Inside of fifty-five minutes after he had reported his loss a detective agency had notified all banks, brokers, and the police in fifty-six cities of the United States and Canada.
In the story books your detective scans with eagle eye the surface of the floor for microscopic evidences of crime.

His mind leaps from a cigar ash to a piece of banana peel and thence to what the family had for dinner.

His brain is working all the time.

It is, of course, all quite wonderful and most excellent reading, and the old-style sleuth really thought he could do it! Nowadays, while the fake detective is snooping around the back piazza with a telescope, the real one is getting the "dope" from the village blacksmith or barber or the waitress at the station.

He may not be highly intelligent, but he knows the country, and, what is more important, he knows the people.