Samuel Hopkins Adams

“ Don’t you understand? Or,” he added savagely, “do you misunderstand?”
“No, I don’t misunderstand,” answered Kent very gently. “I know there are things that can’t be spoken, not because they are shameful, but because they are sacred. Yet I’ve got to know about her. Here! I have it. When I’m gone, sit down and write it out for me, simply and fully, and send it to my hotel as soon as it is done. You can do that, can’t you?”
“Yes, I can do that,” decided Sedgwick, after some consideration. ”

“ A heavy cloud of smoke issued from Kent’s mouth, followed by this observation: “That formula about the inability to lift one’s self by one’s own boot-straps fails to apply in the spiritual world.”
“Right! You can pull yourself out of the ditch that way; but afterward comes the long hillside. Life has seemed all tilted on edge, at times, and pretty slippery, with little enough to cling to.”
“Work,” suggested Kent briefly.
“Wisdom lurks behind your screen. Work is the answer.” ”

“ What Chester Kent does not understand, Chester Kent resents.
“Love-affair, perhaps,” suggested the artist. “A woman in love will take any risk of death. However,” he added, rubbing his bruised head reminiscently, “she had a very practical bent, for a romantic person. After her mysterious prophecy she started on. I called to her to come back or I would follow and make her explain herself.”
“As to what?”
“Everything: her being there, her actions, her—her apparel, the jewelry, you know, and all that.”
“You’ve said nothing about jewelry.” ”

“ Old interests sprang to life and speech between them. And from the old interests blossomed the old easy familiarity that is never wholly lost to those who have been close friends in college days. Presently Francis Sedgwick was telling his friend the story of his feverish and thwarted ten years in the world. Within a year of his graduation his only surviving relative had died, willing to him a considerable fortune, the income of which he used in furtherance of a hitherto suppressed ambition to study art. ”

“ The rest was infinite clarity of distance and desolation.
“The Rough Rider!” murmured Kent; then, with a change of tone, “For sale?”
“I don’t know,” hesitated the artist. “Fact is, I like that about well enough to keep.” ”

“ He touched one of the surfaces delicately. “It’s not paint, and it’s not pastel. Oh, I see! They’re all of one size—of course.” He glanced at the heavy mechanism near the easel. “They’re color prints.”
Sedgwick nodded. “Monotypes,” said he. “I paint on copper, make one impress, and then—phut!—a sponge across the copper makes each one an original.” ”

“ At the end of the ten minutes, when Kent opened both eyes, his friend forestalled him with another query.
“You say that no jewels were found on the body. Was there any other mark of identification?”
“If there was, the sheriff got away with it before I saw it.”
“How can you be sure, then, that the dead woman was my visitor?”
“Dennett mentioned a necklace. On the crushed flesh of the dead woman’s neck there is the plain impress of a jewel setting. Now, come, Sedgwick! If I’m to help you in this, you must help me. Had you ever seen that necklace before?” ”

“ Am I to infer that you’ve become a famous person? Pardon the ignorance of expatriation. Have you discovered a new disease, or formulated a new theory of life, or become a golf champion, or a senator, or a freak aviator, or invented perpetual motion? ”

“ Well, then that’s all up,” said Kent, as if speaking to himself. “There’s a streak of superstition in all these New Englanders. He’d be sure to interpret it as a confession before the fact. However, Elder Dennett left this morning for a trip to Cadystown. That’s so much to the good.”
“He may have left for a trip to Hadestown for all I care,” stated Sedgwick with conviction. “What’s it all about, anyway?” ”

“ Why, even as a boy I was taught—”
“We were not speaking of child’s play,” said the visitor coolly; “nor am I concerned with the rules of the prize-ring, as applied to my theory. When one is in danger, one uses knife or gun, if at hand. I prefer a less deadly and more effective weapon. Kicking sidewise, either to the front or to the rear, I can disarm a man, break his leg, or lay him senseless. ”

“ We shall see. But frankly, Sedgwick, there’s a matter of more importance—”
“Importance? Good heavens, man! There’s nothing so important in this world!”
“Oh, is it as bad as that?”
A heavy knock sounded from below, followed by the Chinaman’s voice, intermingled with boyish accents demanding Sedgwick in the name of the Western Union Telegraph Company.
“Send him up,” ordered Sedgwick, and the boy arrived; but not before Kent had quietly removed The Rough Rider from its place of exhibit. ”

“ I recall now that the article called him ‘le Professeur Chêtre Kennat.’ That would be about as near as they would come to your name.”
“It’s a good deal nearer than that infernal French journalist whom Wiley brought to my table at the Idlers’ Club got to the facts,” stated Kent.
“Then you are the Professor Kent! But look here! The Frenchman made you out a most superior species of highfalutin detective, working along lines peculiarly your own—”
“Rot!” interjected Kent. “The only lines a detective can work along successfully are the lines laid down for him by the man he is after.” ”

“ It is the special development of such muscles as the sartorius and plantaris,” he ran his long fingers down from the outside of his thigh round to the inside of his ankle, “that enables a human being, with practise, to kick like an ostrich. ”

“ You perceive there the basis of my theory.”
“No, I don’t perceive it at all.”
“A system of defense is effective in proportion to its unfamiliarity. That is all.”
“Then your system consists in stepping up on a wall and diving into obscurity on the farther side, perhaps,” suggested Sedgwick ironically.
“Defense, I said; not escape. Escape is perhaps preferable to defense, but not always so practicable. No ”