Also of another inspector, whose name I can not recall, who, having been
given rather meager and insufficient details of a man whom he anticipated
having great difficulty in finding, went straight down the stairs of the
office where he had received instructions, and actually _fell over_ the
man near the door, where he had stooped down to tie his shoe-lace! There
were cases, too, in which, when a great and notorious crime had been
committed, and various persons had been arrested on suspicion, some were
found among them who had long been badly wanted for some other crime
altogether. Many criminals had met their deserts by venturing out of their
own particular line of crime into another; often a man who got into
trouble over something comparatively small found himself in for a
startlingly larger trouble, the result of some previous misdeed that
otherwise would have gone unpunished. The ruble note-forger Mirsky might
never have been handed over to the Russian authorities had he confined his
genius to forgery alone. It was generally supposed at the time of his
extradition that he had communicated with the Russian Embassy, with a view
to giving himself up--a foolish proceeding on his part, it would seem,
since his whereabouts, indeed even his identity as the forger, had not
been suspected.
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