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Show STBANGERS IN PAEIS. About the words, "the secret police," there is a pretty air of mystery, writes Vance Thompson !n Success. They summon up pictures of cloaked figures, of men waiting in, dark alleyways and of stealthy steps behind the curtains of corridors. They are woven into ntne-tenths ntne-tenths of popular French fiction. The woman concierge, cunning herself in what Parisian doorway you please, feeds her imagination on tales of multiple disguises. dis-guises. - For her the agent de la surete, who comes to inquire about her lodgers; U dark with mystery; he is "of the secret se-cret pollcej" As a matter of fact, this branch ofJhe police, though dressed In plain clowies, is not at all occult. It Bas to ro with plain and simple crimes. Most of the agents of the rurete are old soldiers, honorable men. They are supplemented, sup-plemented, however, by a band of quasi police, known as , lndicateurs. These people, who are permanent auxiliaries of the service, are recruited among the street fakirs and masterless rogues who foregather in Pat is. But behind these humdrum agents and those gloomy outcasts, their aids, there is a mighty and mysterious "secret "se-cret police" about which not one Parisian Par-isian in a hundred has definite knowledge. knowl-edge. The real secret police today, as under the empire Is that which is known as the brigade des recherche. that is, the brigade of investigation. The members of this fores are recruited in a far higher rank of. society than the fellows fel-lows of the surte. Indeed, there is no class from the old nobility to the new feudality of finance which does not contribute to this occult system of espionage. It is not my purpose here to describe in detail the many ramiilcHtions of this ancient and potent. ordr of spies. A foreigner for-eigner in France, if ho associates frequently fre-quently with people of importance, conies in time to know thm well. They follow him In his comings and goings, report upon his acts and opinions, and sift his life, with a care unknown in our careless republic. One of those who was sent out on my trail I came to know very welL What I was suspected of I know not, though during the troublous days of the Dreyfus case I fraternized with many men one of whom, the Comte du Temple, an ex-Deputy, was an aggressive royalist. Any way, my spy and I came to know each other very well. He played a good game of billiards bil-liards and was a companionable gentleman. gentle-man. A little later Dr. W. J. O'Sullivan, the assistant corporation counsel of New-York, New-York, visited me in Paris. He was greatly interested in the secret police. I could hardly persuade him that, from the moment we met and shook hands in the Gare du Nord until his departure from the Gare Ht. Lazare, every net of his had been noted. I got the evidence from my friend (my own pet spy.) in the brigade des rec-herches. The doctor's record was singularly complete. He had not spoken with a man, he had Jiot chatted with a woman, he had not dined out or breakfasted in my garden, he had not bought a pair of yellow gloves, unseen by some ubiquitous spy. The amazed gentleman, when he learned how close had been the watch upon him, shuddered as if he had walked In peril, and went back to New York, wondering. So close are the me.-'hes of this police net that not eveii a casual visitor plips through. |