THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DETECTIVE
Wilton Barnstable was the inventor of a new school of detection of crime.The system came in with him, and it may go out with him for lack of a man of his genius to perpetuate it.He insisted that there was nothing spectacular or romantic in the pursuit of the criminal, or, at least, that there should be nothing of the sort.And he was especially disgusted when anyone referred to him as "a second Sherlock Holmes.""I am only a plain business man," he would insist, urbanely, with a wave of his hand."I have merely brought order, method, system, business principles, logic, to the detection of crime.I know nothing of romance.Romance is usually all nonsense in my estimation.The real detective, who gets results in real life, is NOT a Sherlock Holmes."The enemies of Wilton Barnstable sometimes said of him that he was jealous of Sherlock Holmes.When this was reported to Barnstable he invariably remarked: "How preposterous! The idea of a man being envious of a literary creation!"Perhaps his denial of the existence of romance was merely one of those poses which geniuses so often permit themselves.Perhaps he saw it and was thrilled with it even while he denied it.At any rate, he lived in the midst of it.The realism which was his metier was that sort of realism into which are woven facts and incidents of the most bizarre and startling nature.
And, certainly, behind the light blue eyes that could look with such apparent ingenuousness out of his plump, bland face there was the subtlemind of a psychologist.Barnstable, true to his attitude of the plain business man, would have been the first to ridicule the idea publicly if anyone had dubbed him "the psychological detective." That, to his mind, would have savored of charlatanism.He would have said: "I am nothing so strange and mystifying as that--I am a plain business man." But in reality there was no new discovery of the investigating psychologists of which he did not avail himself at once.His ability to clothe himself with the thoughts of the criminal as an actor clothes himself with a role, was marvelous; he knew the criminal soul.That is to say, he knew the human soul.He refused to see anything extraordinary in this."It is only my business to know such things," he would say."We know many things.It is our business to know them.There is no miracle about it." This was the public character he had created for himself, and emphasized--that of the plain business man.This was his mask.He was so subtle that he hid the vast range of his powers behind an appearance of commonplaceness.
Wilton Barnstable never disguised himself, in the ordinary sense of the term.That is, he never resorted to false whiskers or wigs or obvious tricks of that sort.
But if Wilton Barnstable were to walk into a convention of blacksmiths, let us say, he would quite escape attention.For before he had been ten minutes in that gathering he would become, to all appearances, the typical blacksmith.If he were to enter a gathering of bankers, or barbers, or bakers, or organ grinders, or stockbrokers, or school-teachers, a similar thing would happen.He could make himself the composite photograph of all the individuals of any group.He disguised himself from the inside out.
