Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 60, No. 1, July 4, 1931

Razors and stilettos in Minetta Street; the dog who loved his beer; a New Sergeant in the Gas House district...

A runaway boy from a well-to-do Dutch family jumped the ship he had come over in at Hoboken and found his way across the river to New York City and the Bowery. There he lived for a while off the free lunch counters, starved a good deal, put his brawn to work as a “bouncer,” and finally won a long cherished appointment to New York City’s police force. His adventures with crime began without preface. The boy was Cornelius W. Willemse. And now he tells the vivid story of an unforgettable past. Begin it here.

Chapter XXVI The Minetta District War

In the spring of 1906, I was transferred from the Tenderloin to the Mercer Street station. Some of my superiors had taken a dislike to me; hence the shift. I was assigned to patrol duty on Minetta Lane, Minetta Street and Minetta Place, a post that called for every bit of police experience and nerve that I possessed.

In those days the Minettas had a mixed population — Italians and Negroes. The Negroes had been there first, but the Italians had started a residential invasion. The stiletto was matched against the razor. The stiletto, in a practiced hand, is more effective than a razor. As a result, the Negroes were moving out, slowly and grudgingly, as the Italians moved in. Of itself, a plentiful source of trouble. But that wasn’t all.

Thieves and street girls had made a haven of the section. On Third Street, Carmine Street and Minetta Street, all part of the Mercer Street District, were several Negro places running full blast. They were, cheap creep and panel joints, men being robbed in them every night. There was none of the glamour and bright lights that helped to gloss over the wide-open doings of the Tenderloin. Dark, squalid houses stood side by side. Men could shoot from doorways, or spring out with a stiletto, razor, or sandbag before a passer-by knew what was up. The saloons were dark, evil-looking places, the rendezvous for thieves and the lowest type of thugs.

There were good, hard-working folk among the Negroes. They were being driven from homes they had occupied for years, and I felt sorry for them. Among the Italian newcomers, too, were many splendid families, but the riff-raff ruled the district and the police were locked in a bitter war.

I was warned the night I appeared for duty. Sergeant Gilhooley had just been shot and murdered. Two patrolmen on the same post had been shot down when they rushed into a saloon to stop fights between Italians and Negroes. The same Negro, Jeff Sanders, had fired all three shots. He’d been discharged in court because the police lacked conclusive evidence. But he’d learned how the police treat tough guys in the station houses.

“Sanders is behaving himself now, but every bad man, white and Negro, thinks he’s a hero, and is out to knock off a cop,” the sergeant told me. “Keep your night stick and your gun handy every minute you’re on post. Have your eyes peeled and don’t pass any doorway without looking to see what’s there. We don’t want to lose any more men. Don’t be afraid to use your club. They don’t know what talking means down there.”

My first trip over the post convinced me that the advice was sound. If ever a spot looked ripe for trouble, it was Minetta Lane. As you walked along in the dark you could hear voices, Italian and Negro, but you couldn’t see the speakers or place the exact houses in which they were. It was the kind of a place where a cop finds every muscle in his body tense without knowing just why, and where his hand clutches his night stick grimly.

Paddy Gunn was my relief on post. A man feared for his courage, but more feared for his powerful work with the night stick. Paddy knew the district well and had been the victor in a dozen brawls. I talked things over with him and walked back to the station house, itching to run into some of those bad guys. Remember, I was young and strong and could swing the night stick, myself.

Trouble wasn’t long in coming. Reporting at the station house at night soon afterward, I found the sergeant waiting for me. He was excited.

“Hurry over to the Lane! Gunn’s been having trouble and may need help.”

I ran to the Lane, arriving just in time to see Gunn charging into a house. In that district there was just one thing to do. I took the next house and raced up the four flights of stairs. Then I stepped softly to the roof, prepared to give chase if Paddy’s man tried a getaway. Paddy, I knew, would stop to search each floor on the way up.

There was a faint light and I stole over to the adjoining roof. Then I spotted a man, a strapping Negro. He was trying no get-away. Instead, he was crouching in wait at the door through which Paddy would have to step to reach the roof. In his hands, lifted in readiness to strike, was a big ax.

It was a perfect spot for the murderous ambush the Negro had planned. I got to him just as my partner reached the door. The Negro’s ax flew out of his hands harmlessly as my night stick crushed down on his skull. Paddy took one look at the ax and the prisoner, a well-known Negro thief Paddy had been pursuing for a robbery.

“It’s lucky for me you came,” he growled. Then he turned his attention to the prisoner.

I know good work when I see it, and Paddy’s was good. If that Negro didn’t go straight ever afterward I miss my bet. Paddy knew where to hit to make it count the most.

To-day, Paddy is a lieutenant of police, but he’s never forgotten that particular close call. It put us both even more on our toes. It was another evidence of the risks every cop in the district had been running since the shootings.

My turn came next, on the night of July 4, at a time when I was least expecting trouble.

There were four old-fashioned houses on Minetta Place occupied by Italian mosaic workers and their families. All were hard workers and were happy in their new surroundings. The men had good jobs and on the summer nights the families would gather together on the stoops, drinking a little wine, and chatting to the music of guitars and mandolins. They asked nothing more.

I had become friendly with these four families. A good spaghetti dinner was waiting for me any time I was hungry, and a glass of Barbary wine if my throat was dry. I had a particular favorite, too; a little Italian girl about four years old — a black-eyed child who ran up to me every time I swung along the sidewalk, took my hand, and marched proudly by my side.

There was even more gayety than usual on the night of the holiday. Guitars and mandolins were strumming and women were singing on the stoops. I stopped in the shadow directly across the street from the houses and leaned back against a fence to listen to the music, something I had done before on nights of quiet in the district.

The bullet whipped through the fence alongside my head before I heard the report of the revolver from behind me. There was a scream from across the street as I turned to the fence. By the time I had climbed over, the gunman had disappeared in the darkness of the yard. I hurried back to find out who had screamed.

The bullet had struck the little girl, my favorite. The wound was in the thigh and she was bleeding and sobbing. Nothing fatal, I knew, but I was wild when I called the ambulance, and cried with rage when I lifted my little friend inside. If I could have found on that night the man who fired the shot, I’m afraid there would have been no need for a trial. My report about him probably would have read: “Killed resisting arrest.”

I never got the man who fired at me — another Negro who sought to become a hero by getting a cop. An informant gave me a name, but I knew he had a grudge against the man and I couldn’t trust the information.

Thus it went for months in the district while the war continued. Other policemen were attacked when they attempted to make arrests but fortunately no more were killed. In police parlance, each cop became the “boss on the job” and ruled his beat with an iron hand. We kept the bad men on the run. If we hadn’t, there would have been more shootings and deaths. Eventually, the night stick won, as it usually does when the cops who use it mean business.

To-day, Minetta Lane, Minetta Street, Minetta Place and Carmine Street are within the borders of Greenwich Village. The Negroes have gone and so have the dives. The Italians have remained, many of them still living in the old houses I knew. But the restaurants and speakeasies, the little stores which sell that mixture of hot water and rum known as “punchino,” now cater to the so-called Village crowd, to “uptowners” and tourists. A cop is reasonably safe on his beat. I know it wouldn’t feel the same, any more.

Chapter XXVII Detective Work

The transfer of Captain Miles O’Reilly from the Tenderloin to take command of the Mercer Street, then the Sixteenth Precinct, brought another change for me. He was pleased to find me in his command. I had worked for him in plain-clothes in the Tenderloin and he asked me at once if I wouldn’t like to act as a detective in his precinct. I gave the answer any foot cop would give, so he assigned me to work with Camille Pierne. The latter is now an inspector and a competent one. He was a competent policeman and detective when I first knew him, but he looked like an innocent boy of eighteen or nineteen and could get into places where no other detective could hope to go.

Camille, of course, spoke French, and our common familiarity with languages, together with his ability to squirm into situations and my big fist to pull us out, made us a good combination.

Aside from attacks on policemen, loft burglaries were the major crimes of the district. The thieves were clever and business men far more careless than at present. Few places were protected by the elaborate systems of burglar alarms in effect to-day.

Captain O’Reilly was anxious to make a showing, and the continued loft raids looked bad. One Monday morning I showed up to find him annoyed and anxious.

“Get right over to Houston Street,” he ordered. “Your friend Pierne is there investigating a loft burglary. It’s a big one and we’ve got to clear it up. The owner is raising the devil with me for having sent a boy over to handle the case.”

The particular business man, I found, was unwilling to talk to Pierne. What detectives he knew were big fellows who looked the part. I seemed to fill the bill and he told me what he knew. It wasn’t much. The burglary had been a Sabbath job, as it was known among the detectives. The owner of the building was Jewish and his holy day was Saturday, which had been the day of the robbery. Silks, woolens and other valuable merchandise had been carted off in the daytime when the loft was closed. That was all the owner knew, but he let me see that the police were expected to recover his goods, pronto.

There was another large loft building across the street. I went over and found a boy who was employed to check merchandise as it came in and went out. Yes, he had been on duty Saturday afternoon, sitting out in front of the building reading a dime novel. Would he help the police? What boy who read the old dime novels wouldn’t?

“Yes, sir, I saw a large green van over at that building Saturday afternoon. It had a monkey-faced driver, the funniest looking man you ever saw. I thought it funny, sir, that they’d be shipping on a Saturday afternoon. Four men came out carrying bundles while a lame man stood in the doorway watching them. But I didn’t pay much attention. I’m sorry now, sir.”

“Would you know the monkey-faced fellow and the van if you saw them again, sonny?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I want to be a detective and I’ll do anything I can.”

“Well, if you make good on this matter with me, I’ll employ you to help me out from time to time and let you learn the ropes.”

He was tickled. So I arranged with his employer to get him time off and we began a round of all the stations, stands and establishments where vans were for hire. We had many disappointments, but finally reached Union Market on the lower East Side, where several vans were parked. One of them was green.

“That’s the one!” cried the boy, tugging at my coat sleeve. “Look at the driver. Just like a monkey.”

A side view of the driver’s face was convincing. He had a receding forehead, dirty red hair, and looked ready for anything.

“All right, son; now you beat it. I don’t want that fellow to get a slant at you and know you squealed. He may come looking for you some time later on. You’ve done a good job.”

The boy away, I leaped, without warning, into the back of the van, hauled the driver out of the seat by the scruff of the neck and pulled him inside the van with me.

“Come clean!” I ordered.

He was all injured innocence. I cracked him on the jaw and he saw that worse was to come unless he squawked. Then he admitted the job and told me where he’d delivered the stuff. He begged to be allowed to see his mother, so we drove to a tenement on the East Side.

I felt sorry for the mother as I told her the story. I’ve had to do the same thing with a lot of poor hard-working women and it’s never been pleasant. She pleaded with her son to tell me the truth and keep out of trouble, and he promised to do all he could to make amends.

With Pierne, I rode in the van to the house at East One Hundred and Twelfth Street, the address the driver gave. There were two flats on the second floor, both occupied by a Mr. Siegel. We found Mr. Siegel with his wife. Mr. Siegel was lame. He also was indignant. But a minute’s search revealed some of the missing merchandise and a full kit of burglar’s tools. A little more search proved that Mr. Siegel was using one flat for concealment of a fine assortment of swag.

It was enough. I phoned to the East One Hundred and Fourth Street station for more detectives. Things looked black for Mr. Siegel, and he knew it.

“Do you speak Jewish?” he asked, with the air of a man who hoped I’d be able to understand him more fully in his own tongue.

“No,” I answered.

He became excited. He wrung his hands. A sudden fit of remorse, excitement and fright seized him. His eyes rolled toward the ceiling wildly. He grabbed my coat and begged me to guard his wife.

“Oy, oy!” he wailed. Then a quick jabber of words in Yiddish.

“Oy, oy!” he wailed a second time. Again the quick jabber as he wrung his hands.

“Oy, oy!” once again. Another jumble of words.

Mr. Siegel had tears in his eyes. In English he said: “My poor wife! Terrible! Terrible!”

A dramatic man, Mr. Siegel. He might have convinced me if I hadn’t understood Yiddish. What he’d actually been telling his wife was this:

“The game’s up. After I’m taken to the station house, hurry down town and see the gang. Tell them what’s happened. Have them arrange bail for me at once.”

We loaded a patrol wagon with the merchandise and left with Siegel as a prisoner. But once outside I slipped off the wagon and rejoined the van driver while Pierne continued on with the loot.

Mrs. Siegel was prompt, unsuspicious, and in a hurry. We trailed her easily all the way down town to Eldredge and Stanton Streets. Here she turned into a basement pool room as if she knew the place well. I sent the driver up to have a peek and he came back on the run.

“The other four are in there talking to Mrs. Siegel. Think they’re getting ready to come out.”

“Run to the Eldredge Street station and get help,” I ordered. Then I rushed to the stairs and stepped down to the doorway from where I could command the room. Mrs. Siegel screamed, but my revolver covered the four men sitting with her.

“The man who moves gets plugged!”

The four men slipped back into their seats, their hands in the air. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement. The pool room proprietor, a big tough, was edging over toward me, the butt of a billiard cue in his hand. I swung my revolver toward him and he stopped, cursing.

Those few minutes of waiting seemed a long time to me as I stood in the door with six pairs of eyes fixed on me and my gun. All those men wanted was a second of distraction. Of them all, I felt I had to watch the pool room keeper most. He was ready for anything, if he could escape a bullet in the stomach. It was a ticklish spot.

The detectives arrived on the run and the danger was over. I pocketed my gun and set myself.

“Wait a minute, boys,” I shouted. “Before you do anything, let me do something.”

I did it. I socked that tough proprietor so hard that he rolled under a pool table. He had it coming to him, and he got it, right on the button. Then the business of the arrests went forward. There wasn’t a peep out of the prisoners or Mrs. Siegel.

I telephoned to Captain O’Reilly and to Pierne. The latter bundled Siegel and the swag into a patrol wagon and rode down to Eldredge Street. Captain O’Reilly came with his own patrol wagon to take over the prisoners and the loot.

The five were held in five thousand dollars bail each and convicted before Judge Rosalsky, being sent to Sing Sing for long terms. The driver and Mrs. Siegel were spared.

Chapter XXVIII Queen of the Forgers

That was a good week for Pierne and me. After working all night on the robbery details we went to a restaurant on Bleecker Street and, coming back to the station house, spotted three men in the act of robbing a cigar store. We collared them, and carted them along to the cells. We made arrests in two other felony cases besides, nabbing in all eleven persons. Convictions were obtained in each case, and it began to look as if things were breaking my way.

It looked even more that way when I took into custody the matronly Mrs. Catherine J. Bolch, of Philadelphia and the world at large. The newspaper headlines of the day referred to her as the “Queen of the Forgers.” She was as clever, smooth and daring as a male crook, and could do tricks with a pen that few men could equal.

Catherine had the manner that makes department store managers bow on sight. Hard-boiled store detectives would give her a glance of respect whenever she appeared. She looked to be the wife of a rich and distinguished citizen. She was about fifty years of age, with a stoutness which only added to her dignity. Her expensive clothing, her cultured voice, her treatment of department store staffs were just what might be expected from a matron of the “400.” Only, Catherine was never the wife of the same prominent citizen from one store to the next, and all the checks she left behind her bounced right back marked: “Forgery.”

In the period with which I was concerned with Catherine’s activities she had dropped into New York via Washington. She left the capital not willingly, but at the command of Major Sylvester, chief of Washington police, who gave her six hours to go.

A few days before Major Sylvester got busy a beautiful young woman had presented a check for fifty dollars, signed by “Chauncey M. Depew” to Abraham C. Mayer, a jeweler. Mr. Mayer knew of Mr. Depew. The young woman acted just as a relative of the famous United States Senator Depew would act, and Mr. Mayer gave her a forty-two dollar gold watch and eight dollars in cash for the check, hoping for more of the same exclusive trade.

But the check was a forgery and the beautiful Elizabeth Ray who had passed it was found to be the supposed daughter of Mrs. Bolch. The chain of evidence was obvious, for everywhere that Mrs. Bolch had gone, from the Atlantic coast west to Chicago, there was the same trail of worthless checks. Senator Depew did not care to prosecute a woman, but her exile was demanded.

I would have had a lot of respect for Catherine on the score of her nerve, but no detective has any use for the crook who strikes at a hard-working, defenseless person. Catherine’s most brazen stunt made me her enemy for life. The doors of Sing Sing didn’t close on her any too soon to suit me.

Catherine appeared at the house of Mrs. Ryan on West Twelfth Street and took a room. Mrs. Ryan, a widow supporting herself and her children as a boarding-house keeper, was impressed by the clothing and manner of her new lodger. Her sympathies were won completely when she saw that Mrs. Bolch’s right hand was bandaged.

“Oh, you mustn’t bother about me, Mrs. Ryan. I’ve had an operation on my hand, but I’m sure that everything will be all right. Please don’t concern yourself.”

But the generous Mrs. Ryan did concern herself. She couldn’t do enough for her new guest. She found pleasure in talking to this woman, who seemed to have been everywhere. Entirely unaware that she was being cross-examined, she told her life story, gave the names of her parents, her place of birth in Ireland, the name of the ship on which she had sailed to America, her age, the date of her marriage, the dates of her own children’s births, the name of her husband and other intimate details of her family life. Mrs. Bolch seemed so sympathetic.

Mrs. Ryan was only too glad to help when requested to write a letter to Mrs. Bolch’s daughter in Newark.

“Sign it with your own name, my dear, and tell daughter that I’m feeling better and will soon be able to write myself.”

Mrs. Ryan mailed the letter to a post office box in Newark as requested, and forgot the incident. But Mrs. Bolch’s right hand seemed to get better quite rapidly after that. A few days afterward Mrs. Bolch called Mrs. Ryan to her room.

“You have been very kind to me, my dear, and you deserve a holiday.” Mrs. Bolch was smiling at her, and that was good. “Now I want you and your daughter to take this ten dollars and go right down to Coney Island. Have a good time. Spend the whole day and all of the money. Forget all about the house. Leave everything right as it is. My hand is so much better, you know.”

Holidays were rare to Mrs. Ryan. She needed little urging on this bright summer morning, particularly with her house left in such good hands. She was gone with her daughter in half an hour, and then Mrs. Bolch set to work. First she broke open a desk and removed Mrs. Ryan’s bank book. With the letter which had gone to Newark and back, secretly, as her guide, she forged the landlady’s name to a withdrawal slip.

At the bank she passed herself off as Mrs. Ryan. She babbled so many details of Mrs. Ryan’s life and family and the signature was so exact that the bank clerk handed over Mrs. Ryan’s full deposit, fifteen hundred dollars.

Not content with this haul, Mrs. Bolch returned boldly to the house, bringing a secondhand furniture dealer with her. To him she sold every stick of furniture in the place. She set a shrewd price and insisted on payment at once in cash.

Mrs. Ryan, enjoying the outing and the luxury of a restaurant dinner down at Coney Island, was telling her daughter:

“We must repay Mrs. Bolch some way for her kindness. She’s the loveliest lady I’ve ever met. Think of her, offering to stay home herself on this hot day and watch things for me.”

At that very moment the “kind, sweet” Mrs. Bolch was ransacking the rooms of the lodgers for money, jewelry and marketable articles. She didn’t miss a thing. Hours before the happy Ryans returned, their guest was gone with cash and loot valued at from six thousand to seven thousand dollars. Mrs. Ryan was left penniless.

She had used a fictitious name, and we had no photographs at police headquarters to aid in identification. Catherine would probably have got clean away if she hadn’t become careless. In Wanamaker’s store, several weeks afterward, she attempted to pass a ten-dollar check signed by William A. Jones, a well-known New York lawyer who had defended her in a case some years before. Her haste to leave with a pair of corsets she had purchased and the balance of the check in cash attracted the attention of a woman store detective. The police were called and I made the arrest.

Then the complaints. Catherine’s photograph and description appeared in the newspapers and the cat was out of the bag. Siegel & Cooper, Abraham & Straus, Macy’s, O’Neill’s and a dozen more big department stores and hotels turned up with bogus paper.

Judge Cornell and veteran court attendants, accustomed to the queer hodge-podge of characters a police court can produce, were amazed when they saw a well-dressed, composed woman who stood in the dock accused of as many crimes as an expert confidence man. It was hard to believe that she had spent five years in a Massachusetts prison, but she had. The records didn’t lie.

The detectives of my station, were able to perform another service for the department stores about this time.

Mashers hung out in every large department store and women were making complaints in great numbers. Siegel & Cooper, busy all day with throngs of women shoppers, was a particular field for those annoyers. They were bold and free, jostling and handling women who passed them in the crush of the store.

The management appealed to the police, and I went up there with another detective. I don’t like mashers, and never have, and I enjoyed the work we had to do. We provided ourselves with long hat pins with the sharpest possible points, and circulated in the crowds. Every time a man reached out his hand toward a woman, he got his. We’d slip up behind him and jab the hat pins into the tenderest part of his body. As the fellow set up a howl, we’d grab him and rush him out the door. At the station he’d get plenty more. A little of that treatment was enough. Mashers began to behave themselves in the stores.

Yes, things were looking up. Then some one threw a monkey-wrench into the works! My good luck turned to bad. Fourteen detectives, including myself, were transferred by Commissioner Bingham and scattered all over Greater New York. We were accused of taking money from gamblers and poolroom keepers. The Allen, a pool-room and gambling-house keeper, was supposed to be the go-between. Eddie Riordan, a county detective, had supplied the information to the district attorney and police commissioner. We were all marked down for pernicious activity — and were in bad.

They transferred me from the Sixteenth to the Eighth Precinct. Out on patrol, pounding the pavement again! It was harsh. I didn’t even finish my full tour of duty in the Eighth Precinct before I was called back to the station and told that I had been transferred again to the Seventh Precinct, a real “punishment” precinct.

Chapter XXIX Real Police Dogs

That short stay in the Eighth brought an incident that seems mighty funny now, but then was bitterness piled on bitterness. Shortly after I started out on the tour, a cigar manufacturer on Church Street re-ported a burglary to me. I got busy, called up the station house and asked for detectives.

Just as I finished my report, made from the cigar man’s office, I was told to come into the station. I turned from the phone to be thanked by the owner of the factory for the interest I had taken in his case. He thrust a big box of cigars, hand-made smokers, into my hands. I carried the bundle back with me to the station house. The lieutenant handed me my order to report to the Seventh Precinct station house at Madison Street, and, as I turned to go, he spotted the box.

“What have you got in that bundle?” he demanded.

“Cigars given me by the man that was robbed.”

The lieutenant leaped up from his seat, his face red with sudden fury.

“Get out of here!” he-yelled. “No wonder they have the skids under you. Two hours in the precinct and you come in with a load of cigars from a complainant. Good riddance to bad rubbish. You’ll land in jail yet. Get out!”

I marched into the Seventh Precinct station perhaps the most downhearted and miserable cop in all New York. I knew I was innocent of the complaints against me, but just then it seemed as if no one ever would believe me. Behind the desk I saw Lieutenant William Boettler, who had been my superior in the old Tenderloin. Here was a friend, and I unloaded all my troubles.

The lieutenant listened. When I had finished, he lay back in his chair and laughed.

“Say,” he declared, “do you think I’m down here myself for my health? Take your medicine. It ’ll all straighten out in time.”

He sent me out on patrol in Seward Park, a center of the old East Side, for my first tour. What a difference! From Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue, down to the lower East Side!

Even to a man who knew the life of the Bowery district, Seward Park seemed, at first sight, like another world. But by the end of my first tour I found it wasn’t so bad after all. I made acquaintances fast along the sidewalks, for I spoke the tongue of most of its people. I suppose many of them took me for a Jew.

I was assigned to a steady post on Market Street, from Division to South Streets, and it wasn’t long before I was laughing again. One night I was instructed to take a probationary policeman out on post with me. He was acquiring his actual police experience just as I had done, and I gave him what advice I could.

On Monroe Street, between Market and Catharine Streets, revolvers suddenly began to pop. Before we knew it we were in the midst of a battle between the Cherry Hill and Monroe Street mobs, two wicked bands of thugs. I charged forward with the night stick and in a minute there was too much for me to do to keep watch on anything else. The whole district was in a bedlam. I was fighting men of both mobs by the time the reserves arrived. The ambulance carted off several toughs and we made a score of arrests. A wild party all around and it was an hour before I remembered the probationary man. He was nowhere to be found.

It didn’t look good for the youngster, but I kept my mouth shut. When I answered the return roll call at the station later that night, I reported him as being present. On the following day when I returned for duty, Captain Ferris asked me what had happened to my man.

“Oh, nothing,” I answered. “He was with me all night and assisted me very well, indeed.”

“Is that so?” the captain cut in. “Well, it’s no use lying about it. When the shooting party started, your man ran all the way home. His mother was here in the station house this morning telling me that the police job was no work for her boy. She said there were easier ways of making a living. What’ve you got to say about that?”

Nabbed again! I explained that between the fighting, excitement and the arrests I’d been too busy to know where the boy had gone. Captain Ferris smiled.

“Well, you took good care of your case. I’ve got no kick coming, and I think the department will be better off without him.”

The fight and the captain’s words, and the laugh I had after I left him, were good medicine for me. I began to feel something like my old self.

But soon afterward I was in trouble again. This time I had company — two men and a dog. The men hadn’t broken any rules, but the dog had.

“Bum,” the station house mascot, was out of place in the lower East Side. Up in the Tenderloin, or on Fifth Avenue, Bum would have been a well-behaved fellow, but he didn’t like men with whiskers. When Bum didn’t like you, he showed it.

His best friends were Pete Lehr, Eddie Sullivan and myself. Whenever any one of us was going on patrol duty, he came along. Bum would start out in good-humored curiosity, frisking around the pushcarts and losing himself in the sidewalk crowd. Then a high-pitched yelp, a wail or a curse in Yiddish. Another whiskered man bitten.

There was nothing to be done about it, and complaints poured in at the station house. Pete, Eddie and myself soothed most of the victims, but one of them went to court. Pete was summoned to appear before Judge House and was ordered to produce the dog. Bum was hauled before the bar, his sins were recounted, and he was formally condemned to death.

The complainant intended to see that the court order was obeyed. There wasn’t much time, but we found an old stray dog that looked enough like Bum to fool the complainant, and we shot him as the court had ordered. Then Bum’s ghost turned up in the precinct, snapping at men with long beards, and there was more trouble. Bum finally was transferred for the good of the service.

Don’t ever tell policemen that Rin Tin Tin or shepherd dogs of his breed are “police dogs.” So far as the policeman is concerned — and I mean myself — the only dogs that have the right to the title are the mongrel mutts that hang around the police station, learn their tricks from the policemen on the beat and wear the collar and buttons of a police station mascot. They may not look dignified or aristocratic, and they haven’t any pedigree, but they know their stuff.

Bum was a water rat. He was born in a stable at the Brooklyn Bridge river front. He was supposed to be pure Irish terrier, but I guess his mother must have done a little wandering from home. He was half Irish, and the rest was in doubt.

The men in the stable threw Bum out to fend for himself. They didn’t like his ears, one sticking up and the other down. Bum had a grand memory, and when he became a full-fledged police mascot he never would go near the stable or have anything to do with the men who hung out there. He never forgave bad treatment.

A rat-killer second to none, Bum was just as good against a two-footed wrongdoer. Many a thief, fleeing from a policeman, was pulled down when Bum joined the chase. On a fire line or a police line, Bum was better than a squad of men. He would run up and down inside the line, barking constantly. If a man got over the line, Bum would jump for him, landing with his forepaws on the man’s stomach. Then Bum would jump back and growl a warning, but never bite.

He liked children, and would escort them over crossings near the school-houses. A real police dog, all the way through.

The finest dog of this type I ever knew, though, was “Browney,” a mongrel I met later on at the Twenty-First Precinct, East Twenty-Second Street. Browney would help you in a fight and chase and grab any man you pointed out to him. If Bum was intelligent, Browney was wise. He knew just where to get the good things of life. I guess he figured his police collar made him a privileged character. He made regular calls at the leading restaurants and enjoyed steaks, chops and such fare.

Browney liked his beer, and could carry his load like a gentleman. He knew every saloon in which a pail was used to catch the drip from the beer taps. Whenever he wanted a drink, Browney would walk under the swinging doors of the saloons and lap up everything in the drip pail.

He always protected the men. If Browney was with a policeman who stepped into a restaurant or a saloon for a rest, a bite or a drink, he’d never stick around outside the door so as to give the man away to a passing sergeant. Instead, he’d beat it for the station stable and go to sleep with one of his friends among the horses.

Browney had a rival in the station house, a big female St. Bernard, who answered to the name of “Bess.” She went out on patrol for years with the men, but when she got old, found a job for herself caring for the lost children in the back room. Many a tearful child went peacefully to sleep after Bess put a big paw over him.

An automobile did for Browney, and his funeral was something to remember. Browney was buried in Gramercy Park, the most exclusive bit of ground in all New York. The children of some of the city’s richest families were chief mourners with the policemen, for Browney had been a playmate of the rich when he wasn’t on duty. The world is shut out from Gramercy Park, only the families of its property holders being permitted to enter there, but this never stopped Browney. He made free use of the park whenever he chose, and when he died the children insisted that he be buried there. Flowers were placed on his grave daily for a long time afterward. The grave is there still.

Chapter XXX “Happy” Houlihan

I had no dull nights in the Seventh Precinct. The water front always has a big quota of thugs. Sailors, immigrants and drunks were prey for the tough bands of the district, and the man on the beat had to be alert. If everything else failed, I could always make excitement for myself at the old Catharine Street Market.

Not many New Yorkers know — or want to know — that market. It’s the trading place of the East Side’s poorest. Every Sunday morning peddlers turn up with vegetables and produce that they couldn’t sell Saturday night and which will spoil if they keep it.

When it gets late on any day at the market, the peddlers give away whatever they have left in the way of fish, vegetables and other perishable foods. It is pitiful to see women scrambling around the carts, looking for bargains or hoping for any kind of a hand-out. Many of them with babies at home, too.

The district consisted mostly of old, dirty warehouses and at night it swarmed with rats. I offered to help reduce the rodent population, and persuaded one of the market owners to buy me a twenty-two caliber Winchester rifle. Every late tour was a big game hunt. I would hang a piece of ham skin on a string under a drop light and then start shooting from the darkness when the rats came for the bait. I killed thousands, lots of them big fellows of the kind that attack children and even adults in the cheaper tenement houses.

You never could tell what would happen on Catharine Street, particularly in the late night hours. It was the dividing line between Madison Street and the Oak Street precincts. The south side was patrolled by the Fifth Precinct officers and the north side by our men. I was on my own side of the street at two o’clock one morning when I heard shooting. I saw a man sprinting along the sidewalk toward me with a cop chasing him. It was a running gun fight. Both were jumping into doorways and out again, firing with each jump and running about fifty feet after each shot. The fleeing man was on my side of the street, but the cop was on the south side and I stood directly in his line of fire.

It was my move and I took it on the hop. I waited for my chance in a dark doorway and sprang out just as the man got up to me. I hit him on his head with my night stick and knocked him into the gutter, following this by jumping on him with both feet.

The other officer rushed up and I learned that the man was an Italian who had shot a woman. I surrendered the prisoner and left. The man seemed unconscious. The next day I met the same officer in a restaurant and he spoke.

“You know how to hit them,” he remarked. “That man’s out yet.”

I don’t know whether the capture had any effect, but a break came for me not long after this. Commissioner Bingham had been going over the facts against the men transferred out of the Sixteenth Precinct, on the graft-taking charges, and had concluded that an injustice had been done. I was asked if I wanted to return to the Sixteenth, but was told I could be sent anywhere I wanted to go. I requested an assignment to the Bronx, near my home, and was transferred to the Thirty-Fifth Precinct.

For some time before this, even despite my worries and troubles, I had been studying for the sergeant’s examinations. At the new station I met Captain James Post who had organized a school among his men, and right, there my ambition took a spurt. It was the turning point in my police life.

I can never repay Captain Post for the encouragement he gave me. The captain was the new type of superior officer, intelligent, strict in discipline, but square. He worked on the theory that the policeman needed to be as handy with his head as with the night stick. The captain sought to make his men ambitious, and spurred on those who were.

Most of us became so enthusiastic that we carted our books around on post. I studied law, city ordinances, and rules and regulations of the police department while squatting on lumber piles along the Harlem River at the Willis and Third Avenue bridge. A funny sight that would have been to some of the cops I had known while a youngster on the Bowery.

It was at this period that I met “Happy” Houlihan, a patrolman of the Thirty-Fifth Precinct. The popular comic strip of the day, “Happy Hooligan,” accounted for the nickname. Every man in the station house was his friend. He had a fine wife and several children and his intentions were the best.

But Happy couldn’t leave liquor alone and was drunk when he shouldn’t have been. Several complaints for intoxication had been made against him and it looked like the end.

I’ve pulled many tricks in my life, but I don’t think anything quite equaled the stunt that saved Happy. He was my side partner on post and cops can’t let down their pals. Jim Skehan, a patrolman with whom I did a good deal of studying for the sergeantcy, was in on things with me from the start.

We had a council of war at Happy’s home with Happy and his wife. It was a glum meeting, for Happy’s trial was due. If he pleaded guilty he was gone. If he denied the charges, they had the evidence. Happy was sure he would be busted and was heartbroken over what would happen to his family. He couldn’t see hope anywhere, even after we’d talked things over for hours.

I don’t know how we came to think of aphasia, but we did. Then we were off.

“Go over to Newark. Remove all the identification marks from your clothing and get lost over there. Stay in a hospital for a while, remembering nothing about who you are, where you live, or what you do. Then come to yourself again. It’s the only chance.”

That’s what we advised Happy, and that’s what he did. The next day things started to pop. His wife came sobbing to the station house, with the word that Happy had been gone all night. The alarm was sent to all station houses. Every hospital in the city was searched — even the morgue. But no Happy.

Ten days went by without a trace, with the whole department mystified. Then a hospital in New Jersey called up police headquarters and reported that a patient had just been cured of aphasia and that he was a patrolman.

Police surgeons were rushed to the hospital — and Happy stalled beautifully. He was brought back to the city and suspended for trial, with enough complaints against him to paper the walls of his home.

Happy had a good lawyer and the trial was a scream. They read complaint after complaint to Happy and asked him to plead.

“I don’t remember getting it — how can I plead?” Happy wanted to know.

Deputy Commissioner Hanson, presiding officer, was at a loss. Such a sad state of affairs had never existed before under the laws as he knew them. So he sent out a hurry call for the Corporation counsel to advise him on proceedings. The Corporation counsel showed up.

A psychiatrist came into our fold. He took the stand and so did other doctors. It wasn’t long before the court room began to think that Happy was a much abused man, the innocent victim of mental impulses which he didn’t even know he possessed. Happy almost began to think so himself.

Medical history was raked over by Happy’s lawyer. It developed that other cases such as Happy’s had existed in the past. The New Jersey witnesses told of his dazed, helpless condition when found.

I’ve never seen a farce like it on any stage. We didn’t dare to share the joke with anybody. By the time the medical men and the lawyer were finished, even Mr. Hanson seemed convinced that Happy had been non compos mentis every time he’d taken a drink. So they had to dismiss the complaints and restore the shield to Happy.

Superiors are suspicious people and there were those who figured the department was being buncoed. So Happy was transferred to another station whose captain was noted for his toughness. The game, of course, was to “break” our friend at the first false step. But Happy fooled them all. From the day of his trial he became a teetotaler. He remained in the department until he retired honorably on his pension. His family was protected — and that’s what concerned Jim Skehan and me.

Chapter XXXI Sergeant’s Stripes

The Thirty-Fifth Precinct had another unusual character, the type of man it’s hard to find in any modern police department. He was James Farley, a patrolman with more than fifty years of service to his credit.

Jim was in my platoon and slept alongside me in the station when we were on the reserve. He was a grand fellow, and every other man in the station felt just as I did about him. Every inch of him was policeman despite his seventy odd years. With his Vandyke beard and erect figure, he was an imposing man. He had plenty of money, but that made no difference to Jim. His life began and ended at the station house, and he dreaded even the mention of the word retirement.

Jim liked his little nip and he smoked regularly. He was a leader in the pranks of the station house and he always kept a bottle of good liquor in his locker. At morning or night when we were getting ready to return to post after a reserve trick at the station, we’d always gather around Jim’s locker and complain about the cramps, or a cold or a sore toe. It was a regular ceremony and the talk sounded like a hospital clinic, but it made Jim mighty happy.

“Cramps, damn ye! If I didn’t have liquor you wouldn’t be hanging around here. You’ll get none from me. The idea, policemen!”

But the bottle always turned up. All would have a little drink and Jim was happy.

Jim Farley’s greatest day came in his fifty-fourth year in the department. He was then the oldest policeman in point of service in the city and his record was spotless. On parade day, when the policy force marched up Fifth Avenue, Jim was given the place of honor in the reviewing stand at the orders of Commissioner Bingham.

The department finally ordered Jim retired and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the station that day, because we all knew what it meant. It was even more pathetic than we thought, too, for Jim couldn’t stay away or keep out of uniform. On every late tour he reported at his post in blue uniform, but without his precious shield and then would patrol the beat with the man who had the right to wear the shield — on duty. I couldn’t talk much whenever he walked with me. The old man wasted away and didn’t live many years after the blow fell.

Meanwhile, all of us younger men in the station were anxiously waiting for. news. The examinations were over and the announcement of the sergeant list was due. One day at home I got a forthwith from Captain Post to report at the precinct. I found the list waiting.

“Hey, Dutch,” he greeted me, “you did great. You are thirty-seventh on the list. You got 92.50 in the mental.”

I felt good. Michael Walsh, one of our own crowd, stood at the head of the list, which covered the patrolmen for the whole city. I had very little seniority, so I had to make up for it by my_; mark in the mental tests.

On February 1, 1909, the first fifty on the list were ordered to report at headquarters. Commissioner Bingham called me into his office, went over my whole record and troubles and said he was convinced I had been wronged. General Bingham was a square shooter.

“Remember you are a Bingham sergeant. Live up to that. I hope to see you promoted higher in the department, and am sure you will be.”

It all meant the chevrons! Policemen saluting me! A boss in. the department! I wouldn’t have swapped positions that day with the mayor of New York City. I imagined that every lady I passed was looking at my gold colored shield and my chevrons. I thought of all the hard-boiled superiors who had bawled me out. Now I was one of them myself.

I was transferred to the Sixty-Ninth Precinct, Westchester, and reported there for my first tour. Black Jack McCauley, an old friend I had known when he was a detective sergeant, was captain of the station. He told me it was a hard precinct to cover unless a man was a “native,” as the old-timers were called.

Westchester of those days was a wilderness and the precinct covered an enormous district, all of which, of course, a sergeant had to oversee. The captain cheerfully added that the posts were from two to four miles long and just as wide, with all kinds of lanes and woods to get lost in.

“No cars running to Classon Point, Throgs Neck, Pennyfield and Pelham Park,” he went on. And I was a foot sergeant, and the mercury was at zero. I didn’t get far on that first tour. In fact, I went out into the stables to see that the horses were all right, and I stayed there until the tour was over.

It didn’t take long to get acquainted, though. There was little to do in the way of police work, and everybody was happy. We were like a bunch of retired business men, drawing full pay while we loafed. I made it as easy for the boys as I could.

I’ve spoken before of the old system of judging a sergeant’s efficiency by the number of complaints he turned in against his men. For the first time, I began to find out what a tough job that means for the sergeant. The inspector wanted complaints and I was expected to provide them. No complaints no discipline, was the way the inspector figured.

Well, I hadn’t forgotten my own troubles. Up in that desert, I saw no reason why the men couldn’t take time off, now and then, for a bit to eat, a smoke or “to take it in” — the police expression for a shin roast. I used to do all those things myself on post, and why expect others to do more than I’d done myself. I knew what I’d be doing and saying if I had to spend eight hours in zero weather wandering around the edges of Long Island Sound and Pelham Bay. No man can do a trick like that without getting frost-bitten. Besides, there were the horses to think about!

So, as long as the boys kept close to the posts to hear any possible cries for help, and made quick laps at intervals over the beats to guard against fires, I was satisfied, no matter where they were. They always hung out in some place where there was a phone and I always knew — unofficially, of course — just where that place was. A hurry call in case of trouble would bring a gang of men in no time.

As days and weeks went by without “didos” against my men, the inspector lost his patience. He sent for me and came straight to the point:

“Get me complaints, or I’ll put you back on patrol!”

I told him my men were on the job and that I had no cause for complaints against any of them.

“I won’t bring men in here unless they’ve done something wrong,” I wound up, with more boldness than discretion. The inspector glared a little, but I stuck to my guns. For the whole year I was under his command. I complained against only one man in the entire year. That particular patrolman had mislaid his shield. It was a simple case and no one got hurt.

Of course, I could have made plenty of trouble for the boys. Any sergeant can if he wants to be a strict disciplinarian. Four of the men were particular offenders. They figured they were putting something over on me, and that’s a bad feeling for men under you to possess. So I thought of a scheme to teach them a lesson without hurting them.

The four were mounted men. It’s always difficult for a foot sergeant to control such a force, for the simple reason that he can’t move as fast as they can. The territory I had to cover couldn’t have been inspected in four full tours of duty, let alone one — of which fact the boys were aware.

I learned that the Deaf and Dumb Asylum on Throgs Neck was a coop for the mounted men. My evidence was the best. I had taken out a horse belonging to a policeman who was on sick leave. The animal tried to turn in at the asylum driveway and I had all I could do to get him past the gates. The asylum was it, but I knew my men would be tipped off by telephone any time I showed up publicly in Throgs Neck.

I said nothing and waited my chance. On one late tour I slipped over to Eastern Boulevard on foot, sneaked through St. Raymond’s Cemetery and got inside the asylum gates. I saw the watchman coming and leaned up against a tree so my chevrons were hidden. I took off my cap and held it so it would conceal the bright, telltale shield.

“Hello,” he exclaimed, “since when have footmen been coming over here?”

“I’m not on post,” I answered. “I just slipped in from Union Port to tip off the toys that two ‘shoo flies’ (the sergeants in civilian clothes) are on the way over here. Tell the toys to get out P. D. Q.”

As the watchman hurried off to the barn to give the alarm, I closed the gates and waited. It wasn’t long before the four men came riding for the gates at a gallop, like cavalrymen charging the enemy. They caught sight of the closed gates just in time. The horses reared up. Only expert horsemanship saved an accident.

“Whoa! Whoa! What the hell!”

Then I slipped from behind a tree right into their midst.

“Well! Well! Good morning, boys. Why in such a hurry? Dismount!”

The most sheepish looking men I ever saw climbed out of those four saddles, and faced me.

“Where are you on post — and you... and you?” I shouted. “You better think quick and give me a damn good excuse. You’ll need it when I take you down town!”

All four were married men. In one minute I found out how many kids they had and how many national, patriotic and fraternal reasons there were why they should be given another chance. They expected to be busted, for while I didn’t intend to report them, I wasn’t showing my hand. These boys needed a scare.

“I’m too old a cat to be fooled by kittens,” I snapped. “Get to hell out on post!” It did kind of nettle me to think that these young patrolmen had expected to get away with something on me after all the tricks of the game that I knew — and had practiced.

The four boys nearly spoiled my good intentions. When I got to the village the next morning, I was approached by brother Masons, politicians, and clergymen, even by Mr. Falk, the baker, where I got my coffee and rolls, and Lieutenant Billy Ferdon, a fine old policeman. With all this hullabaloo I was afraid the news of the affair would reach the inspector’s ears and then I’d have been in hot water up to my neck. I pleaded ignorance, telling the policemen’s friends that some one had been kidding them. I didn’t want to lie to an old clergyman, and I told him the story. I guess he passed it along the line under a pledge of secrecy, for the excitement stopped. But whenever I visited a mounted post after that, I found my man on the job.

Chapter XXXII The Gas House Again

Dead as the precinct was in the winter, the summer was another story. Picnic grounds were plentiful throughout our station territory and every Sunday were occupied by dollar beer “rackets” from distant parts of the city. A “racket” then meaning a gathering, not a type of criminal activity. A big gang of toughs, known as the Bergens, showed up every Sunday and attempted to break up these parties. Battles were many and gory.

About this time, Classon Point was opened up with a new car line, and the Bergens found a new place to play. On the first Sunday night they swooped down. They wrecked stands and booths and terrorized the crowds, insulting women and beating men who offered resistance. It was up to us to wipe out the Bergens.

We laid for them on the following week-end. I hid in a barn with a dozen mounted men, all armed with night sticks — and under instructions to use them. Footmen were in readiness to cover the Classon Point road and I had arranged with Harry Kerrigan, the superintendent of the trolley line, to have a car on a siding, waiting for prisoners. We intended to fill that car.

The Bergens swarmed in on Sunday night, aching for trouble. They started a fight in Fairyland, and then we went at them, the mounted men charging forward on their horses and swinging their clubs from the saddles. The attack was a complete surprise, and there was no escape for the Bergens. They got the beatings of their lives.

Some of them fled into a pig farm and we had to rescue them. The battle spread into near-by swamps.

When the fight was over, the trolley car was packed with prisoners. A lot of them needed attention from the doctors of Fordham Hospital.

I was taking no chances, either. On the following morning I requested the magistrate to visit Classon Point and Fairyland and inspect the damage the thugs had caused. When we got back to court he would listen to no excuses. To a man, the Bergens were sent to the workhouse, and that was the last of them.

We had taught the Bergens a lesson that was passed all along the line. The Sunday picnics were undisturbed and the station slipped back into its old peaceful ways again. In place of the usual stiff police routine, I was able to go ambling around the countryside admiring nature and enjoying myself.

That precinct was a vacation, but it was too good to last. Early that winter I got orders transferring me to the Twenty-First Precinct, at East Twenty-Second Street, in the heart of the old Gas House district.

I had many friends in the Gas House district, mostly business men I had met when working there as a boy, and was proud to return to them a sergeant of police.

I renewed my friendship with Bruno Wolfram, the owner of the New York Dog Exchange at 204 East Nineteenth Street. A prosperous business man now, he was still the same Bruno I’d known and worked with when we were both singing waiters at Coney Island. I formed the habit of dropping in on Bruno’s shop in off hours to help him out. I got in on some funny stunts in the dog-trading game, but none of them were quite so rich as the one that concerned myself.

Bruno went off to Europe and asked me to take charge of his business while he was away. Charles Roe was his manager, but it was arranged that I’d spend all my spare time at the shop, and drop in now and then when on post. Bruno agreed to give me twenty-five per cent of the net profits as my reward.

I love dogs and animals and it was pleasant work. I’d made a few good bargains, but nothing of particular profit. Then, one afternoon, a woman came into the shop. She was one of the handsomest I’d ever seen and her clothing and manner somehow made Bruno’s store look very shabby. With her was a well-dressed man of foreign appearance, plainly an admirer.

Charlie went out to wait on her and in a minute he hurried up to me. The woman, he said, spoke French and he couldn’t understand her. I addressed her in French, and she smiled delightedly.

“I’m Gaby Deslys, the actress,” she announced. “I want to buy an English bulldog.”

Mile. Gaby Deslys, the famous French dancer! — the most featured stage celebrity of the day. I turned on my best French and said I had just the dog she wanted.

He was a fine specimen, that dog. His massive, undershot jaw and tusks gave him a ferocious expression. But he was also rather old, although you had to know dogs to discover it.

“Magnifique!” cried Mile. Deslys, entirely missing the gray hairs. “What’s his name?”

He didn’t have one, but any animal favored with such appreciation deserved none but the best.

“The Duke of Montgomery,” I answered.

Such a name! Such a dog! Mile. Deslys would have him and the cost was not to be considered.

Then I remembered Little Willie, a skye terrier. If the “Duke” was big, Little Willie was the last word in tininess. We brought him up to Mile. Deslys, squatting in a big basket lined with black velvet. It was an effective arrangement. Willie didn’t seem pint-size and very easily could be taken to be one of the smallest dogs in the world, the which I implied he was.

For the Duke of Montgomery Mile. Deslys paid five hundred dollars, and for Little Willie three hundred dollars. She left orders that the dogs were to be prepared for a visit by the “man from Tiffany’s.” We prepared them, carefully. All the gray hairs were painted, just as dog sellers everywhere always do at need. The man from Tiffany’s solemnly measured the Duke and Little Willie for collars, harness and leaders of gold and precious stones.

Lucky dogs, they were old enough to appreciate fine treatment. A week later, all the newspapers had pictures of Gaby Deslys as she sailed for a vacation in France. By her side stood the Duke of Montgomery, in her arms was Little Willie, outward bound to see the world. Overnight they became famous and the New York Dog Exchange didn’t suffer any from the advertising.

But it wasn’t all fun and play in the Twenty-First Precinct. Policemen have to be more careful there with traffic than in almost any other section of the city. No other district in the Greater City has so many hospitals, and cripples come to them by the hundreds. That means careful watching at the crossings, and it’s up to the sergeants to see that the watch is maintained.

It was here, too, that I developed the hatred I’ve always felt for the flat burglar. In my estimation there’s no meaner criminal than the thief who robs the tenements of the poor. They leave more misery behind them than any bandit can cause, short of lifetaking itself. The clothing and money they steal can’t be replaced.

The Gas House district had a large number of flat burglars and I instructed my men to go after them as hard as they could. My orders were to bring such thieves in “right.” We caught several of them on the streets with bundles of clothing, or going into pawnshops to raise what they could on the belongings of some poverty-stricken family. I made it my personal business to see that each one of those thieves got his.

The rough treatment helped and I kept passing around the word that the man caught robbing a flat would get a beating he’d never forget. Such burglaries became much fewer.

Here’s just a case in point. One of the cops caught a fellow with a suitcase containing a man’s suit, a girl’s dress and coat, some shoes and other articles of clothing. We found the owner, an old widowed mother with a son and daughter who were supporting her. The thief had taken the Sunday clothes of her kids, the only decent clothing they possessed. The mother begged me not to let the children know the flat had been robbed.

“They’ll accuse me of being old and careless,” she pleaded.

I couldn’t give the clothing back to her then for we needed evidence in court. But I found a way to help her. I kept the suitcase in my locker. Every Friday afternoon she would call and take the clothing home. On Monday she would return the goods to me. I pushed the case as fast as I could, but it was several weeks before I got the thief sent up for a long stretch. The children never even suspected.

This case was almost my last in uniform, and I’ve always looked back on it with pleasure.

Shortly afterward another big change came with my being ordered into the detective service. A whole new life opened before me. The hope of every uniformed man had been finally gratified for me.