The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-02-23
THREE spoTTERs ON ONE CASE.

THREE SPOTTERS ON ONE CASE
 Under the old, loose system that prevailed on most of the southern and
 western roads, said veteran passen-
 ger conductor of this city, ''the spot l ter was virtually necessity but the
 trouble about him was that he could
 never be relied upon with absolute cer- | tainty to tell the truth. He knew his
 popularity and prestige with his em-
 ployers depended on the number of
 cases he worked up, and if he couldn' t
 catch a conductor knocking down he
 was only too apt to manufacture lit
 tie circumstantial evidence and report
 the poor fellow anyhow Of course, I
 am speaking of the average spotter, and no doubt there were plenty of ex- captions to the rule, but that was the | great defect of the system, and, incl l dentally, it reminds me of curious little story.
 Back in the eighties" continued the veteran, "a tip was one day given to a
 well known and very popular conduc- tor on a certain line leading out of New
 Orleans that spotter of considerable
 note in the north had been put on his
 train, with instructions to investigate
 him thoroughly. This conductor was
 big, jovial fellow, fond of good clothes, good sport and good living, and, while there was no evidence of anything wrong, he had fallen under suspicion on general principles. The company off cials were persuaded he was living far beyond his means and inferred that he 1>o hn1t Hs ko but all prior efforts to get line on him had failed ignonliniously, and for that reason the expert sleuth had been i'm ported from the north and told to go to the bottom of the case, if it took six months. When the conductor himself heard that spy had been put on his trail he was highly indignant and also considerably alarmed He reasoned that the fellow would be especially anx- ious to sustain his reputation as thief catcher, and was, in all probab bility fully prepared to fake up a case in the event that he discovered no evidence. To protect himself against such manoeu- vre, he quietly telegraphed to big de- tective agency in Chicago and engaged a first-class operative to spot the spot ter, Both men went on duty at about the same time the spotter taking the role of commercial traveller who had frequent business up and down the road. He watched the conductor the Chicago detective watched him, and the conductor sized them both up and chuckled in his sleeve.
 "Now comes the funny part of the yarn The double watch had been in progress only few days when a treacherous brakeman went to the gen. eral superintendent and told him the whole story. The superintendent was a pretty wise person himself, so he said nothing, but simply engaged an entirely new man and set him watching the two spies. The triangular game went on for weeks; then the conductor was to headquarters! He carried his detectives report with him, and was when the superintendent showed him two others. The original spotter's report exonerated the conduc- tor; the Chicago mans report agreed | exactly with the spotter's, and the last | spy asserted flatly that he two other men had stood in together, so as to please all hands and save trouble. That | disgusted one road with spotters, and | the superintendent swore he would l never employ another. The conductor, by the way, retained his b"-New | Orleans Times Democrat.