Philip Brown, an old New Yorker, who recently died, full of years and honored of all men who knew him, was some years ago quite a flourishin’ tradesman, and a shrewd, money-makin’ man, with a keen head and a kind heart,– two things that don’t often go together–a good wife, a happy, flourishin’ family, and an A No. 1 character. He only had one pet weakness that I know of, and that was a belief that he was about the hardest man to “fool” livin’. He thought nobody could ever deceive him, and that he was a natural born detective.
Brown was very fond of the society of detectives–very fond of readin’ detective stories, and imagined himself about the best amateur detective livin’. Vidocq was nothin’ to him, so he thought; but he had a great likin’ and respect for old Matsell, who, in turn, liked old Brown, and the two were often together.
One day Brown got a letter from a business house in Chicago, with the head of which he was very well acquainted.
This letter tickled the old man, for it was just the very kind of communication he had been wantin’ and waitin’ all his life to receive–a letter with some mystery, the promise of some adventure, and above all, the chance of some detective work in it.
The letter was marked “confidential” and went on to say that the firm in Chicago had been robbed of fifty thousand dollars worth of securities by their head clerk, a young man of good family, who was a relative of one of the partners in the concern. It had been ascertained that the clerk whose hidin’ place at present was mysterious, intended, sooner or later, to come on to New York to negotiate the securities, relyin’ on his relationship with one of his partners enough to calculate that the firm wouldn’t put the matter into the hands of the police if they could possibly help it. Owin’ to this relationship the firm did not want any police publicity; they wrote to Brown, askin’ him as an old and tried business friend, to see if he couldn’t get hold, quietly, of the thief if he came to New York, and get him to disgorge his stolen wealth without havin’ to call on the authorities. The letter contained some other directions about the treatment of the thief, in case Brown came across him, of which directions more hereafter. Of course the letter contained a full and minute description of the personal appearance of the head clerk, and also hinted at the assumed name which it was understood it was probable he would take.
Here was adventure and detective work enough, and Brown was as glad when he got that letter as if it had been money in his pocket. He immediately set to work and went the tour each day of the hotels to see if the abscondin’ head clerk was to be seen at any of ‘em, and meanwhile he got Matsell, then Superintendent of the Police, to let him have an officer “detailed for special duty” always at his beck and call, Brown, of course, standin’ the expense.
In a few days Brown was made happy by findin’ at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the very man he was after, the head clerk from Chicago.
The man answered the description given of the head clerk in the Chicago letter exactly. Brown was perfectly certain of that, and as luck would have it, the fellow had assumed the very name that had been suggested. Evidently, the thief didn’t calculate on bein’ seriously bothered by his victims, but then he hadn’t calculated on Brown.
Brown set to work very cunnin’ly and made the acquaintance of the abscondin’ thief, who was certainly quite an agreeable fellow. Brown and the agreeable rascal got very intimate in a very short time, and one day, over their wine, the latter asked his companion where he could get some securities cashed. Brown said he did a little bankin’ and broker business sometimes, and if it would be any accommodation to his dear young friend why he would cash this securities himself. The dear young man said it would be quite an accommodation, and so one day the agreeable young rascal and his companion, the amateur detective, got into a carriage and drove down to Brown’s place of business.
As Brown passed into his private office with his dear young friend, he saw his private policeman waitin’ in the front office. Givin’ the policeman the wink that somethin’ was up, Brown led his companion into the private office, and then cautiously and quietly locked the main door, leavin’ a little side door unlocked, however, for the benefit of the policeman if he should need him.
“Now let’s have a look at the securities,” said Brown smilin’ly to his dear young friend. The latter pulled out a big pocketbook, but before he could get the securities out of it, Brown snatched at and seized the pocketbook.
“What is this?” asked Brown’s companion, utterly thunderstruck.
“Why, it means, young man,” said Brown, not smilin’ly but sternly this time, “that these securities are stolen.”
“Stolen!” gasped the young man.
“Yes,” said Brown, “stolen from your trustin’ employers in Chicago.”
The young man who had risen angrily, now sat down again, almost stupidly. He was dazed, he did not pretend to deny his guilt; he only seemed struck dumb with wonder at bein’ caught.
“How did you find this out?” he stammered.
“Ah, young man, we found find out everythin’ in New York,” said Brown, half proudly, half patronizin’ly, as if fully aware of his own cleverness in this matter. “I am almost an old man, but I have seen the world and nothin’ escapes me, no one can deceive me. You have failed to do so.”
“I have indeed,” said the discovered thief, hidin’ his face in his hands.
“You confess your guilt, then, and these securities are stolen,” continued Brown.
“Yes, I confess all, and I throw myself on your mercy,” cried the detected criminal. “Spare me. You have all the securities I took intact. Spare me for my poor mother’s and sister’s sake.” And the young man almost cried.
Brown’s heart was touched. His vanity was gratified by the young man’s evident wonder at and appreciation of the way he had been caught. Brown was gratified at the easy way in which he had accomplished his victory, all by himself, without havin’ to call in the policeman; he was pleased that he had put his business friends at Chicago under such an obligation by recoverin’ all their stolen money for ‘em so quietly; and he could afford to take pity on the poor criminal himself, because the very instructions to him in the Chicago letter requested as much.
According to the Chicago letter, the head clerk had, when he entered the service of the firm, invested in it five thousand dollars of his own. This five thousand dollars the Chicago firm intimated they would like to have paid by Brown to the young man (advanced on the stolen securities, of course) so that the young man could have a fresh start in life on it, promisin’ to leave the more settled States however, and startin’ life out again in the Southwest or California, far from the temptations of large cities.
Acting on these instructions, and guided by his own sympathies, too, Brown took pity on the now penitent and nearly heartbroken young man. Drawin’ himself up, and drawin’, too, on all his recollections of the old family Bible at home, Brown delivered “the greatest effort of his life” before his audience of one. He spoke so solemnly, yet so feelin’ly, that he affected his audience to tears.
Then readin’ to his crushed companion the Chicago letter, he–according to the instructions–said that not only would he not prosecute him, but he would at once advance him, upon his makin’ the promises required, the amount suggested by his late employers.
The penitent thief made the solemn promises necessary, and then Brown sent his check-boy to the bank and drew five thousand five hundred dollars from it, which sum he handed over to the repentant rascal, who received it with tears and sobs of gratitude. This gratitude quite overpowered him in fact–so much so that he didn’t remark that Brown had given him five hundred dollars more than his Chicago instructions called for. Grateful tears got in the way of his arithmetic. Tearful thankfulness don’t stop to count.
Brown gently reminded him, and told him that he must regard it as a gift from himself, in token of his belief in his sincere repentance and desire for reform. Right here, I guess, old Brown just fooled himself a little; for really Brown gave this extra five hundred chiefly because he felt so tickled at the success of his first detective job, and because the detected one himself had seemed all along to appreciate so highly the cleverness with which he had been detected.
At last, wringin’ Brown’s hand and callin’ down blessings on his head with streamin’ eyes, the repentant, grateful criminal left Brown’s place, to start that afternoon for the boundless West, to commence his life anew.
And Brown went to his friend Matsell, and telling him the outline of his story (without of course betrayin’ confidence or tellin’ names) received Matsell’s congratulations thereon. But Matsell didn’t seem to be very enthusiastic over the matter, as Brown had expected; and at partin’, mysteriously told Brown to be sure and call on him, Matsell, after he, Brown, had heard from the firm in Chicago in answer to his letter informin’ ‘em what he had just done in their behalf in New York.
Then Brown went home and told his wife and children the story of the day’s adventures, and the wife and the children kissed him and the wife called him a good man. The minister who dropped in durin’ the evening, too, called Brown a Christian, and said he had “plucked a brand from the burnin’.” And happy Brown went to bed that night, thinkin’ himself a kind of mixture of a chief of detectives and an archangel.
But you are ought to have seen Brown when he got a letter from the Chicago house in answer to the one he had sent ‘em on, one week after he had dismissed the penitent thief. He didn’t act a bit like an archangel then.
For the letter from Chicago said first that they their head clerk never robbed ‘em; second, they hadn’t been robbed at all; third, they had never sent any such letter to Brown, as he said he had received–it was a forgery–and last, that the securities he had advanced five thousand dollars on were worthless, and that the penitent thief he had given the extra five hundred of his own to was simply a first-class swindler.
Talk about your archangels. If you had seen and heard old brown then you would have thought he was a head devil. The way he went on was simply frightful, all to himself, however. He wouldn’t let on to anybody how he had been bamboozled, fooled, cajoled, slobbered over, cheated!
He kept his own counsel, only he winced the next time his wife called him “so good,” and was downright cross when his Minister referred one day in Sunday School to the brand plucked from the burnin’ business.
Yet he did call to see Matsell, but it was to request Matsell to ask him nothin’ more about “that matter.”
But Matsell, takin’ the matter in hand, found out that it had been a job made up between a clerk of Brown, a smart but dissolute young chap, and a smart thief, Tommy King, since dead. The matter had been suggested first by the clerk as a practical joke on old Brown’s pet weakness, but had been turned into a matter of regular business by the thief, who had, however, gone back on the clerk and never given him his divvy of the five thousand.
At any rate, nothin’ was ever done in the matter save dischargin’ the clerk, and from that time till the day of his death old Brown never again attempted detective work.
[Editor’s notes: George W. Matsell was Chief of the New York Municipal Police from 1845-1857, when the police force was (ungently) reconstituted as the New York Police Department. Matsell returned to serve as the Superintendent of Police in 1874-1875. An item in the New York Dispatch of June 22, 1873, notes that “Tommy King” is one of the most noted criminals in the city: educated, affable, and not bad-looking. But whether “Philip Brown” was the real name of a real person, or an alias invented by Harry (and/or his writer), or just a fiction created for an entertaining anecdote, is harder to tell. Between 1873 and 1882 (when this column appeared) there were no prominent obituaries for a “Philip Brown” in New York newspapers.]
