The Master Mind

By Dashiell Hammett

HEREVER crime or criminals were discussed by enlightened folk, the name of Waldron Honeywell could be heard. It was a symbol—to the citizens of Punta Arenas no less than to those of Tammerfors—for the ultimate in the prevention and detection of crime. A native of the United States, Honeywell’s work had overflowed the national boundaries. Thirty years of warfare upon crime had taken him into every quarter of the globe, and his fame into every nook where the printed word penetrated.

Bringing to his work a singularly perspicacious intellect, and combining an exhaustive knowledge of both the scientific and more practical phases of his profession, he had reduced it to as nearly exact a science as possible; and his supremacy in his field had never been questioned.

He had punctured Lombroso’s theories at a time when the scientific world regarded the Italian as a Messiah. The treatise with which he exploded the belief—fostered by no less an authority than the great W. J. Burns—that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have made a successful detective, and showed that the mysteries confronting Sherlock Holmes would have been susceptible to the routine methods of the ordinary policeman, was familiar to the readers of eight languages. The mastery with which he unearthed and frustrated the Versailles bomb plot before it was well on its feet; the dispatch with which he recovered the aircraft program memoranda; his success in finding the assassin of the emperor of Abyssinia, the details of which were suppressed for some obscure political reason; the effectual manner in which he coped with the epidemic of postal robberies—these were matters of history, but in no way more remarkable than a thousand-odd other exploits in which he had figured.

Honors and decorations were showered upon him, governments sought his advice, scientists deferred to him, criminals shuddered at the sound of his name (one, who had avoided arrest for seventeen years, surrendered to the nearest policeman upon learning that Honeywell had been engaged to hunt him down), and his monetary rewards were enormous.

Early in 1922 Waldron Honeywell died, and left an estate consisting of $182.65 in cash, 37,500 shares of International Solar Power Corporation common, 42,555 shares of Cousin Tilly Gold, Platinum & Diamond Mining Company common, 6,430 shares of Universal Petroleum Corporation of Uruguay, S. A. preferred, and 75,000 shares of New Era Fuelless Motor Company common.