They Seldom Slept

THE PINKERTON STORY (366 pp.)--James D. Horan & Howard Swiggett--Putnam ($4.50).

In the late 1860s, just about the time Jesse James was blossoming in the Midwest, the four Reno boys were shooting up the area with a vigor that set a pattern for all outlaw brotherhoods to come. Though sadly neglected by folklore and Hollywood, the Reno boys were more original than the James or Younger brothers; they were the first to stage a train robbery in the U.S. (near Seymour, Ind. on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad), and once they burned an entire town (Rockford, Ind.) just so they could buy up its land for a bargain $600.97.

The reign of the Renos lasted only three years. When local sheriffs proved unable to catch them, the victimized express company called in Allan Pinkerton, head of a small Chicago detective agency that was already using such new methods as infiltrating bandit gangs and keeping an elaborate file of criminal information. Soon the Pinkertons had all the outlaw Renos behind bars. While three of them were awaiting trial, a mob of vigilantes strung them up.

Presidential Plot. The Reno escapades form the opening salvo in the drumfire of bandit tales Authors Horan and Swiggett have let loose in their history of Pinkerton's National ("We Never Sleep") Detective Agency. The Pinkerton Story reads too much like a collection of Sunday-supplement pieces, but the raw material survives anything writers can do to it.

In 1861, the Pinkertons discovered a plot to assassinate Lincoln as he passed through Baltimore on the way to his inaugural; they persuaded the President to reroute his trip. During the Civil War, Allan Pinkerton became chief of the first U.S. Secret Service, and slipped through the Southern lines to send back reports of troop movements.

Back in civilian life, the Pinkertons prospered. Every kind of criminal, from Western train robber to international jewel thief, fell before them. In 1886, they solved a New Orleans murder case in which the main clue was an obscure African poison injected from a hollow needle into the leg of a pretty girl. In the '20s, they caught a bigamist who gave as his reason for burning his second wife the indisputable fact that "it is hard for a man to support two wives."

Gentlemanly Crook. By far the best chapter in The Pinkerton Story is a report on Adam Worth, the "most remarkable" criminal of the Victorian era. In 35 years, he stole $4,000,000, never once resorted to violence. He forged checks on a Turkish bank, grabbed -L-70,000 worth of rough diamonds in South Africa, stole 700,000 francs worth of bonds from the Calais-Paris express, and once took a famous Gainsborough painting from its frame in a London dealer's gallery. Operating mainly in Europe, he stayed out of reach of the Pinkertons, was imprisoned only twice for petty thefts. During Worth's heyday, he and William Pinkerton frequently met in a fashionable London bar and developed a fond respect for each other. Years later, Worth poured out to Pinkerton the true tales of his exploits.

When they turn to Pinkerton activities in labor disputes, Authors Horan and Swiggett get a little skittish. They make out a convincing case that the Pinkertons were not quite the strikebreaking devils pictured by some historians, but they admit that during the mid-'30s about 30% of the Pinkerton business was in labor espionage. In any case, the Pinkertons dropped labor spying in 1937, and since then the organization, now employing about 3,000, has concentrated on comparatively routine chores, such as guarding industrial plants and shooing unsavory characters away from race tracks. The Pinkertons are choosy about the cases they will accept. They refuse to have anything to do with divorces, or investigations of public officials. But some kinds of crime never fade away: one month last year, 20 Pinkerton men were still hunting down cattle rustlers.

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