his
was his story: A couple of weeks before, a young man had come in and
ordered a certification stamp, drawing at the time a rough design
of what he wanted. The stamp, when first manufactured, had not been
satisfactory to him; and on his second visit, the customer had left a
piece of a check, carefully torn out in circular form, which showed
the certification which he desired copied. This fragment the maker
had retained, as well as a slip of paper, upon which the customer had
written the address of the place to which he wished the stamp sent--The
Young Men's Christian Association! The face of the fragment showed a
part of the maker's signature. The superintendent ran his eye over
a list of brokers and picked out the name of the firm most like the
hieroglyphics on the check. Then he telephoned over and asked to be
permitted to see their pay roll. Carefully comparing the signature
appearing thereon with the Y.M.C.A. slip, he picked his man in less than
ten minutes.

The latter was carefully trailed to his home, and thence to the Young
Men's Christian Association, after which he called on his fiancee at
her father's house. He spent the night at his own boarding place. Next
morning (Sunday) he was arrested on his way to church, and all the
securities (except some that he later returned) were discovered in his
room. More quick work! The amateur's method had been very simple. He
knew that the loan had been made and the bonds sent to the bank. So he
forged a check, certified it himself, and collected the securities. Of
course, he was a bungler and took a hundred rash chances.

A good example of the value of the accumulated information--documentary,
pictorial, and otherwise--in the possession of an agency was the capture
of Charles Wells, more generally known as Charles Fisher, alias Henry
Conrad, an old-time forger, who suddenly resumed his activities after
being released from a six-year term in England. A New York City bank had
paid on a bogus two hundred and fifty dollar check and had reported its
loss to the agency in question. The superintendent examined the check
(although Fisher had been in confinement for six years on the other
side) spotted it as his work. The next step was to find the forger. Of
course, no man who does the actual "scratching" attempts to "lay down"
the paper. That task is up to the "presenter." The cashier of the
bank identified in the agency's gallery the picture of the man who had
brought in the