He quite appreciated the commonly accepted attitude that a Chief Commissioner or a Chief Constable (outside Scotland Yard) needed a wider training, a broader outlook, than were to be obtained by step-by-step promotion in the police force. But for the particular and expert work of criminal investigation, for a degree of experience and proficiency such as he believed a great chief of the C.I.D. ought to have, he did not believe that any soldier, sailor, or barrister was qualified. On the other hand, he doubted, as did the authorities and public opinion generally, whether any policeman, as at present recruited, had the necessary qualifications, of the broader kind, either; in fact, he doubted whether, under present conditions, _any_ individual living was properly qualified for the post he sought. Poole therefore determined to qualify himself by obtaining both the broad outlook and the expert knowledge which he postulated. He completed his time at Oxford, taking a Second Class in Law at the end of his third year; then, in order to get some insight into the legal side of his work, he was called to the Bar and was lucky enough to get into the chambers of Edward Floodgate, the well-known criminal lawyer, who afterwards leapt into fame in the course of the astounding Hastings trial. With Floodgate he remained for a year, working with great energy to acquire as much knowledge and experience as possible in the short time at his disposal. At the age of twenty-three he joined the Metropolitan Police as a recruit, and after serving for fifteen months as a Constable in “C” Division, succeeded in catching the eye of the authorities and was transferred to the C.I.D. at Scotland Yard. At the age of twenty-seven he was promoted Sergeant and soon afterwards was lucky enough to figure prominently in two celebrated cases, in the latter of which, known as the Curzon case, he had come under the notice of Sir Leward Marradine himself. The A.C.C. was so impressed by the intelligence and persistence displayed by the young Detective-Sergeant that he put his name down for accelerated promotion, a step, as we have seen, not fully approved by Chief Inspector Barrod, in whose section he worked.