brokers, and the police in fifty-six cities of the United
States and Canada.

In the story books your detective scans with eagle eye the
surface of the floor for microscopic evidences of crime. His
mind leaps from a cigar ash to a piece of banana peel and
thence to what the family had for dinner. His brain is
working all the time. It is, of course, all quite wonderful
and most excellent reading, and the old-style sleuth really
thought he could do it! Nowadays, while the fake detective
is snooping around the back piazza with a telescope, the real
one is getting the "dope" from the village blacksmith or
barber or the waitress at the station. He may not be highly
intelligent, but he knows the country, and, what is more
important, he knows the people. All the brains in the world
cannot make up for the lack of an elementary knowledge of the
place and the characters themselves. It stands to reason
that no strange detective could form as good an opinion as to
which of the members of your household would be most likely
to steal a piece of jewelry as you could yourself. Yet the
old-fashioned Sherlock knew and knows it all.

One of the best illustrations of the practical necessity of
some first-hand knowledge is that afforded by the recovery of
a diamond necklace belonging to the wife of a gentleman in a
Connecticut town. The facts that are given here are
absolutely accurate. The gentleman in question was a retired
business man of some means who lived not far from the town
and who made frequent visits to New York City. He had made
his wife a present of a fifteen thousand-dollar diamond