School for Sleuths

In charge of the Prohibition Bureau's correspondence school for Dry agents is short, stout, Pennsylvania-Dutch Harry Morgan Dengler, 48. An oldtime Pennsylvania and Montana teacher, he learned sleuthing in the Intelligence Service of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Treasury Department, and was transferred to the Prohibition Bureau ten years ago. He went with the Bureau from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice this year (TIME, July 7), will continue his courses as adjuncts to Director Amos Walter Wright Woodcock's new personal instruction plan (TIME, Aug. 11). Last week a newshawk obtained one of Mr. Dengler's textbooks, Correspondence Study Lessons on Criminal Investigation.

Excerpt: "You must be prepared to assume some line of business which will give you the entree desired. You may have to go so far as to pretend you are getting up a directory to cover your reason for asking who occupies the office. If the person enters a theatre you must get close enough to see where he goes."

To find breweries, Mr. Dengler advises trailing "trucks delivering wort* or other supplies. Various expedients may be used. Officers have used a pail of sand fastened to the axle. A hole in the bottom and plug with a string attached to the wheel completes the outfit which makes the sand trail when the truck starts. Others have taken speedometer readings to get an idea as to the distance covered. ... A man or boy on a bicycle can follow a truck without suspicion."

To keep watch on speakeasies or breweries : "Secure lodging or employment near the place to avoid appearing on the streets."

Several times in his lectures Mr. Dengler advocates employment of minors to enforce the nation's laws. In Lesson V he says: "Two boys can engage in games near the home of the subject without attracting attention, whereas a man loitering in the neighborhood would soon arouse suspicion."

For collateral reading, detective fiction is recommended, such as: Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug and Murders in the Rue Morgue, William Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series. But Detective Dengler reminds his pupils: "The officer [in these stories] always wins against crooks by some superhuman effort." He warns against "disappointment."

P: Last week Director Woodcock announced the appointments of Randolph Shaw, special assistant to the Attorney General, major in the Army Reserve Corps, to be chief of the Prohibition Bureau's Law Division, and of Dwight E. Avis, Detroit Dry Agent, to be chief of the new corps of 200 "super-agents," the director's confidential detectives assigned to uncover big rum-running rings.

* The sweet infusion of malt which ferments and forms beer. Botanically speaking, a wort (pronounced wurt) is any kind of plant or herb.

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