told me how he instantly located his man, without disclosing
his own identity, by unostentatiously leaving a note addressed
to Dodge in a bright-red envelope upon the office counter of
the Hotel St. Charles in New Orleans, where he knew his quarry
to be staying. A few moments later the clerk saw it, picked
it up, and, as a matter of course, thrust it promptly into box
No. 420, thus involuntarily hanging, as it were, a red lantern
on Dodge's door.

There is no more reason to look for superiority of
intelligence or mental alertness among detectives of the
ordinary class than there is to expect it from clerks,
stationary engineers, plumbers, or firemen. While comparisons
are invidious, I should be inclined to say that the ordinary
chauffeur was probably a brighter man than the average
detective. This is not to be taken in derogation of the
latter, but as a compliment to the former. There are a great
many detectives of ambiguous training. I remember in one case
discovering that of the more important detectives employed by
a well-known private Anti-Criminal Society in New York, one
had been a street vender of frankfurters (otherwise yclept
"hot dogs"), and another the keeper of a bird store, which
last perhaps qualified him for the pursuit and capture of
human game. There is a popular fiction that lawyers are
shrewd and capable, similar to the prevailing one that
detectives are astute and cunning. But, as the head of one of
the biggest agencies in the country remarked to me the other
day, when discussing the desirability of retaining local
counsel in a distant city: "You know how hard it is to find a
lawyer that isn't a dead one." I feel confident that he did