und; none has
been more misunderstood. It does its duty effectually, unswervingly, in
the same unemotional spirit that marks the other departments of the
service, but with perhaps even a keener eye to its own reputation. The
C.I.D. knows how high is the reputation it has won among international
police forces, and is very properly jealous of its maintenance.

There have been critics of the C.I.D. Many have held that the system of
recruiting from the uniformed police is wrong in essence--that educated
men employed direct from civilian life would be more effective. There is
no bar against anyone being appointed direct if the authorities
chose--but it has been tried.

Once upon a time--this was a long while ago--an ardent reformer held
the reins of the detective force. He made many valuable changes, and
some less valuable--among the latter the experiment of "gentlemen" as
detectives. There were six of them, and the full story of these
kid-glove amateurs would be interesting reading. They were, in the
euphemistic words of the reformer himself, "eminently unsatisfactory."
"There is," he added, "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."[2] So the only
approach to Sherlock Holmes that Scotland Yard has ever seen was killed
for good and all, though there is still no legal bar to anyone being
appointed directly a detective.

Six hundred and fifty picked officers, all of whom have worn the blue
uniform and patrolled the streets at the regulation pace, form a mobile
army scattered over the metropolis.

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