The Gold Bag

From the opening

Though a young detective, I am not entirely an inexperienced one, and I have several fairly successful investigations to my credit on the records of the Central Office.

The Chief said to me one day: “Burroughs, if there's a mystery to be unravelled; I'd rather put it in your hands than to trust it to any other man on the force.

“Because,” he went on, “you go about it scientifically, and you never jump at conclusions, or accept them, until they're indubitably warranted.”

I declared myself duly grateful for the Chief's kind words, but I was secretly a bit chagrined. A detective's ambition is to be, considered capable of jumping at conclusions, only the conclusions must always prove to be correct ones.

But though I am an earnest and painstaking worker, though my habits are methodical and systematic, and though I am indefatigably patient and persevering, I can never make those brilliant deductions from seemingly unimportant clues that Fleming Stone can. He holds that it is nothing but observation and logical inference, but to me it is little short of clairvoyance.

The smallest detail in the way of evidence immediately connotes in his mind some important fact that is indisputable, but which would never have occurred to me. I suppose this is largely a natural bent of his brain, for I have not yet been able to achieve it, either by study or experience.

Of course I can deduce some facts, and my colleagues often say I am rather clever at it, but they don't know Fleming Stone as well as I do, and don't realize that by comparison with his talent mine is insignificant.

And so, it is both by way of entertainment, and in hope of learning from him, that I am with him whenever possible, and often ask him to “deduce” for me, even at risk of boring him, as, unless he is in the right mood, my requests sometimes do.

A short sample. Read the whole book

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