hed firm of transport agents in
the Old Bailey.

The London detective grows up in an atmosphere of business. Romance,
adventure are incidental--and rare. Before he can bring off any big coup
he has thoroughly to understand the handling of the big machine of which
he forms part. And above all he must have courage--not merely physical
courage, but a courage that will assume big responsibility in an instant
of stress.

Melville, sometime of the Special Branch, for instance, once committed a
flagrant illegality when he decoyed a dangerous Anarchist into a wine
cellar and locked him in while a great personage was passing through
London. And Mr. Frank Froest, when he snatched a noted embezzler from
the Argentine after all attempts to obtain his extradition had failed,
gave an example of the same kind of courage. Another detective, in a
case where the body of a murdered man had been hidden, did not hesitate
to arrest the murderer on the flimsy charge of "being in unlawful
possession of a pickaxe" to prevent flight while he continued his
search. In each case these men deliberately adopted risks to attain
their ends which nothing but success could warrant.

There are 650 men attached to the Criminal Investigation Department, and
they have all learned their trade by tedious degrees. They all started,
even the superintendents at their head, as constables on street duty.

Consider the precautions that are taken in recruiting the department.
The candidate has passed the stringent tests of character and physique
applied to all metropolitan police officers. He has been watched, with
unostentatious vigilance, for defects of temperament or intelligence. A
few months he has on street duty in uniform, and then he may apply for
transfer to the C.I.D. He may be recommended then by his divisional
superiors to Mr. McCarthy--the blonde blue-eyed Irishman who rules the
Central C.I.D.--who himself interviews and makes a rapid judgment of the
aspirant before he is passed on to an examining board of two veteran
chief detective-inspectors sitting with a Chief Constable. Some of the
questions he will be expected to answer run like this: "How may you
utilise the photographs of persons suspected of crime, and what
precautions would you take?" "What is meant by a 'special enquiry'?"
"Give examples of the use special enquiries can be put to in detecting
offenders against the law."

These examinations, it may be said, are compulsory at every step in