papers; not only all our facts but all our plans and purposes
had been revealed; even all the suspected persons had been named; these
would doubtless disguise themselves now, or go into hiding.

"Let them. They will find that when I am ready for them my hand will
descend upon them, in their secret places, as unerringly as the hand of
fate. As to the newspapers, we must keep in with them. Fame, reputation,
constant public mention--these are the detective's bread and butter. He
must publish his facts, else he will be supposed to have none; he
must publish his theory, for nothing is so strange or striking as a
detective's theory, or brings him so much wonderful respect; we must
publish our plans, for these the journals insist upon having, and we
could not deny them without offending. We must constantly show the
public what we are doing, or they will believe we are doing nothing. It
is much pleasanter to have a newspaper say, 'Inspector Blunt's ingenious
and extraordinary theory is as follows,' than to have it say some harsh
thing, or, worse still, some sarcastic one."

"I see the force of what you say. But I noticed that in one part of your
remarks in the papers this morning you refused to reveal your opinion
upon a certain minor point."

"Yes, we always do that; it has a good effect. Besides, I had not formed
any opinion on that point, anyway."

I deposited a considerable sum of money with the inspector, to meet
current expenses, and sat down to wait for news. We were expecting the
telegrams to begin to arrive at any moment now. Meantime I reread the
newspapers and also our descriptive circular, and observed that our
twenty-five thousand dollars reward seemed to be offered only to
detectives. I said I thought it ought to be offered to anybody who would
catch the elephant. The inspector said:

"It is the detectives who will find the elephant; hence the reward will
go to the right place. If other people found the animal, it would
only be by watching the detectives and taking advantage of clues and
indications stolen from them, and that would entitle the detectives to
the reward, after all. The proper office of a reward is to stimulate the
men who deliver up their time and their trained sagacities to this sort
of work, and not to confer benefits upon chance citizens who stumble
upon a capture without having earned the benefits by their own merits
and labors."

This was reasonable enough, certainly. Now the telegraphic