"The case hasn't arisen yet," said he. "When it does I guess
we'll get the real thing."

The national detective agency, with its thousands of
employees who have, most of them, grown up and received their
training in its service, is a powerful organization, highly
centralized, and having an immense sinking fund of special
knowledge and past experience. This is the product of
decades of patient labor and minute record. The agency which
offers you the services of a Sherlock Holmes is a fraud, but
you can accept as genuine a proposition to run down any man
whose picture you may be able to identify in the gallery.
The day of the impersonator is over. The detective of this
generation is a hard-headed business man with a stout pair of
legs.

This accumulated fund of information is the heritage of an
honest and long established industry. It is seventy-five per
cent of its capital. It is entirely beyond the reach of the
mushroom agency, which in consequence has to accept less
desirable retainers involving no such requirements, or go to
the wall. The collection of photographs is almost priceless
and the clippings, letters, and memoranda in the filing cases
only secondarily so. Very few of the "operators" pretend to
anything but common-sense, with perhaps some special
knowledge of the men they are after. They are not
clairvoyants or mystery men, but they will tirelessly follow
a crook until they get him. They are the regular troops who
take their orders without question. The real "detective" is