I felt
certain that the really experienced clerks intrusted with
conducting private investigations and hunting up lost evidence,
were too well paid and too independently situated in their
various offices to care about entering the ranks of the Detective
Police, and submitting themselves to the rigid discipline of
Scotland Yard, and I ventured to predict that the inferior clerks
only, whose discretion was not to be trusted, would prove to be
the men who volunteered for detective employment. My advice was
not taken and the experiment of enlisting the clerks was tried in
two or three cases. I was naturally interested in the result, and
in due course of time I applied for information in the right
quarter. In reply, the originals of the letters of which I am now
about to read the copies were sent to me, with an intimation that
the correspondence in this particular instance offered a fair
specimen of the results of the experiment in the other cases. The
letters amused me, and I obtained permission to copy them before
I sent them back. You will now hear, therefore, by his own
statement, how a certain attorney's clerk succeeded in conducting
a very delicate investigation, and how the regular members of the
Detective Police contrived to help him through his first
experiment.
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