The Silent Bullet

Book Excerpt: ...ectives. They're all right. They're indispensable, of course. Half the secret of success nowadays is organisation. The professor of criminal science should be merely what the professor in a technical school often is--a sort of consulting engineer. For instance, I believe that organisation plus science would go far to ward clearing up that Wall Street case I see you are reading."I expressed some doubt as to whether the regular police were enlightened enough to take that view of it."Some of them are," he replied. "Yesterday the chief of police in a Western city sent a man East to see me about the Price murder: you know the case?"Indeed I did. A wealthy banker of the town had been murdered on the road to the golf club, no one knew why or by whom. Every clue had proved fruitless, and the list of suspects was itself so long and so impossible as to seem most discouraging."He sent me a piece of a torn handkerchief with a deep blood-stain on it," pursued Kennedy. "He said it clearly di...