Pinkerton's Secret - Hardcover

There was no explanation of who she was or the nature of her business with my Agency beyond her name, Mrs. Kate Warne, written in my appointment book for ten o’clock on the morning of August 22, 1856.

At that time the Pinkerton National Detective Agency consisted only of myself, my General Superintendent George Bangs, and three recently hired operatives.

Even though George Bangs has managed to infuriate and exasperate me for thirty years and has never been much of a detective, he has been as loyal and trustworthy a friend as any man could ever hope to have. I gave him his title in recognition of the fact that he saved me from insolvency. I have no idea what possessed him even to apply for a position when I had yet to hire a single suitable employee. He was a banker, one of a whole class of disreputable sons of eastern families of distinction you found here in Chicago back in those days, mostly in the branch offices of commercial enterprises, sent by their fathers to the frontier to spare the family further embarrassment.

That didn’t matter to me. He could keep a set of books, which I could not, and get the rent paid, which was crucial at the outset. Over time he helped me build my empire. In return I have always done my best to include him in the activities of criminal investigation, satisfying his appetite for adventure while making sure he never got himself killed.

On the morning of Mrs. Warne’s appearance, I had not left the office the previous night. This had become my habit, sleeping only a couple of hours in my chair as I worked to formulate a strategy to crack a difficult case. Lost in thought, I was startled by the brief knock at my door that preceded George’s sudden entrance. He ushered her in with a big smile on his face. George has always fancied himself a bit of a ladies’ man. Certain women find him attractive. All right, most women do. The man is undeniably handsome. So what? He had nothing to do with it.

These old-family Americans may have been the dregs of England when they first landed, but as is apparent with dogs and cattle there is something to be said for selective breeding. The first men off the Mayflower got their pick of the females from each boat that followed. Consequently George is a tall fellow, broad across the chest, his face distinguished by nearly perfect unmarked skin and a square jaw whose bones rise like Greek columns to support his smooth brow. His hair is thick chestnut, like a racehorse, and he carries himself with effortless grace.

George had made this appointment, and in my mood that morning I had little patience for his obvious blunder. As my General Principles clearly state:

The Agency will never investigate the morals of a woman unless in connection with another crime, nor will it handle cases of divorce or of a scandalous nature.

hat else could this Mrs. Warne be here for?

What confirmed my assumption of her situation was an ineffable sadness welling behind her dark brown eyes, the sadness of a woman who has lost a man. What she had lost, however, I was not in the business of trying to regain.

George caught the stern look of disapproval on my face and made some inane comment to cover his retreat, leaving me to deal with the unpleasant task of turning her away.

“Mrs. Warne,” I said, rising to my feet, “I apologize for whoever accepted this appointment, but it is my strict policy not to accept cases of a domestic nature.”

“A domestic nature?”

I detected an unmistakable tone of irony. I hate irony. I am not very good at it, and when others direct it at me I take offense. I stared at her balefully. Mrs. Warne, however, did not flinch from my gaze. The sadness had disappeared from her eyes. She was amused.

“Is that what you have so quickly deduced to be the purpose of my interview with you, Mr. Pinkerton?” As if to emphasize just how mistaken I was, she seated herself without my offer in one of the two chairs across from my desk. “It is understandable that you might arrive at that erroneous conclusion.” Her tone was infuriatingly indulgent.

“Then would you be so kind as to inform me precisely what services you wish to employ from my Detective Agency?”

“None, Mr. Pinkerton. I wish to be employed by your Agency. I am here in response to your advertisement.”

She opened her purse and removed a neatly cut page from the Chicago Tribune featuring the cunning logo of my own design, a heavy-lidded, half-closed eye of vaguely mysterious Hindoo origin, which perfectly illustrated the sobriquet that had quickly attached itself to my person: The Eye That Never Sleeps. The advertisement contained the terse announcement, now accepting applications for positions of employment in the field of criminal detection.

I had shown little enthusiasm for advertising for prospective operatives, but George insisted we could not survive with our current meager numbers, no matter how many twenty-hour days I worked. He told me that by placing a notice in a respectable newspaper, next to solicitations for bank managers and industrial supervisors, we would attract a better class of job seeker than those who had appeared at our door to date.

So much for his asinine idea.

“Mrs. Warne, what possible use could a woman be as a detective?”

She smiled, and I realized she had gotten me to pose the very question to which she had already composed her answer. “Isn’t it obvious, Mr. Pinkerton, that a woman can worm out secrets in many places to which it is impossible for a male detective to gain access?”

The minute she spoke, I knew it was a damn good idea. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? This country has become intolerably prudish since then in its notions of what is decent behavior for a respectable woman. And I am not just a cranky old man glorifying his younger days! There are better times and worse times, and these are terrible times, despite my sons’ smug embrace of the era’s fashionable hypocrisy, especially in regard to women.

Back in the fifties, however, “widow farmers” were a common sight on Michigan Avenue, rolling into town behind mule-drawn wagons, wearing men’s overalls and managing on their own when their men succumbed to fevers and fights or got their brains kicked out by their own horses while defenselessly drunk.

You couldn’t spit without hitting a sign advertising the services of mediums, spiritualists, or faith healers, women who were welcome at the finest dinner tables in Chicago. The Women’s Suffrage movement was more powerful than the Abolitionist cause. Even more pertinent to Mrs. Warne’s argument was the fact that in those days women ran the world’s oldest profession, as well as numerous saloons and traveling theatrical troupes, with little of the opprobrium that is now attached to their participation in these enterprises.

When I started the Pinkerton National Detective Agency some thirty years ago, this demimonde was a veritable gold mine of information for my trade. I had from time to time gained nuggets from that mine, but Mrs. Warne was correct in pointing out that a woman could dig even deeper into its hidden veins of precious ore. But was Mrs. Kate Warne the right one for the job?

These are my precise first impressions of her. She was twenty-five. I am never wrong when it comes to assessing men’s and women’s ages. She was a handsome woman, of slender figure, but not the type who wishes to draw attention to her physical attributes. This was apparent in the plain cut of her dress, which did not blossom in the rear in a full bustle, in the way her hair was gathered in a tight bun behind her head, and in the hat she wore, which was a...