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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
Arthur B. Reeve's 'Detective Kennedy's Cases' is a classic collection of short mystery stories that captivate readers with its intricate plot twists and clever detective work. Written in a straightforward and engaging style, the book showcases Reeve's talent for creating suspenseful narratives that keep readers on the edge of their seats. Set in the early 20th century, the stories provide a fascinating glimpse into the detective genre during this time period, highlighting the role of technology and forensic science. Reeve's attention to detail and ability to craft compelling characters make 'Detective Kennedy's Cases' a standout in the genre. Arthur B. Reeve, a former journalist, drew inspiration for his detective stories from his fascination with crime-solving techniques and forensic science. His background in journalism and keen interest in detective work are evident in the meticulous research and attention to detail found in 'Detective Kennedy's Cases.' Reeve's dedication to creating authentic and compelling mysteries has solidified his reputation as a master of the genre. I highly recommend 'Detective Kennedy's Cases' to anyone who enjoys classic detective fiction with a modern twist. Reeve's clever storytelling and vivid descriptions make this collection a must-read for those who appreciate a good mystery. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Detective Kennedy's Cases: The Poisoned Pen, The War Terror, The Social Gangster, The Ear in the Wall, Gold of the Gods and many more
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Detective Kennedy's Cases: The Poisoned Pen, The War Terror, The Social Gangster, The Ear in the Wall, Gold of the Gods and many more gathers a selection of Arthur B. Reeve's fiction centered on Craig Kennedy, the scientific detective. Comprising major novels such as The Dream Doctor, The War Terror, The Social Gangster, The Ear in the Wall, Gold of the Gods, The Exploits of Elaine, The Romance of Elaine, The Soul Scar, and The Film Mystery, alongside a broad range of short stories, this collection offers a coherent introduction to the cycle. Its purpose is to present Kennedy's investigations across forms, themes, and settings in one accessible volume.
Readers will find two principal modes represented: full-length novels and short stories. The novels pursue sustained conspiracies and crises through successive episodes, while the short stories deliver concise case studies shaped around a single inventive problem. The shorter works include material from sequences associated with The Silent Bullet and The Poisoned Pen, together with individual episodes such as The Scientific Cracksman, The Bacteriological Detective, The Deadly Tube, The Seismograph Adventure, The Diamond Maker, The Azure Ring, Spontaneous Combustion, The Terror in the Air, The Black Hand, The Artificial Paradise, The Steel Door, and The Treasure-Train, among others. Across both forms, each narrative foregrounds method and consequence.
Reeve's unifying premise is simple and potent: crime and counter-crime are modern enterprises, and science is the decisive tool. Kennedy's inquiries move from the laboratory to the street, coupling demonstration with pursuit. Titles throughout this volume advertise that synthesis, from The Invisible Ray and The Truth-Detector to The Mystic Poisoner, The Phantom Destroyer, The Beauty Mask, The Love Meter, The Vital Principle, The Rubber Dagger, The Submarine Mine, The Gun-Runner, and The Sunken Treasure. Whether the menace involves toxins, industrial devices, explosive innovations, or deceptive instruments, the emphasis remains on tested procedure, clear inference, and consequences that resonate beyond a single room or suspect.
Another persistent signature is voice. Many cases are framed by Walter Jameson, a journalist companion whose plainspoken reportage lends immediacy and measure to Kennedy's demonstrations. The resulting tone is at once explanatory and kinetic: expositions of apparatus and method are braided with interviews, city chases, and sudden reversals. Settings range across laboratories, apartments, waterfronts, resorts, and newspaper offices, most often anchored in New York. The novels extend this canvas across multiple crises, while the shorter tales distill a single technique or ruse. In either mode, the narrative insists that knowledge is active, and that understanding is a form of pursuit.
The range of subjects reflects the rapid transformations of the early twentieth century. The War Terror addresses wartime espionage and sabotage as a backdrop for detection, while The Social Gangster probes urban rackets. The Ear in the Wall pivots on listening and surveillance. Shorter pieces take up aviation hazards in The Terror in the Air, public-health fears in The Germ of Death, political corruption in The Campaign Grafter, trafficking anxieties in The White Slave, and confidence schemes in The Confidence King. Each premise is approached through experiment and inference rather than brute force, with the immediate case linked to wider civic concerns.
Reeve's achievement endures for its marriage of pedagogy and suspense. By dramatizing cutting-edge devices, laboratory routines, and new media, he helped popularize forensic thinking for a broad audience and anticipated strands of the modern procedural. The novels sustain serial momentum and expanding peril; the short stories hone the elegant, one-sitting problem. Throughout, Craig Kennedy embodies a persuasive ideal of expert citizenship, insisting that specialized knowledge can be legible to lay readers without loss of rigor. The result is a body of work that still speaks to debates about technology, privacy, public safety, and the ethical uses of discovery.
This collection offers a representative cross-section rather than an exhaustive catalogue, placing full-length novels first and then a substantial suite of short stories. Readers may follow Kennedy's development across the longer narratives or sample the briefer cases selectively; the design supports either approach. No attempt is made here to adjudicate competing interpretations or to supply commentary, since the point is immersion in the stories themselves. Taken together, these works chart how a distinctly American detective adapted emerging science to the pressing problems of his moment, and why that method continues to illuminate puzzles, motives, and communities far beyond their original pages.
Historical Context
Arthur B. Reeve’s Craig Kennedy tales emerged in the 1910s, when American cities and laboratories were transforming daily life. First appearing in magazines such as Cosmopolitan, the stories positioned a Columbia University professor-detective amid New York’s teeming streets and modern lecture rooms. Between roughly 1910 and America’s entry into World War I in 1917, Reeve’s audience encountered telephones, electric subways, motion pictures, and bacteriological breakthroughs as novelties with unsettling implications. By harnessing these developments for detection, the collection captured a culture oscillating between optimism about scientific progress and anxieties about the new perils it unleashed, from poison and wireless devices to sophisticated financial frauds.
Reeve wrote during the codification of forensic science. Fingerprinting was being adopted in the United States after 1904, while Edmond Locard established a pioneering crime laboratory in Lyon in 1910, and Hans Gross’s criminalistics shaped investigative method. Discoveries by Wilhelm Röntgen and Marie and Pierre Curie popularized X‑rays and radium, fueling both marvel and fear, echoed in stories invoking invisible rays and deadly tubes. Psychology also entered the courtroom through Hugo Münsterberg and early lie‑detection experiments, anticipating Kennedy’s “truth‑detectors.” Such advances supplied plausible mechanisms for plots about toxins, microbes, seismographs, or galvanometers, and reassured readers that rational technique could master seemingly occult crimes.
At the same time, Progressive Era New York confronted corruption and rapid urban growth. The subway’s 1904 opening, new skyscrapers, and mass immigration strained services and politics, while Tammany Hall loomed over contracts, elections, and policing. Muckraking exposés by Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell encouraged faith that investigative method could purge graft, a sensibility mirrored in tales of campaign frauds, social climbers, and “society” criminals. Catastrophes such as the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire intensified reform demands, creating a backdrop in which a scientific sleuth could appeal to readers eager for order. Kennedy’s forays into high society salons and tenement alleys alike reflected this urban duality.
Immigration patterns and transatlantic networks shaped crime anxieties that Reeve mined. The so‑called Black Hand extortion wave in Italian American communities, pursued by NYPD Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino until his 1909 assassination in Palermo, filled newspapers with secret letters and bombings. Safe‑cracking “yeggmen,” train robberies, and waterfront smuggling persisted despite modern locks and customs inspections, offering fertile material for stories of treasure trains, forgers, and unofficial spies. These plots echoed Pinkerton methods and the era’s fascination with specialized tools—nitroglycerin, time locks, and clever disguises—while signaling the limits of traditional policing. Scientific detection arrived as a hopeful counterweight to sensational, cross‑border criminal enterprises.
Progressive moral reform also left its mark. The Mann Act of 1910, framed amid a “white slavery” panic, and long campaigns by Anthony Comstock’s New York Society for the Suppression of Vice sustained headline‑grabbing raids and trials. Such concerns intersected with stories about trafficking, deceptive romance, and bodily peril. Meanwhile, a booming beauty industry and new laboratory products made masks, elixirs, and therapeutic rays seem both scientific and suspect, themes that Reeve exploited in plots about cosmetic dangers or toxic allure. Popular psychology experiments with galvanic skin response and word association—publicized by figures like Carl Jung—further informed the series’ fascination with measurement and motive.
World War I transformed the series’ milieu. Before U.S. entry in 1917, fears of sabotage shadowed the neutral port of New York; the Black Tom explosion of 1916 and the Kingsland plant fire of 1917 heightened suspicions of German agents. Afterward, the Espionage Act and military censorship reinforced a culture of vigilance. Stories invoking submarine mines, aerial danger, gun‑running, and clandestine laboratories channeled these anxieties. Simultaneously, new surveillance technologies—telephone intercepts and the Dictograph, widely advertised after 1907—made eavesdropping a staple of both policing and scandal, resonating with titles about ears in walls and the uneasy ethics of modern intelligence‑gathering.
American expansion and archaeology supplied exotic settings and motives. The Panama Canal opened in 1914, symbolizing engineering prowess and strategic reach, while “Dollar Diplomacy” interventions in the Caribbean and Central America during the Taft and Wilson administrations expanded U.S. influence and trade routes. In 1911, Hiram Bingham publicized Machu Picchu, stoking fascination with Andean civilizations and lost gold. Reeve’s treasure hunts and “Gold of the Gods” motifs fit this climate, mixing pulp adventure with headlines about antiquities, mineral concessions, and contested sovereignty. Such narratives paired Kennedy’s laboratory methods with frontier intrigues, suggesting that scientific rationality could domesticate distant mysteries for metropolitan readers.
The series thrived within a multimedia marketplace. Hearst’s Cosmopolitan, which serialized Kennedy beginning in 1910, linked magazine fiction to investigative journalism and mass advertising, while the silent‑film boom delivered screen versions like The Exploits of Elaine (1914), starring Pearl White and Arnold Daly. This synergy branded Kennedy the “American Sherlock Holmes,” aligning Reeve with contemporaries who translated laboratory prestige into popular entertainment. Audiences applauded the promise that chemistry, psychology, and electricity could decipher modern hazards, even as the stories mirrored prevailing biases and wartime fears. As professional police science institutionalized after 1918, the tales remained cultural artifacts of optimism tempered by unease.
Synopsis (Selection)
Early Scientific Detection Stories (The Silent Bullet; The Scientific Cracksman; The Bacteriological Detective; The Deadly Tube; The Seismograph Adventure; The Diamond Maker; The Azure Ring; Spontaneous Combustion; The Terror in the Air; The Black Hand; The Artificial Paradise; The Steel Door)
Kennedy and reporter Walter Jameson apply lab tests, electricity, ballistics, and other then-new methods to crack cases involving secret toxins, engineered devices, and urban rackets.
The tone blends classroom demonstration with brisk pursuit, foregrounding faith in rational inquiry amid anxiety about modernity’s hidden dangers.
Middle-Period Underworld and Social-Crime Stories (The Poisoned Pen; The Yeggman; The Germ of Death; The Firebug; The Confidence King; The Sand-Hog; The White Slave; The Forger; The Unofficial Spy; The Smuggler; The Invisible Ray)
These cases push into organized crime, vice rings, and sensational swindles, with Kennedy countering forged identities, incendiaries, and weaponized chemistry.
The stories sharpen the social lens and the peril, pairing street-level infiltration with portable gadgets that make science both shield and scalpel.
Later Tech-and-Espionage Stories (The Campaign Grafter; The Treasure Train / The Treasure-Train; The Truth-Detector; The Soul-Analysis; The Mystic Poisoner; The Phantom Destroyer; The Beauty Mask; The Love Meter; The Vital Principle; The Rubber Dagger; The Submarine Mine; The Gun-Runner; The Sunken Treasure)
The scale widens to political corruption, industrial sabotage, and international arms, as inventions and countermeasures escalate into proto–spy-thriller territory.
Themes of surveillance, propaganda, and the ethics of technological power move to the fore, while the pace turns more cinematic and outward-facing.
Psychological Cases (The Dream Doctor; The Soul Scar)
Kennedy probes dreams, suggestion, and the mechanics of personality to explain crimes that seem born in the unconscious rather than the laboratory.
The mood is clinical yet dramatic, treating the mind as evidence and exploring how memory, trauma, and reputation become battlegrounds.
Urban Power and Surveillance Novels (The Social Gangster; The Ear in the Wall)
Set against New York’s elite clubs and tough precincts, these novels trace how wealth, politics, and policing intertwine to breed sophisticated crime.
Acoustic surveillance, social engineering, and public scandal drive plots where image and influence can be as lethal as weapons.
Elaine Cycle (The Exploits of Elaine; The Romance of Elaine)
A wealthy heroine becomes the target of a master criminal, drawing Kennedy into a serialized gauntlet of puzzles, traps, and public peril.
Cliffhanger pacing and media-savvy spectacle dominate, showcasing gadgets and the performance of heroism in a world attuned to headlines.
The War Terror
Amid wartime paranoia, Kennedy confronts spies, saboteurs, and threats that turn science into a battlefield at home.
The narrative channels urgency and secrecy, balancing patriotic duty with the hazards of total-war technology.
Gold of the Gods
A hunt for hidden treasure pulls Kennedy into cryptic codes, exoticized lore, and transnational intrigue.
Scientific method meets legend and geopolitics, with fieldwork and decoding replacing the drawing-room puzzle.
The Film Mystery
A murder entangles the emerging movie industry, where staged illusions, star power, and mechanical images complicate truth.
Kennedy exploits cameras and timing as evidence, critiquing how new media can both expose and fabricate reality.
Series Signatures and Evolution
Across the collection, Craig Kennedy’s hallmark is forensic showmanship—turning the latest chemistry, electricity, and instrumentation into narrative engines.
Over time the series shifts from lab-centered puzzles to broader social and geopolitical stakes, anticipating the modern techno-thriller while keeping a reporter’s eye for the city.
Detective Kennedy's Cases: The Poisoned Pen, The War Terror, The Social Gangster, The Ear in the Wall, Gold of the Gods and many more
Novels
The Dream Doctor
Chapter IThe Dream Doctor
"JAMESON, I want you to get the real story about that friend of yours, Professor Kennedy," announced the managing editor of the Star, early one afternoon when I had been summoned into the sanctum.
From a batch of letters that had accumulated in the litter on the top of his desk, he selected one and glanced over it hurriedly.
"For instance," he went on reflectively, "here's a letter from a Constant Reader who asks, 'Is this Professor Craig Kennedy really all that you say he is, and, if so, how can I find out about his new scientific detective method?'"
He paused and tipped back his chair.
"Now, I don't want to file these letters in the waste basket. When people write letters to a newspaper, it means something. I might reply, in this case, that he is as real as science, as real as the fight of society against the criminal. But I want to do more than that."
The editor had risen, as if shaking himself momentarily loose from the ordinary routine of the office.
"You get me?" he went on, enthusiastically. "In other words, your assignment, Jameson, for the next month is to do nothing except follow your friend Kennedy. Start in right now, on the first, and cross-section out of his life just one month, an average month. Take things just as they come, set them down just as they happen, and when you get through give me an intimate picture of the man and his work."
He picked up the schedule for the day and I knew that the interview was at an end. I was to "get" Kennedy.
Often I had written snatches of Craig's adventures, but never before anything as ambitious as this assignment, for a whole month. At first it staggered me. But the more I thought about it, the better I liked it.
I hastened uptown to the apartment on the Heights which Kennedy and I had occupied for some time. I say we occupied it. We did so during those hours when he was not at his laboratory at the Chemistry Building on the University campus, or working on one of those cases which fascinated him. Fortunately, he happened to be there as I burst in upon him.
"Well?" he queried absently, looking up from a book, one of the latest untranslated treatises on the new psychology from the pen of the eminent scientist, Dr. Freud of Vienna, "what brings you uptown so early?"
Briefly as I could, I explained to him what it was that I proposed to do. He listened without comment and I rattled on, determined not to allow him to negative it.
"And," I added, warming up to the subject, "I think I owe a debt of gratitude to the managing editor. He has crystallised in my mind an idea that has long been latent. Why, Craig," I went on, "that is exactly what you want—to show people how they can never hope to beat the modern scientific detective, to show that the crime-hunters have gone ahead faster even than—"
The telephone tinkled insistently.
Without a word, Kennedy motioned to me to "listen in" on the extension on my desk, which he had had placed there as a precaution so that I could corroborate any conversation that took place over our wire.
His action was quite enough to indicate to me that, at least, he had no objection to the plan.
"This is Dr. Leslie—the coroner. Can you come to the Municipal Hospital—right away?"
"Right away, Doctor," answered Craig, hanging up the receiver. "Walter, you'll come, too?"
A quarter of an hour later we were in the courtyard of the city's largest hospital. In the balmy sunshine the convalescing patients were sitting on benches or slowly trying their strength, walking over the grass, clad in faded hospital bathrobes.
We entered the office and quickly were conducted by an orderly to a little laboratory in a distant wing.
"What's the matter?" asked Craig, as we hurried along.
"I don't know exactly," replied the man, "except that it seems that Price Maitland, the broker, you know, was picked up on the street and brought here dying. He died before the doctors could relieve him."
Dr. Leslie was waiting impatiently for us. "What do you make of that, Professor Kennedy?"
The coroner spread out on the table before us a folded half-sheet of typewriting and searched Craig's face eagerly to see what impression it made on him.
"We found it stuffed in Maitland's outside coat pocket," he explained.
It was dateless and brief:
Dearest Madeline:
May God in his mercy forgive me for what I am about to do. I have just seen Dr. Ross. He has told me the nature of your illness. I cannot bear to think that I am the cause, so I am going simply to drop out of your life. I cannot live with you, and I cannot live without you. Do not blame me. Always think the best you can of me, even if you could not give me all. Good-bye.
Your distracted husband, Price.
At once the idea flashed over me that Maitland had found himself suffering from some incurable disease and had taken the quickest means of settling his dilemma.
Kennedy looked up suddenly from the note.
"Do you think it was a suicide?" asked the coroner.
"Suicide?" Craig repeated. "Suicides don't usually write on typewriters. A hasty note scrawled on a sheet of paper in trembling pen or pencil, that is what they usually leave. No, some one tried to escape the handwriting experts this way."
"Exactly my idea," agreed Dr. Leslie, with evident satisfaction. "Now listen. Maitland was conscious almost up to the last moment, and yet the hospital doctors tell me they could not get a syllable of an ante-mortem statement from him."
"You mean he refused to talk?" I asked.
"No," he replied; "it was more perplexing than that. Even if the police had not made the usual blunder of arresting him for intoxication instead of sending him immediately to the hospital, it would have made no difference. The doctors simply could not have saved him, apparently. For the truth is, Professor Kennedy, we don't even know what was the matter with him."
Dr. Leslie seemed much excited by the case, as well he might be.
"Maitland was found reeling and staggering on Broadway this morning," continued the coroner. "Perhaps the policeman was not really at fault at first for arresting him, but before the wagon came Maitland was speechless and absolutely unable to move a muscle."
Dr. Leslie paused as he recited the strange facts, then resumed: "His eyes reacted, all right. He seemed to want to speak, to write, but couldn't. A frothy saliva dribbled from his mouth, but he could not frame a word. He was paralysed, and his breathing was peculiar. They then hurried him to the hospital as soon as they could. But it was of no use."
Kennedy was regarding the doctor keenly as he proceeded. Dr. Leslie paused again to emphasise what he was about to say.
"Here is another strange thing. It may or may not be of importance, but it is strange, nevertheless. Before Maitland died they sent for his wife. He was still conscious when she reached the hospital, could recognise her, seemed to want to speak, but could neither talk nor move. It was pathetic. She was grief-stricken, of course. But she did not faint. She is not of the fainting kind. It was what she said that impressed everyone. 'I knew it—I knew it,' she cried. She had dropped on her knees by the side of the bed. 'I felt it. Only the other night I had the horrible dream. I saw him in a terrific struggle. I could not see what it was—it seemed to be an invisible thing. I ran to him—then the scene shifted. I saw a funeral procession, and in the casket I could see through the wood—his face—oh, it was a warning! It has come true. I feared it, even though I knew it was only a dream. Often I have had the dream of that funeral procession and always I saw the same face, his face. Oh, it is horrible—terrible!"
It was evident that Dr. Leslie at least was impressed by the dream.
"What have you done since?" asked Craig.
"I have turned loose everyone I could find available," replied Dr. Leslie, handing over a sheaf of reports.
Kennedy glanced keenly over them as they lay spread out on the table. "I should like to see the body," he said, at length.
It was lying in the next room, awaiting Dr. Leslie's permission to be removed.
"At first," explained the doctor, leading the way, "we thought it might be a case of knock-out drops, chloral, you know—or perhaps chloral and whiskey, a combination which might unite to make chloroform in the blood. But no. We have tested for everything we can think of. In fact there seems to be no trace of a drug present. It is inexplicable. If Maitland really committed suicide, he must have taken something—and as far as we can find out there is no trace of anything. As far as we have gone we have always been forced back to the original idea that it was a natural death—perhaps due to shock of some kind, or organic weakness."
Kennedy had thoughtfully raised one of the lifeless hands and was examining it.
"Not that," he corrected. "Even if the autopsy shows nothing, it doesn't prove that it was a natural death. Look!"
On the back of the hand was a tiny, red, swollen mark. Dr. Leslie regarded it with pursed-up lips as though not knowing whether it was significant or not.
"The tissues seemed to be thickly infiltrated with a reddish serum and the blood-vessels congested," he remarked slowly. "There was a frothy mucus in the bronchial tubes. The blood was liquid, dark, and didn't clot The fact of the matter is that the autopsical research revealed absolutely nothing but a general disorganisation of the blood-corpuscles, a most peculiar thing, but one the significance of which none of us here can fathom. If it was poison that he took or that had been given to him, it was the most subtle, intangible, elusive, that ever came to my knowledge. Why, there is absolutely no trace or clue—"
"Nor any use in looking for one in that way," broke in Kennedy decisively. "If we are to make any progress in this case, we must look elsewhere than to an autopsy. There is no clue beyond what you have found, if I am right. And I think I am right. It was the venom of the cobra."
"Cobra venom?" repeated the coroner, glancing up at a row of technical works.
"Yes. No, it's no use trying to look it up. There is no way of verifying a case of cobra poisoning except by the symptoms. It is not like any other poisoning in the world."
Dr. Leslie and I looked at each other, aghast at the thought of a poison so subtle that it defied detection.
"You think he was bitten by a snake?" I blurted out, half incredulous.
"Oh, Walter, on Broadway? No, of course not. But cobra venom has a medicinal value. It is sent here in small quantities for various medicinal purposes. Then, too, it would be easy to use it. A scratch on the hand in the passing crowd, a quick shoving of the letter into the pocket of the victim—and the murderer would probably think to go undetected."
We stood dismayed at the horror of such a scientific murder and the meagreness of the materials to work on in tracing it out.
"That dream was indeed peculiar," ruminated Craig, before we had really grasped the import of his quick revelation.
"You don't mean to say that you attach any importance to a dream?" I asked hurriedly, trying to follow him.
Kennedy merely shrugged his shoulders, but I could see plainly enough that he did.
"You haven't given this letter out to the press?" he asked.
"Not yet," answered Dr. Leslie.
"Then don't, until I say to do so. I shall need to keep it."
The cab in which we had come to the hospital was still waiting. "We must see Mrs. Maitland first," said Kennedy, as we left the nonplused coroner and his assistants.
The Maitlands lived, we soon found, in a large old-fashioned brownstone house just off Fifth Avenue.
Kennedy's card with the message that it was very urgent brought us in as far as the library, where we sat for a moment looking around at the quiet refinement of a more than well-to-do home.
On a desk at one end of the long room was a typewriter. Kennedy rose. There was not a sound of any one in either the hallway or the adjoining rooms. A moment later he was bending quietly over the typewriter in the corner, running off a series of characters on a sheet of paper. A sound of a closing door upstairs, and he quickly jammed the paper into his pocket, retraced his steps, and was sitting quietly opposite me again.
Mrs. Maitland was a tall, perfectly formed woman of baffling age, but with the impression of both youth and maturity which was very fascinating. She was calmer now, and although she seemed to be of anything but a hysterical nature, it was quite evident that her nervousness was due to much more than the shock of the recent tragic event, great as that must have been. It may have been that I recalled the words of the note, "Dr. Ross has told me the nature of your illness," but I fancied that she had been suffering from some nervous trouble.
"There is no use prolonging our introduction, Mrs. Maitland," began Kennedy. "We have called because the authorities are not yet fully convinced that Mr. Maitland committed suicide."
It was evident that she had seen the note, at least. "Not a suicide?" she repeated, looking from one to the other of us.
"Mr. Masterson on the wire, ma'am," whispered a maid. "Do you wish to speak to him? He begged to say that he did not wish to intrude, but he felt that if there—"
"Ye, I will talk to him—in my room," she interrupted.
I thought that there was just a trace of well-concealed confusion, as she excused herself.
We rose. Kennedy did not resume his seat immediately. Without a word or look he completed his work at the typewriter by abstracting several blank sheets of paper from the desk.
A few moments later Mrs. Maitland returned, calmer.
"In his note," resumed Kennedy, "he spoke of Dr. Ross and—"
"Oh," she cried, "can't you see Dr. Ross about it? Really I—I oughtn't to be—questioned in this way—not now, so soon after what I've had to go through."
It seemed that her nerves were getting unstrung again. Kennedy rose to go.
"Later, come to see me," she pleaded. "But now—you must realise—it is too much. I cannot talk—I cannot"
"Mr. Maitland had no enemies that you know of?" asked Kennedy, determined to learn something now, at least.
"No, no. None that would—do that."
"You had had no quarrel?" he added.
"No—we never quarrelled. Oh, Price—why did you? How could you?"
Her feelings were apparently rapidly getting the better of her. Kennedy bowed, and we withdrew silently. He had learned one thing. She believed or wanted others to believe in the note.
At a public telephone, a few minutes later, Kennedy was running over the names in the telephone book. "Let me see—here's an Arnold Masterson," he considered. Then turning the pages he went on, "Now we must find this Dr. Ross. There—Dr. Sheldon Ross—specialist in nerve diseases—that must be the one. He lives only a few blocks further uptown."
Handsome, well built, tall, dignified, in fact distinguished, Dr. Ross proved to be a man whose very face and manner were magnetic, as should be those of one who had chosen his branch of the profession.
"You have heard, I suppose, of the strange death of Price Maitland?" began Kennedy when we were seated in the doctor's office.
"Yes, about an hour ago." It was evident that he was studying us.
"Mrs. Maitland, I believe, is a patient of yours?"
"Yes, Mrs. Maitland is one of my patients," he admitted interrogatively. Then, as if considering that Kennedy's manner was not to be mollified by anything short of a show of confidence, he added: "She came to me several months ago. I have had her under treatment for nervous trouble since then, without a marked improvement."
"And Mr. Maitland," asked Kennedy, "was he a patient, too?"
"Mr. Maitland," admitted the doctor with some reticence, "had called on me this morning, but no, he was not a patient."
"Did you notice anything unusual?"
"He seemed to be much worried," Dr. Ross replied guardedly.
Kennedy took the suicide note from his pocket and handed it to him.
"I suppose you have heard of this?" asked Craig.
The doctor read it hastily, then looked up, as if measuring from Kennedy's manner just how much he knew. "As nearly as I could make out," he said slowly, his reticence to outward appearance gone, "Maitland seemed to have something on his mind. He came inquiring as to the real cause of his wife's nervousness. Before I had talked to him long I gathered that he had a haunting fear that she did not love him any more, if ever. I fancied that he even doubted her fidelity."
I wondered why the doctor was talking so freely, now, in contrast with his former secretiveness.
"Do you think he was right?" shot out Kennedy quickly, eying Dr. Ross keenly.
"No, emphatically, no; he was not right," replied the doctor, meeting Craig's scrutiny without flinching. "Mrs. Maitland," he went on more slowly as if carefully weighing every word, "belongs to a large and growing class of women in whom, to speak frankly, sex seems to be suppressed. She is a very handsome and attractive woman—you have seen her? Yes? You must have noticed, though, that she is really frigid, cold, intellectual."
The doctor was so sharp and positive about his first statement and so careful in phrasing the second that I, at least, jumped to the conclusion that Maitland might have been right, after all. I imagined that Kennedy, too, had his suspicions of the doctor.
"Have you ever heard of or used cobra venom in any of your medical work?" he asked casually.
Dr. Ross wheeled in his chair, surprised.
"Why, yes," he replied quickly. "You know that it is a test for blood diseases, one of the most recently discovered and used parallel to the old tests. It is known as the Weil cobra-venom test."
"Do you use it often?"
"N-no," he replied. "My practice ordinarily does not lie in that direction. I used it not long ago, once, though. I have a patient under my care, a well-known club-man. He came to me originally—"
"Arnold Masterson?" asked Craig.
"Yes—how did you know his name?"
"Guessed it," replied Craig laconically, as if he knew much more than he cared to tell. "He was a friend of Mrs. Maitland's, was he not?"
"I should say not," replied Dr. Ross, without hesitation. He was quite ready to talk without being urged. "Ordinarily," he explained confidentially, "professional ethics seals my lips, but in this instance, since you seem to know so much, I may as well tell more."
I hardly knew whether to take him at his face value or not. Still he went on: "Mrs. Maitland is, as I have hinted at, what we specialists would call a consciously frigid but unconsciously passionate woman. As an intellectual woman she suppresses nature. But nature does and will assert herself, we believe. Often you will find an intellectual woman attracted unreasonably to a purely physical man—I mean, speaking generally, not in particular cases. You have read Ellen Key, I presume? Well, she expresses it well in some of the things she has written about affinities. Now, don't misunderstand me," he cautioned. "I am speaking generally, not of this individual case."
I was following Dr. Ross closely. When he talked so, he was a most fascinating man.
"Mrs. Maitland," he resumed, "has been much troubled by her dreams, as you have heard, doubtless. The other day she told me of another dream. In it she seemed to be attacked by a bull, which suddenly changed into a serpent. I may say that I had asked her to make a record of her dreams, as well as other data, which I thought might be of use in the study and treatment of her nervous troubles. I readily surmised that not the dream, but something else, perhaps some recollection which it recalled, worried her. By careful questioning I discovered that it was—a broken engagement."
"Yes," prompted Kennedy.
"The bull-serpent, she admitted, had a half-human face—the face of Arnold Masterson!"
Was Dr. Ross desperately shifting suspicion from himself? I asked.
"Very strange—very," ruminated Kennedy. "That reminds me again. I wonder if you could let me have a sample of this cobra venom?"
"Surely. Excuse me; I'll get you some."
The doctor had scarcely shut the door when Kennedy began prowling around quietly. In the waiting-room, which was now deserted, stood a typewriter.
Quickly Craig ran over the keys of the machine until he had a sample of every character. Then he reached into drawer of the desk and hastily stuffed several blank sheets of paper into his pocket.
"Of course I need hardly caution you in handling this," remarked Dr. Ross, as he returned. "You are as well acquainted as I am with the danger attending its careless and unscientific uses."
"I am, and I thank you very much," said Kennedy. We were standing in the waiting-room.
"You will keep me advised of any progress you make in the case?" the doctor asked. "It complicates, as you can well imagine, my treatment of Mrs. Maitland."
"I shall be glad to do so," replied Kennedy, as we departed.
An hour later found us in a handsomely appointed bachelor apartment in a fashionable hotel overlooking the lower entrance to the Park.
"Mr. Masterson, I believe?" inquired Kennedy, as a slim, debonair, youngish-old man entered the room in which we had been waiting.
"I am that same," he smiled. "To what am I indebted for this pleasure?"
We had been gazing at the various curios with which he had made the room a veritable den of the connoisseur.
"You have evidently travelled considerably," remarked Kennedy, avoiding the question for the time.
"Yes, I have been back in this country only a few weeks," Masterson replied, awaiting the answer to the first question.
"I called," proceeded Kennedy, "in the hope that you, Mr. Masterson, might be able to shed some light on the rather peculiar case of Mr. Maitland, of whose death, I suppose, you have already heard."
"I?"
"You have known Mrs. Maitland a long time?" ignored Kennedy.
"We went to school together."
"And were engaged, were you not?"
Masterson looked at Kennedy in ill-concealed surprise.
"Yes. But how did you know that? It was a secret—only between us two—I thought. She broke it off—not I."
"She broke off the engagement?" prompted Kennedy.
"Yes—a story about an escapade of mine and all that sort of thing, you know—but, by Jove! I like your nerve, sir." Masterson frowned, then added: "I prefer not to talk of that. There are some incidents in a man's life, particularly where a woman is concerned, that are forbidden."
"Oh, I beg pardon," hastened Kennedy, "but, by the way, you would have no objection to making a statement regarding your trip abroad and your recent return to this country—subsequent to—ah—the incident which we will not refer to?"
"None whatever. I left New York in 1908, disgusted with everything in general, and life here in particular—"
"Would you object to jotting it down so that I can get it straight?" asked Kennedy. "Just a brief résumé, you know."
"No. Have you a pen or a pencil?"
"I think you might as well dictate it; it will take only a minute to run it off on the typewriter."
Masterson rang the bell. A young man appeared noiselessly.
"Wix," he said, "take this: 'I left New York in 1908, travelling on the Continent, mostly in Paris, Vienna, and Kome. Latterly I have lived in London, until six weeks ago, when I returned to New York.' Will that serve?"
"Yes, perfectly," said Kennedy, as he folded up the sheet of paper which the young secretary handed to him. "Thank you. I trust you won't consider it an impertinence if I ask you whether you were aware that Dr. Ross was Mrs. Maitland's physician?"
"Of course I knew it," Masterson replied frankly. "I have given him up for that reason, although he does not know it yet. I most strenuously object to being the subject of—what shall I call it?—his mental vivisection."
"Do you think he oversteps his position in trying to learn of the mental life of his patients?" queried Craig.
"I would rather say nothing further on that, either," replied Masterson. "I was talking over the wire to Mrs. Maitland a few moments ago, giving her my condolences and asking if there was anything I could do for her immediately, just as I would have done in the old days—only then, of course, I should have gone to her directly. The reason I did not go, but telephoned, was because this Ross seems to have put some ridiculous notions into her head about me. Now, look here; I don't want to discuss this. I've told you more than I intended, anyway."
Masterson had risen. His suavity masked a final determination to say no more.
Chapter IIThe Soul Analysis
The day was far advanced after this series of very unsatisfactory interviews. I looked at Kennedy blankly. We seemed to have uncovered so little that was tangible that I was much surprised to find that apparently he was well contented with what had happened in the case so far.
"I shall be busy for a few hours in the laboratory, Walter," he remarked, as we parted at the subway, "I think, if you have nothing better to do, that you might employ the time in looking up some of the gossip about Mrs. Maitland and Masterson, to say nothing of Dr. Ross," he emphasised. "Drop in after dinner."
There was not much that I could find. Of Mrs. Maitland there was practically nothing that I already did not know from having seen her name in the papers. She was a leader in a certain set which was devoting its activities to various social and moral propaganda. Masterson's early escapades were notorious even in the younger smart set in which he had moved, but his years abroad had mellowed the recollection of them. He had not distinguished himself in any way since his return to set gossip afloat, nor had any tales of his doings abroad filtered through to New York clubland. Dr. Ross, I found to my surprise, was rather better known than I had supposed, both as a specialist and as a man about town. He seemed to have risen rapidly in his profession as physician to the ills of society's nerves.
I was amazed after dinner to find Kennedy doing nothing at all.
"What's the matter?" I asked. "Have you struck a snag?"
"No," he replied slowly, "I was only waiting. I told them to be here between half-past eight and nine."
"Who?" I queried.
"Dr. Leslie," he answered. "He has the authority to compel the attendance of Mrs. Maitland, Dr. Ross, and Masterson."
The quickness with which he had worked out a case which was, to me, one of the most inexplicable he had had for a long time, left me standing speechless.
One by one they dropped in during the next half-hour, and, as usual, it fell to me to receive them and smooth over the rough edges which always obtruded at these little enforced parties in the laboratory.
Dr. Leslie and Dr. Ross were the first to arrive. They had not come together, but had met at the door. I fancied I saw a touch of professional jealousy in their manner, at least on the part of Dr. Ross. Masterson came, as usual ignoring the seriousness of the matter and accusing us all of conspiring to keep him from the first night of a light opera which was opening. Mrs. Maitland followed, the unaccustomed pallor of her face heightened by the plain black dress. I felt most uncomfortable, as indeed I think the rest did. She merely inclined her head to Masterson, seemed almost to avoid the eye of Dr. Ross, glared at Dr. Leslie, and absolutely ignored me.
Craig had been standing aloof at his laboratory table, beyond a nod of recognition paying little attention to anything. He seemed to be in no hurry to begin.
"Great as science is," he commenced, at length, "it is yet far removed from perfection. There are, for instance, substances so mysterious, subtle, and dangerous as to set the most delicate tests and powerful lenses at naught, while they carry death most horrible in their train."
He could scarcely have chosen his opening words with more effect.
"Chief among them," he proceeded, "are those from nature's own laboratory. There are some sixty species of serpents, for example, with deadly venom. Among these, as you doubtless have all heard, none has brought greater terror to mankind than the cobra-di-capello, the Naja tripudians of India. It is unnecessary for me to describe the cobra or to say anything about the countless thousands who have yielded up their lives to it. I have here a small quantity of the venom"—he indicated it in a glass beaker. "It was obtained in New York, and I have tested it on guinea-pigs. It has lost none of its potency."
I fancied that there was a feeling of relief when Kennedy by his actions indicated that he was not going to repeat the test.
"This venom," he continued, "dries in the air into a substance like small scales, soluble in water but not in alcohol. It has only a slightly acrid taste and odour, and, strange to say, is inoffensive on the tongue or mucous surfaces, even in considerable quantities. All we know about it is that in an open wound it is deadly swift in action."
It was difficult to sit unmoved at the thought that before us, in only a few grains of the stuff, was enough to kill us all if it were introduced into a scratch of our skin.
"Until recently chemistry was powerless to solve the enigma, the microscope to detect its presence, or pathology to explain the reason for its deadly effect. And even now, about all we know is that autopsical research reveals absolutely nothing but the general disorganisation of the blood corpuscles. In fact, such poisoning is best known by the peculiar symptoms the vertigo, weak legs, and falling jaw. The victim is unable to speak or swallow, but is fully sensible. He has nausea, paralysis, an accelerated pulse at first followed rapidly by a weakening, with breath slow and laboured. The pupils are contracted, but react to the last, and he dies in convulsions like asphyxia. It is both a blood and a nerve poison."
As Kennedy proceeded, Mrs. Maitland never took her large eyes from his face.
Kennedy now drew from a large envelope in which he protected it, the typewritten note which had been found on Maitland. He said nothing about the "suicide" as he quietly began a new line of accumulating evidence.
"There is an increasing use of the typewriting machine for the production of spurious papers," he began, rattling the note significantly. "It is partly due to the great increase in the use of the typewriter generally, but more than all is it due to the erroneous idea that fraudulent typewriting cannot be detected. The fact is that the typewriter is perhaps a worse means of concealing identity than is disguised handwriting. It does not afford the effective protection to the criminal that is supposed. On the contrary, the typewriting of a fraudulent document may be the direct means by which it can be traced to its source. First we have to determine what kind of machine a certain piece of writing was done with, then what particular machine."
He paused and indicated a number of little instruments on the table.
"For example," he resumed, "the Lovibond tintometer tells me its story of the colour of the ink used in the ribbon of the machine that wrote this note as well as several standard specimens which I have been able to obtain from three machines on which it might have been written.
"That leads me to speak of the quality of the paper in this half-sheet that was found on Mr. Maitland. Sometimes such a half-sheet may be mated with the other half from which it was torn as accurately as if the act were performed before your eyes. There was no such good fortune in this case, but by measurements made by the vernier micrometer caliper I have found the precise thickness of several samples of paper as compared to that of the suicide note. I need hardly add that in thickness and quality, as well as in the tint of the ribbon, the note points to one person as the author."
No one moved.
"And there are other proofs—unescapable," Kennedy hurried on. "For instance, I have counted the number of threads to the inch in the ribbon, as shown by the letters of this note. That also corresponds to the number in one of the three ribbons."
Kennedy laid down a glass plate peculiarly ruled in little squares.
"This," he explained, "is an alignment test plate, through which can be studied accurately the spacing and alignment of typewritten characters. There are in this pica type ten to the inch horizontally and six to the inch vertically. That is usual. Perhaps you are not acquainted with the fact that typewritten characters are in line both ways, horizontally and vertically. There are nine possible positions for each character which may be assumed with reference to one of these little standard squares of the test plate. You cannot fail to appreciate what an immense impossibility there is that one machine should duplicate the variations out of the true which the microscope detects for several characters on another.
"Not only that, but the faces of many letters inevitably become broken, worn, battered, as well as out of alignment, or slightly shifted in their position on the type bar. The type faces are not flat, but a little concave to conform to the roller. There are thousands of possible divergences, scars, and deformities in each machine.
"Such being the case," he concluded, "typewriting has an individuality like that of the Bertillon system, finger-prints, or the portrait parlé."
He paused, then added quickly: "What machine was it in this case? I have samples here from that of Dr. Ross, from a machine used by Mr. Masterson's secretary, and from a machine which was accessible to both Mr. and Mrs. Maitland."
Kennedy stopped, but he was not yet prepared to relieve the suspense of two of those whom his investigation would absolve.
"Just one other point," he resumed mercilessly, "a point which a few years ago would have been inexplicable—if not positively misleading and productive of actual mistake. I refer to the dreams of Mrs. Maitland."
I had been expecting it, yet the words startled me. What must they have done to her? But she kept admirable control of herself.
"Dreams used to be treated very seriously by the ancients, but until recently modern scientists, rejecting the ideas of the dark ages, have scouted dreams. To-day, however, we study them scientifically, for we believe that whatever is, has a reason. Dr. Ross, I think, is acquainted with the new and remarkable theories of Dr. Sigmund Freud, of Vienna?"
Dr. Ross nodded. "I dissent vigorously from some of Freud's conclusions," he hastened.
"Let me state them first," resumed Craig. "Dreams, says Freud, are very important. They give us the most reliable information concerning the individual. But that is only possible"—Kennedy emphasised the point—"if the patient is in entire rapport with the doctor.
"Now, the dream, is not an absurd and senseless jumble, but a perfect mechanism and has a definite meaning in penetrating the mind. It is as though we had two streams of thought, one of which we allow to flow freely, the other of which we are constantly repressing, pushing back into the subconscious, or unconscious. This matter of the evolution of our individual mental life is too long a story to bore you with at such a critical moment.
"But the resistances, the psychic censors of our ideas, are always active, except in sleep. Then the repressed material comes to the surface. But the resistances never entirely lose their power, and the dream shows the material distorted. Seldom does one recognise his own repressed thoughts or unattained wishes. The dream really is the guardian of sleep to satisfy the activity of the unconscious and repressed mental processes that would otherwise disturb sleep by keeping the censor busy. In the case of a nightmare the watchman or censor is aroused, finds himself overpowered, so to speak, and calls on consciousness for help.
"There are three kinds of dreams—those which represent an unrepressed wish as fulfilled, those that represent the realisation of a repressed wish in an entirely concealed form, and those that represent the realisation of a repressed wish in a form insufficiently or only partially concealed.
"Dreams are not of the future, but of the past, except as they show striving for unfulfilled wishes. Whatever may be denied in reality we nevertheless can realise in another way—in our dreams. And probably more of our daily life, conduct, moods, beliefs than we think, could be traced to preceding dreams."
Dr. Ross was listening attentively, as Craig turned to him. "This is perhaps the part of Freud's theory from which you dissent most strongly. Freud says that as soon as you enter the intimate life of a patient you begin to find sex in some form. In fact, the best indication of abnormality would be its absence. Sex is one of the strongest of human impulses, yet the one subjected to the greatest repression. For that reason it is the weakest point in our cultural development. In a normal life, he says, there are no neuroses. Let me proceed now with what the Freudists call the psychanalysis, the soul analysis, of Mrs. Maitland."
It was startling in the extreme to consider the possibilities to which this new science might lead, as he proceeded to illustrate it.
"Mrs. Maitland," he continued, "your dream of fear was a dream of what we call the fulfilment of a suppressed wish. Moreover, fear always denotes a sexual idea underlying the dream. In fact, morbid anxiety means surely unsatisfied love. The old Greeks knew it. The gods of fear were born of the goddess of love. Consciously you feared the death of your husband because unconsciously you wished it."
It was startling, dramatic, cruel, perhaps, merciless—this dissecting of the soul of the handsome woman before us; but it had come to a point where, it was necessary to get at the truth.
Mrs. Maitland, hitherto pale, was now flushed and indignant. Yet the very manner of her indignation showed the truth of the new psychology of dreams, for, as I learned afterward, people often become indignant when the Freudists strike what is called the "main complex."
"There are other motives just as important," protested Dr. Boss. "Here in America the money motive, ambition—"
"Let me finish," interposed Kennedy. "I want to consider the other dream also. Fear is equivalent to a wish in this sort of dream. It also, as I have said, denotes sex. In dreams animals are usually symbols. Now, in this second dream we find both the bull and the serpent, from time immemorial, symbols of the continuing of the life-force. Dreams are always based on experiences or thoughts of the day preceding the dreams. You, Mrs. Maitland, dreamed of a man's face on these beasts. There was every chance of having him suggested to you. You think you hate him. Consciously you reject him; unconsciously you accept him. Any of the new psychologists who knows the intimate connection between love and hate, would understand how that is possible. Love does not extinguish hate; or hate, love. They repress each other. The opposite sentiment may very easily grow."
The situation was growing more tense as he proceeded. Was not Kennedy actually taxing her with loving another?
"The dreamer," he proceeded remorselessly, "is always the principal actor in a dream, or the dream centres about the dreamer most intimately. Dreams are personal. We never dream about matters that really concern others, but ourselves.
"Years ago," he continued, "you suffered what the new psychologists call a 'psychic trauma'—a soul-wound. You were engaged, but your censored consciousness rejected the manner of life of your fiancé. In pique you married Price Maitland. But you never lost your real, subconscious love for another."
He stopped, then added in a low tone that was almost inaudible, yet which did not call for an answer, "Could you—be honest with yourself, for you need say not a word aloud—could you always be sure of yourself in the face of any situation?"
She looked startled. Her ordinarily inscrutable face betrayed everything, though it was averted from the rest of us and could be seen only by Kennedy. She knew the truth that she strove to repress; she was afraid of herself.
"It is dangerous," she murmured, "to be with a person who pays attention to such little things. If every one were like you, I would no longer breathe a syllable of my dreams."
She was sobbing now.
What was back of it all? I had heard of the so-called resolution dreams. I had heard of dreams that kill, of unconscious murder, of the terrible acts of the subconscious somnambulist of which the actor has no recollection in the waking state until put under hypnotism. Was it that which Kennedy was driving at disclosing?
Dr. Ross moved nearer to Mrs. Maitland as if to reassure her. Craig was studying attentively the effect of his revelation both on her and on the other faces before him.
Mrs. Maitland, her shoulders bent with the outpouring of the long-suppressed emotion of the evening and of the tragic day, called for sympathy which, I could see, Craig would readily give when he had reached the climax he had planned.
"Kennedy," exclaimed Masterson, pushing aside Dr. Ross, as he bounded to the side of Mrs. Maitland, unable to restrain himself longer, "Kennedy, you are a faker—nothing but a damned dream doctor—in scientific disguise."
"Perhaps," replied Craig, with a quiet curl of the lip. "But the threads of the typewriter ribbon, the alignment of the letters, the paper, all the 'finger-prints' of that type-written note of suicide were those of the machine belonging to the man who caused the soul-wound, who knew Madeline Maitland's inmost heart better than herself—because he had heard of Freud undoubtedly, when he was in Vienna—who knew that he held her real love still, who posed as a patient of Dr. Ross to learn her secrets as well as to secure the subtle poison of the cobra. That man, perhaps, merely brushed against Price Maitland in the crowd, enough to scratch his hand with the needle, shove the false note into his pocket—anything to win the woman who he knew loved him, and whom he could win. Masterson, you are that man!"
The next half hour was crowded kaleidoscopically with events—the call by Dr. Leslie for the police, the departure of the Coroner with Masterson in custody, and the efforts of Dr. Ross to calm his now almost hysterical patient, Mrs. Maitland.
Then a calm seemed to settle down over the old laboratory which had so often been the scene of such events, tense with human interest. I could scarcely conceal my amazement, as I watched Kennedy quietly restoring to their places the pieces of apparatus he had used.
"What's the matter?" he asked, catching my eye as he paused with the tintometer in his hand.
"Why," I exclaimed, "that's a fine way to start a month! Here's just one day gone and you've caught your man. Are you going to keep that up? If you are—I'll quit and skip to February. I'll choose the shortest month, if that's the pace!"
"Any month you please," he smiled grimly, as he reluctantly placed the tintometer in its cabinet.
There was no use. I knew that any other month would have been just the same.
