Samuel Hopkins Adams

“ At the end of four days, Average Jones had satisfied himself that if Livius were seeking anything in particular, he had an indefinite task before him, for the colonel’s bound treasures were in indescribable confusion. Apparently he had bought from far and near, without definite theme or purpose. As he bought he read, and having read, cast aside; and where a volume fell, there it had license to lie. No cataloguer had ever sought to restore order to that bibliographic riot. To seek any given book meant a blind voyage, without compass or chart, throughout the mingled centuries. ”

“ So I infer from your repeated use of the word ‘thief.’ Bacon’s principle—an admirable principle in detective work—is that we should learn from things and not from the names of things. You are deluding yourself with a name. Because the law, which is always rigid and sometimes stupid, says that a man who takes that which does not belong to him is a thief, you’ve got your mind fixed on the name ‘thief,’ and the idea of theft. ”

“ To Average Jones the memory of that day has never been wholly clear. Sodden with weariness, dazzled and muddled by the savage sun-glare, he followed, with eyes fixed, the rhythmically, monotonously moving feet of his leader, through an interminable desert of soft, clogging sand; a desert which dropped away into parched arroyos, and rose to scorched mesas whereon fierce cacti thrust at him with thorns and spikes; a desert dead and mummified in the dreadful heat; a lifeless Inferno wherein moved neither beast, bird nor insect. ”

“ Now, Average Jones’s birth-fairy had endowed him with one priceless gift: the power of inspiring an instinctive confidence in himself. Sylvia Graham felt, suddenly, that a hand, sure and firm, had been outstretched to guide her on a dark path. In one of those rare flashes of companionship which come only when clean and honorable spirits recognize one another, all consciousness of sex was lost between them. The girl’s gaze met the man’s level, and was held in a long, silent regard. ”

“ Their putty-and-pasteboard fantasies did not long survive the Honorable William Linder’s return to consciousness and coherence. An “inside job,” they had said. The door was locked and bolted, Mr. Linder declared, and there was no possible place for an intruder to conceal himself. Clock-work, then.
“How would any human being guess what time to set it for,” demanded the politician in disgust, “when I never know, myself, where I’m going to be at any given hour of any given day?”
“Then that Dutch horn-player threw the bomb,” propounded the head of the “Detective Bureau” ponderously. ”

“ Meantime, between spells at the oars, Average Jones had outlined the case in full to Funcke. He could have found no better coadjutor:
By nature and equipment every really expert hunter and tracker is a detective. The subtleties of the trail sharpen both physical and mental sensibility. Captain Funcke was, by instinct, a student of that continuous logic which constitutes the science of the chase, whether the prize of pursuit be a mountain sheep’s horns or the scholar’s need of praise for the interpreting of some half-obliterated inscription on a pre-Hittite tomb. ”

“ A man who doesn’t know a bulldog from a bed-spring isn’t likely to be offering a thousand dollars to avenge the death of one. And the minute you answered my question as to whether you cared for dogs, I knew you didn’t. When you fell for a green ribbon, and a splay-legged, curly-tailed medal-winner in the brindle bull class (there’s no such class, by the way) , I knew you were bluffing. Mr. Dorr, who—er—has been—er—threatening your life?”
The chemist swung around in his chair. ”

“ Come on, now, Algy, who sent this to you?”
“Cousin of mine up in Harwick. I wish you weren’t so Billy-be-dashed sharp, Average. I used to visit in Harwick, so they asked me to get you interested in Bailey Prentice’s case. He’s the lost boy.”
“You’ve done it. Now tell me all you know.”
Spofford produced a letter which gave the outlines of the case. Bailey Prentice’s disappearance it was set forth, was the lesser of two simultaneous phenomena which violently jarred the somnolent New England village of Harwick from its wonted calm. The greater was the “Harwick meteor.” ”

“ However, to go on, Tuxall and our friends here fixed up a plan on the prospects of a rich harvest from public curiosity and credulity. Tuxall planted a big rock under the barn, fixed it up appropriately with torch and chisel and sent for the Farleys, who are expert firework and balloon people, to counterfeit a meteor.”
“Amazing!” cried the clergyman.
“Such a meteor, furthermore, as had never been dreamed of before. If you were to visit Tuxall’s barn, you would undoubtedly find on the boulder underneath it a carving resembling a human form, a hoax more ambitious than the Cardiff Giant. ”

“ But while Waldemar rubbed his head in cogitatation and the Honorable William Linder, in his Brooklyn headquarters, breathed charily, out of respect to his creaking rib, Average Jones was following fate northward.
Three Hundred East One Hundredth Street is a house decrepit with a disease of the aged. Its windowed eyes are rheumy. It sags backward on gnarled joints. All its poor old bones creak when the winds shake it. To Average Jones’ inquiring gaze on this summer day it opposed the secrecy of a senile indifference. ”

“ Thomas Colvin McIntyre, solemn of countenance and groomed with a supernal modesty of elegance, as befitted a rising young diplomat, already Fifth Assistant Secretary of State of the United States of America.
“Hello, Tommy,” said the breakfaster. “What’ll you have to drink? An entente cordiale?”
“Don’t joke,” said the other. “I’m in a pale pink funk. I’m afraid to look into the morning papers.”
“Hello! What have you been up to that’s scandalous?”
“It isn’t me,” replied the diplomat ungrammatically. “It’s Telfik Bey.”
“Telfik Bey? Wait a minute. Let me think.” ”

“ Bertram bent a severe gaze on his friend. “Meaning that you’re going to follow up this freak affair?” he inquired.
“Just that. I can’t explain why, but—well, Bert, I’ve a hunch. At the worst, Ackroyd’s face when he sees the beetles should be worth the money.”
“When you frivol, Average, I wash my hands of you. But I warn you, look out for Ackroyd. He’s as big as he is ugly; a tough customer.” ”

“ In the great human hunt which ever has been and ever shall be till “the last bird flies into the last light”—some call it business, some call it art, some call it love, and a very few know it for what it is, the very mainspring of existence—the path of the pursuer and the prey often run obscurely parallel. ”

“ If we don’t catch up some,” he added grimly, “I wouldn’t want to insure our young friend’s life. So it’s all aboard, if you’re ready.”
For the first time since embarking upon the strange seas of advertising in his quest of the Adventure of Life, Average Jones now met the experience of grilling physical toil. All that day and all the night the two men swung at the oars; swung until every muscle in the young Easterner’s back had turned to live nerve-fiber, and the flesh had begun to strip from the palms of his hands. ”

“ The city editor obligingly furnished further details regarding “Rickey” Hoff, as he called the young man, which, while differing in important respects from Doctor Hoff’s, bore the ear-marks of superior accuracy.
“The worst of it is,” said the newspaper man, “that there are elements of decency about the young cub, if he’d keep sober. He won’t go into the old boy’s business, because he hates it. Says it’s all rot and lies. He’s dead right, of course. But there’s nothing else for him to do, so he just fights booze. Better make a few inquiries at Silent Charley’s.” ”

“ Many hours has Average Jones spent more tediously than those passed in the cool seclusion of Colonel Ridgway Graeme’s treasure-house of print. He burrowed among quaint accumulations of forgotten classics. ”

“ All through the smudged ‘copy,’ which you threw away, there run alliterative lines, ‘Stupendous Scientific Sensation,’ ‘Veritable Visitor Void’ and finally ‘Marvelous Man-l—Monster.’ Only one trade is irretrievably committed to and indubitably hall-marked by alliteration, the circus trade. You’ll recall that Farley insensibly fell into the habit even in his advertisement; ‘lost lad,’ ‘retained for ransom’ and ‘Mortimer Morley.’ Therefore I had the combination circus poster, an alleged meteor which burned a barn in a highly suspicious manner, and an apparently purposeless kidnapping. ”

“ He will squander his unearned and undeserved fortune, thus completing the vicious circle, and returning the millions acquired by my political activities, in a poisoned shower upon the city, for which, having bossed, bullied and looted it, I feel no sentiment other than contempt.”
“And now,” remarked Waldemar in his heavy, rumbling voice, “you aspire to disappoint that good old man.”
“It’s only human nature, you know,” said Average Jones. ”

“ Then she whirled upon the prostrate man. “You murderer!” she said very low.
“It’s not murder to put a dying brute out of the way,” said the shaken man sullenly.
“But it’s fraud, in this case,” retorted Average Jones. “A fraud of which you’re self-convicted. Get up.” He himself rose and stepped back, but his eye was intent, and his muscles were in readiness.
There was no more fight in judge “Oily” Ackroyd. He slunk to the stairs and limped heavily down to his frightened and sobbing wife. Miss Graham leaned against the wall, white and spent. ”