WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1012, 19 October 1912, Page 4

WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVE.

SCOTLAND YARD SUPERINTENDENT TO RETIRE.

“Good-bye, Mr Ernest, and Godspeed. . . . The detective and police organisation in which you have served so long is, in my opinion, the best in the world.” This was the King’s farewell message to Superintendent Frank Freest, of Scotland Yard, who is about to retire, after thirty-four years’ service. This Royal tribute to the man who is beyond question the best known of all detectives the world over expresses an appreciation which is shared by every one who has a knowledge of “Frankie” Freest.

When he retires from the “Yard” in a few weeks' time, and the position he has held for six years now as superintendent ot the Criminal Investigation Department is taken over by Chief Inspector John McCarthy, he will have completed an official career which has won him a golden reputation. He is the man who brought Jabez Balfour back to justice from South America, who accompanied the Jameson raiders from Madeira, who has wrestled with armed murderers, and lived in a world of romance and adventure as unconcernedly as another man would work in a City office.

Throughout the world of police and crime, in New York, Paris, Buenos Aires, Capetown and Melbourne, his name is known, and a terse cabled message from him has often settled the fate of a fugitive who had thousands of miles’ start of justice. “Frankie” as his many friends —and they include not a few more or less reformed criminals —call him, is as unlike the familiar figure of detective fiction as can be.

He is a genial, kindly-faced man, broad-shouldered and thick set, with twinkling blue eyes, a short greyish moustache, and an air of innocence which has surprised more than one too-cou tiding “crook.” You would say that here was some prosperous, untroubled business man, who worked always in a quiet office, and knew nothing of the tragedies and grim happenings of life. But Mr Freest, when he takes your hand, had an iron grip. You see that his arms and shoulders would serve him well in a tussle with two ordinary men, and as he talks his eyes light up and observe details that others do not see. “The secret of detective work is the elimination of the unnecessary,” is one of the golden rules which Mr Freest has carved out, and his success in dealing with all sorts and conditions of men and women is largely due to his unfailing tact while engaged on this extremely difficult process of elimination, He takes hold of “the right end of his reason,” like that young reporter of genius, Joseph Rouletabille, in Gaston Leroux's romance, “The Mystery ot the Yellow Room.” Freest as a man has made and kept friends, and bis sympathy has been extended even to the most hardened ot criminals, who, after “a fair capture,” have admitted that “Frankie isn’t such a bad sort, after all.”

The distinctions and commendations he has won are beyond number. He wears the King’s police medal for meritorious ser vice, which few besides chief constables ever win, and the New York police, always a trifle scornful of London methods, admit that Freest has “made good.’’ His muscular strength has olten stood him in good stead, and he, perhaps, owes his life to the fact that he can bend a sixpence and tear a pack of cards in two. Once when he was bringing a prisoner back he had a desperate struggle in an express train with his captive, and even after, singlehanded, he had handcuffed him, the man managed to raise the loot warmer between his manacled wrists and hurl it at his captor. His escapes from death have been many. On one occasion, when he had arrested a man he had tracked, this man 'old him that a lew days before he had seen him in Piccadilly.

“I was desperate, and I turned into a doorway,” said the criminal. “I bad resolved if you came up to shoot first you and then myself. But fortunately lor you I saw you turn up Vine street. That saved your life.” Among the tragi-comedies of his official life was that of the mystery of a water-butt in a London suburb.

A man was found sticking head first in a water-butt. He was dead, and at first there was a suggestion of murder. Mr Freest quickly solved the problem. ‘‘The man hurt his head,” he decided. “He went to bathe it in the water and overbalanced himself. Then, being unable to get out of the butt, he died there.” “Impossible,” cried a critic standing by, and to prove that, it was impossible he leant over the water-butt. A second later his heels were in the air, and had it not been tor kindly friends he would have, indeed, proved Superintendent Frocst’s theories to be right.

Such is the man—a type of shrewdness, daring, tact and strength of mind and body which has gone to make up a near approach to the ideal detective.