We are blood-thirsty enough, God knows, without making things out any worse than they are or juggling the figures. Our murder rate per 100,000 unquestionably exceeds that of most of the countries of western Europe, but, as the saying is, “there’s a reason.” If our homicide statistics related only to the white population of even the _second generation born_ in this country we should find, I am convinced, that we are no more homicidal than France and Belgium, and less so than Italy. It is to be expected that with our Chinese, “greaser,” and half-breed population in the West, our Black Belt in the South, and our Sicilian and South Italian immigration in the North and East, our murder rate should exceed those of the continental nations, which are nothing if not well policed. But of one thing we can be abundantly certain without any figures at all, and that is that our present method of administering justice (less the actions of juries than of judges)—the system taken as a whole—offers no deterrent to the embryonic or professional criminal. The administration of justice to-day is not the swift judgment of honest men upon a criminal act, but a clever game between judge and lawyer, in which the action of the jury is discounted entirely and the moves are made with a view to checkmating justice, not in the trial court-room, but before the appellate tribunal two or three years later. “My young feller,” said a grizzled veteran of the criminal bar to me long years ago, after our jury had gone out, “there’s lots of things in this game you ain’t got on to yet. Do you think I care what this jury does? Not one mite. I got a nice little error into the case the very first day—and I’ve set back ever since. S’pose we _are_ convicted? I’ll get Jim here [the prisoner] out on a certificate and it’ll be two years before the Court of Appeals will get around to the case. Meantime Jim’ll be out makin’ money to pay me my fee—_won’t you_, Jim? Then your witnesses will be gone, and nobody’ll remember what on earth it’s all about. You’ll be down in Wall Street practicing real law yourself, and the indictment will kick around the office for a year or so, all covered with dust, and then some day I’ll get a friend of mine to come in quietly and move to dismiss. And it’ll _be_ dismissed. Don’t you worry! Why, a thousand other murders will have been committed in this county by the time that happens. Bless your soul! You can’t go on tryin’ the same man forever! Give the other fellers a chance. You shake your head? Well, it’s a fact. I’ve been doin’ it for forty years. You’ll see.” And I did. That may not be Why men kill, but perhaps indirectly it may have something to do with it. CHAPTER V DETECTIVES AND OTHERS