AN OLD DETECTIVE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8521, 16 November 1889, Page 5

AN OLD DETECTIVE.

[A SltJDr PEOM LIFE, BY ONE WHO

knew niir.J

On my father's trim-mown lawn nigh the river I made my first acquaintance with the famonslnspector Blank. He was a aparely-bnilt, grey-haired.man, somewhat deeply marked with the smallpox. On seeing the well-known detective for the first time, you would probably have taken him for a smart lower-olavs solicitor — one of those practitioners whose business principally lies in the Bankruptcy and County Courts and among the money-lending fraternity. Seated in a garden-chair, well within the scent of ripening fruit and rich roses, the inspector would leisnrely eDJoy his long churchwarden and his glaus of "unsweetened." When he first came in anything like chatty relations with me he was retained on a causs celelre which was then dragging its Blow length along In very much the same fashion which our Home Eule patriots have called that "wounded snake," the Special Commission. The inspector, never strnck you as being of ajpnysteriously reticaDl^ character. iSy popular, or rnthcjl notorious counsel who was conducting the famous case had on one occasion expressed a wiah to get him in the box. On referring to thia, the inapoctor remarked, "I know very well he don't want me in the box. If he began by asking me why I did this and why I did that, I should answer, ' Well, at any rate I never starved and beat my illegitimate child.' That would settle him, and the Court would go with me, too. He won't have his own way very long." Strangely, the learned counsel never did call him into the box ; and, what was more to the purpose, in the course of a year or two lie had sunk to being the disbarred associate of a crew of brokendown demagogues perpetually trying to break the peace.

Yet, although Inspector Blank had a tolerably comfortable time of it in the great case, and had escaped, indeed, from any decent form of attack from the Press, he had been far from always being bo fortunate. When one of tho most curious murder cases ever known was made for months the daily subject for shouting " catch-pennies," our friend waa treated to the most virulent abuse by a certßin sensational paper. He had dared to insinuate (for what could it be more than Insinuation when there was so little fact P) that the murder had been committed by a young and innocent girl. How oould she (pleaded the popular organ), a girl known to be more than ordinarily fond of children, be likely to prove the murderess of a helpless infant 1 " Such men as the inspector," &c, &c. The result was that, owing to these attacks (the " innocent girl," too, being acquitted), the old detective bad retired from the "force," and started on " private lnqujry." "lam as certain as I am of anything," he said one evening, between the puffs of his churchwarden, "that girl committed tbe murder. 1 thought so the instant I went into tbe room among them, although she was, perhaps, the coolest of the lot." A few yeaiß passed by, and one day the newspapers sold with a vengeance. Miss j^r horrible secret iuo, heavy-Sjioad to carry, and so had .••™- --fessed herself to be a murderess. The old detective was quite right, and the wisdom of the daily Press had for once proved to be fallible.

The inspector had said he " thought " Bhe wag the guilty person. And that was the first time of seeing her, without having gleaned any evidence to bring him to suoh a conclusions. I remember quite distinctly asking him whether he found Grst impressions in such matters to be, as a rule, the right view of the case. He answered : "As far as I know about myself — always !" The inspeotor was a fairly well-read, but not a welleducated man. He lived in a time when psychological study had not as yet become a popular craze. He had never read " Elective Affinities," and possibly not the " Murders in the Eve Morgue." To support this theory about impressions, old Blank described one of his most curious experiences in "private Inquiry." His story ran thus :— What was supposed to be an agrarian ontrage had happened in Ireland. The "squire" seated at dinner with open windows, had been treated to a shot that bad just missed his neck by a few inches, shivering the looking-glasß behind him. On arriving in Ireland the detective soon found out that suspicion rested en a notorious poacher. In the man's absence he managed to get a good look round his cottage. His enaniries were as artfully put as they could be. He eocn found out that the poacher's gun ■was missing. He made every search for it, and at length, after dragging a small pond, found it at the bottom. " Yet for all that," said Blank, "I did not think that the poacher was my man. I always thought that there was something wrong up at the ' House.' The family was a bit queer. '' He then went on to tell how, unperceived, he took the gun up to the '' House," and made a careful examination of it in his owu room. Behind the trigger was a tiny piece of kid Rlove that had evidently been ripped off by the would-be murderer in his nervousness. "I knew atonoe," said Blank) " that my poapher was not the Biurd£lEfl£jor poachers' don't vr^r glbyßS""Hß^rrjsn who fired the &~P then/.-r^Pff e Men the gun from the poacher to 'let suspicion rest upon that suspicions person. Excepting up at the '' House," too, no one in the immediate neighborhood would be likely to wear gloves. The detective made a good search "on the quiet." In a drawer in a oheßt of drawers he found a kid glove with a tiny piece nipped out of the forefinger. The attempt at murder had been made by one of the squire's relatives. The impression that there was something wrong up at the "House" was a light one. In the couree of years I had several chats with the old detective, (as, by-the-way, Charles Dickens had before me), and several times referred to the subject of first impressions. Inspector Blank had always held (and, be it remembered, he was always acknowledged to ba one of the best men of the day) that " fancies, impressions, and Buch like Bhould never be looked down on." Yet he himself was as little foolishly fanciful as a mau Well could bo. He eriiuyed what to him was a comfortable and successful life, 6nd only died a few years ago.— St. James's Gazette.