, 1900-09-07

born, not made. The faculty for track.
ing and capturing criminals is some.
thing like the ability possessed by {
certain breed of dogs to follow a trail
some dogs are born with it, and if they
are not so born no amount of training
will teach them the trick. Detecting
is the ability to draw accurate inre~,
ences from meager data. 1t is anala.
gous to one of the prime requisites o.
a good newspaper man, going in thai
profession under the name of nose
for news"
John E. Wilkie, chief of the govern,
ment secret service, was born with
both faculties. His nose for news led
him into the newspaper business, and
the higher development of the same
power put him at the head of the gov
ernments detective bureau. By his
work in the latter position and more
particularly his handling of the Phila-
delphia counterfeiting conspiracy he
has gained something very like fame
and has won for himself an assured
position in his calling.
Mr.. Wilkes first detective work was
done while he was a reporter covering
night police on the old Chicago
Times. This was back in 1878, when.
Chicago was considerably smaller than
it now is, and when police news was
regarded as a more important feature
of the local papers.
In those days a scoop" or a beat"
ar exclusive piece of news was re-
garded as a rather notable achieve
ment. One such event was the solu-
ton by Reporter Wilkie of a case of
incendiarism which is told brief
ly as follows: A grocery store on
the corner of Lake and May streets
caught fire about 8 o'clock in the
morning.
The firemen and Reporter Wilkie re-
sponded to the alarm, and after some
I NiiiiNuiNy IN / was tAlllS ulSu-
ed. A suspicious feature, and one
which caused the department some de-
lay, was the fact hat an iron ferrule,
or washer, had been placed over the
square top of the fire plug so that the
wrench used to turn on the water
would not take hold.
This led the police to suspect that it
was a case of incendiarism, and the
fact that the store was fairly well in
sured pointed to the owner as the
guilty party. The latter's name was
Arbuckle. An investigation was be-
gun, but it only developed the fact thai
Arbuckle was not in town that night;
in fact, he arrived the following day
from Joliet. But Mr.. Wilkie was not
to be thrown off the track. Like an
industrious reporter, and good detec-
tive, he poked around among the half
burned ruins, and in the rubbish fish
ed up a tintype of the proprietor. The
picture showed him dressed in the
regalia Of some lodge, and on the back
was the nam James Moan, and an ad-
dress on Caldwell street, Philadelphia.
Mr.. Wilkie showed the picture to some
of the ~neighbors, and having identified
the original as the proprietor of the
place, he sem it to Philadelphia for
| p, sd ,-a-t;r. IIa,a a.
promptly recognized by neighbors in
the vicinity Of the address as James
Moan. He had deserted his family and
gone away with a seamstress. Mean
time the supposed Arbuckle had been
arrested on suspicion and was in the
city lookup. Armed with his exclusive
information Mr.. Wilkie secured an in
terview with the prisoner and the lat
ter, finding his identity no longer a Sc
cret, and believing everything discov-
cred, made a complete confession. He
told how he had set his store on fire
and then jumped on a freight train
and beat his way to Joliet. Then he
had come to the city the next day in
the regular passenger train. All Of
which made good reading in the Times
and afterward sent Mr.. Moan to the
~penitentiary.
In his early detective experiences
photographs were rather a speciality
with Mr.. Wilkie. A picture and a good
memory of faces secured him his next
scoop and landed a woman criminal
in the ~penitentiary. 1t began with an
arrest for shoplifting. The woman
was caught with a lot of laces and
merchandise and was relieved of her
plumber at the central police head
quarters.
She gave her name as Mary Hill,
which the police declined to believe to
be her real name, and refused abso-
lutely to give her address. She figured
for a few days in the papers as the
Woman Mystery While prowling
among the plumber Mr.. Wilkie found a
card on which was an address or Hal
sted street, near Green. With a couple
of officers he went to the house and
found a fiat where it was evident the
woman lived. But the neighbors pro-
fessed to know nothing Of her, and
there was nothing to reveal her iden-