife. With the remembrance of many kindly acts performed by the police during her husband's involuntary absences, she is torn between a stubborn loyalty to him and her wish to be civil to her visitor. He is sympathetic--cynics may not believe that the sympathy is often genuine--but he has his duty to do.