t. Presently one of them lifted his hat and the
other crossed over. They fell into step each side of a very ordinary
young man. "Your name is so-and-so," said one. "We are police-officers,
and we should like an explanation of one or two things. It may be
necessary to detain you." A cab stopped, the three got into it, and as
it drove away there were not two people among the thousands in the
street who knew that anything out of the ordinary had happened.

That is typical of the way arrests for great crimes are effected if
possible. Yet, sometimes circumstances force melodrama on the
detectives. Another arrest which was watched by the writer took place at
dead of night in a dirty lodging-house in an East End street. A
house-to-house search had been instituted by forty or fifty armed
detectives. They expected desperate resistance when they found their
quarry. And at last they came upon the man they sought sleeping
peacefully on a truckle bed. A giant detective lifted him bodily. A
great coat was bundled over his night shirt, and he was sent off as he
was, under escort, into the night.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Sir Howard Vincent, first and only "Director of Criminal
Investigations," said, in 1883: "It has been urged more than once that
better and more reliable detectives might be found among the retired
officers of the army and younger sons of gentlemen than in the ranks of
the police. Willing, as I hope I shall always be, to give every
suggestion a fair trial, six such recruits have been enrolled in the
Criminal Investigation Department with a result, I am sorry to say,
eminently unsatisfactory. There is, I fear, 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."

Sir Charles Warren, in the course of a magazine article which had
tremendous effect on his reign as Commissioner, said, referring to the
detective service: "Some few candidates have been admitted direct to a
great number examined and rejected. Of those admitted, few, if any, have
been found qualified to remain in the detective service. It seems,
therefore, that although the Criminal Investigation Branch is open to
receive any qualified person direct, as a general rule no persons, for
some years past, have presented themselves sufficiently qualified to
remain. And there are indicati