The long waited for change was brought about by the greed of Captain John Young, chief of the Detective Bureau, of whose double dealing I have written in another part of this history. Mark Shinburn and I had looted the New Windsor Bank in Maryland, and when the covetous coppers all about Young didn’t get their “rake-off” there was trouble. The police grafters falling out, thieves began to get their dues--in other words, the protection for which they paid. With Captain Young out of the Detective Bureau and out of the force, the time had come for the Under World to strike. The iron made hot to whiteness must be beaten into shape, into a switch, into a patent safety switch--something that would guide us from the crooked road of uncertainty to the broad thoroughfare of perfect exemption from lawful punishment for all kinds of crime. So I began looking about for the safety switch. It was suggested that James Irving, the detective who declined to accept Captain Young’s paltry offer of five hundred as his share in the New Windsor Bank reward, would make a first-class man to succeed to the chieftancy of the Detective Bureau, so I put out a few feelers. My experience with Irving had been most satisfactory, and so far as I was able to gather, he’d dealt squarely with all of the high-class members of my craft. Besides being fearless, he was a handsome chap, with a splendid front to show on Broadway or in Wall Street, and in a question of suspicious dealing with crooks wouldn’t be easily suspected of the offence. It occurred to me that the Detective Bureau plum would be just the thing for Jim, and at the earliest chance I met him at the Parker House in Broadway at Thirty-third Street. I told him he would make a fine figure on the Broadway corners of the Tenderloin, that he could associate with gamblers without it being suspected that he was doing other than obtaining information about them for official purposes, and that he could make Wall Street his frequent resort, where he could deal in bucket shops, which he ought to prosecute; and in fact, he could be a whole lot as the head of the Bureau. Irving was anxious to get the place, but didn’t see how it could be done, as there were many others with far better chances. I told him to be patient and lie low.