Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

From: Chief Inspector, Acme International Detective. Correspondence School, South Kingston, N.Y.

To: Operative P. Moran, c/o Mr. R. B. McRae, Surrey, Conn.

...No subject is more important than that of occupational deduction. The occupation marks the man. The horny-handed son of toil who has spent forty years digging ditches will not look like the cloistered professor who has given a lifetime to the teaching of mathematics. The salty mariner who has sailed the seven seas will not resemble the apothecary who makes up your doctor s prescription. With a single glance the trained detective will determine the occupation of a total stranger. “This man,” he will say, “is obviously a streetcar motor-man: notice the large hands, the distended stomach, and the left foot larger than the right from stamping on the gong. This is a bookkeeper: observe the mark of the eyeshade on his forehead, see the groove over his right ear where he puts his pen, and notice the red ink at the side of his right forefinger. This is a riding-master: notice the bow-legs, observe the peculiar way in which he walks, and smell the odor of the stable.”

Think what it will mean if you know that a certain murder has been committed by a pastry-cook, and you can go out into a crowd and positively identify every pastry-cook in it. You will let ninety-nine men pass, but you will snap your handcuffs on the one hundredth and you will say, “John Doe, the game is up. I arrest you as the mysterious murderer of the wealthy millionaire, Richard Roe. Come to Headquarters with me.”

Read over the section which we have entitled “The Impress of an Occupation,” and particularly read over our long quotation from Dr. Wm. E. Presbrey, formerly professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the Philadelphia University Medical School, who combed Europe and America in his search for facts regarding the influence of occupations on the body. Then, after you think you have mastered everything in this lesson, take a long ride in the subway, jotting down on a piece of paper the occupations of all the men who take seats opposite you, and try to confirm your deductions by supplementary observations. For example, a plumber will not be reading a book of poetry and a clergyman will not be studying the racetrack results. A steamfitter’s assistant will not have well manicured fingernails and a choir singer will not be chewing tobacco. If you decide the man facing you is a prizefighter, and you see him sniff furtively at a bunch of flowers, you may be sure something is wrong somewhere.

J. J. O’B.

P. S. I repeat what I said in my previous letters. Now that you have a dictionary do not be ashamed to look up the spellings of words. You will not find “gorjous” in the dictionary.

J. J. O’B.

From: Operative P. Moran, c/o Mr. R. B. McRae, Surrey, Conn.

To: Chief Inspector, Acme International Detective Correspondence School, South Kingston, N.Y.

Well, I studied the lesson and the long quotation from Dr. Wm. E. Presbrey, though these are busy days for us what with Mr. & Mrs. McRae throwing a big dance on the Sunday before Labor Day which is this Sunday for more than a hundred people. We are going to have music by the Amenia Concert Orchestra which is three musicians, one saxophone, one drummer, and one piano player, and there will be dancing and green and yellow lanterns in the garden and eats and free drinks and a waxed floor which I have been waxing and as Annabell, the new hired girl, says, “Joy will be unrefined,” though I don’t see how that can happen with gas being rationed like it is these days. They say a bicycle gets you there just the same but I observed you cannot park in it with one arm around a girl.

I read that section the Impress of an Occupation and I could not find John Doe, the pastry-cook, in this village, though I stood at the corner outside the post-office and watched for two hours, so I guess the mysterious murderer of the wealthy millionaire, Richard Roe, is not hiding in these parts, but I will look again if there is a reward for him. And I cannot take a long ride in the subway because there isn’t any subway inside of 98.6 miles which is the distance to New York. And detecting isn’t as easy as it used to be because the boss is a good American, he says, and I cannot take the coop on my evenings off.

“Peter,” he says, “from now on we are only going to use the cars for sensual driving. Do you understand that?”

I said “Yes, sir,” though I didn’t.