employ. In this chapter, the word "national," as applied to a
detective agency, refers not to the title under which such an
agency may do its business, but to the fact that it is
organized and equipped to render services all over the
country.

In this connection it is worth noticing that the best
detective agencies train their own operators, selecting them
from picked material. The candidate must as rule be between
twenty and thirty-five years of age, sound of body, and
reasonably intelligent. He gets pretty good wages from the
start. From the comparatively easy work of watching or
"locating," he is advanced through the more difficult
varieties of "shadowing" and "trailing," until eventually he
may develop into a first-class man who will be set to unravel
a murder mystery or to "rope" a professional criminal. But
with years of training the best material makes few real
detectives, and the real detective remains in fact the man who
sits at the mahogany desk in the central office and presses
the row of mother of pearl buttons in front of him.

If you know the heads or superintendents of the large agencies
you will find that the "star" cases, of which they like to
talk, are, for the most part, the pursuit and capture of
forgers and murderers. The former, as a rule, are "spotted"
and "trailed" to their haunts, and when sufficient evidence
has been obtained the police are notified, and a raid takes
place, or the arrest is made, by the State authorities. In
the case of a murderer, in a majority of cases, his capture is
the result of skilful "roping" by an astute detective who