‘I landed at Boston. I went on to New York. I found that he had
lately changed New York paper-money for New Jersey paper money, and
had banked cash in New Brunswick. To take this Doctor Dundey, it
was necessary to entrap him into the State of New York, which
required a deal of artifice and trouble. At one time, he couldn’t
be drawn into an appointment. At another time, he appointed to
come to meet me, and a New York officer, on a pretext I made; and
then his children had the measles. At last he came, per steamboat,
and I took him, and lodged him in a New York prison called the
Tombs; which I dare say you know, sir?’
Editorial acknowledgment to that effect.
‘I went to the Tombs, on the morning after his capture, to attend
the examination before the magistrate. I was passing through the
magistrate’s private room, when, happening to look round me to take
notice of the place, as we generally have a habit of doing, I
clapped my eyes, in one corner, on a – Carpet Bag.
‘What did I see upon that Carpet Bag, if you’ll believe me, but a
green parrot on a stand, as large as life!
‘”That Carpet Bag, with the representation of a green parrot on a
stand,” said I, “belongs to an English Jew, named Aaron Mesheck,
and to no other man, alive or dead!”
‘I give you my word the New York Police Officers were doubled up
with surprise.
‘”How did you ever come to know that?” said they.
‘”I think I ought to know that green parrot by this time,” said I;
“for I have had as pretty a dance after that bird, at home, as ever
I had, in all my life!”‘
‘And was it Mesheck’s?’ we submissively inquired.
‘Was it, sir? Of course it was! He was in custody for another
offence, in that very identical Tombs, at that very identical time.
And, more than that! Some memoranda, relating to the fraud for
which I had vainly endeavoured to take him, were found to be, at
that moment, lying in that very same individual – Carpet Bag!’
Such are the curious coincidences and such is the peculiar ability,
always sharpening and being improved by practice, and always
adapting itself to every variety of circumstances, and opposing
itself to every new device that perverted ingenuity can invent, for
which this important social branch of the public service is
remarkable! For ever on the watch, with their wits stretched to
the utmost, these officers have, from day to day and year to year,
to set themselves against every novelty of trickery and dexterity
that the combined imaginations of all the lawless rascals in
England can devise, and to keep pace with every such invention that
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
comes out. In the Courts of Justice, the materials of thousands of
such stories as we have narrated – often elevated into the
marvellous and romantic, by the circumstances of the case – are
dryly compressed into the set phrase, ‘in consequence of
information I received, I did so and so.’ Suspicion was to be
directed, by careful inference and deduction, upon the right
person; the right person was to be taken, wherever he had gone, or
whatever he was doing to avoid detection: he is taken; there he is
at the bar; that is enough. From information I, the officer,
received, I did it; and, according to the custom in these cases, I
say no more.
These games of chess, played with live pieces, are played before
small audiences, and are chronicled nowhere. The interest of the
game supports the player. Its results are enough for justice. To
compare great things with small, suppose LEVERRIER or ADAMS
informing the public that from information he had received he had
discovered a new planet; or COLUMBUS informing the public of his
day that from information he had received he had discovered a new
continent; so the Detectives inform it that they have discovered a
new fraud or an old offender, and the process is unknown.
Thus, at midnight, closed the proceedings of our curious and