Smith
is a known criminal?"
"I collated all the documents," said the American, "when my friend Warner
knocked me up on receipt of your cable. It is my professional affair
to know these facts, Miss Hunt; and there's no more doubt about them
than about the Bradshaw down at the depot. This man has hitherto escaped
the law, through his admirable affectations of infancy or insanity.
But I myself, as a specialist, have privately authenticated notes
of some eighteen or twenty crimes attempted or achieved in this manner.
He comes to houses as he has to this, and gets a grand popularity.
He makes things go. They do go; when he's gone the things are gone.
Gone, Miss Hunt, gone, a man's life or a man's spoons, or more often a woman.
I assure you I have all the memoranda."
"I have seen them," said Warner solidly, "I can assure you
that all this is correct."
"The most unmanly aspect, according to my feelings," went on the American
doctor, "is this perpetual deception of innocent women by a wild simulation
of innocence. From almost every house where this great imaginative devil
has been, he has taken some poor girl away with him; some say he's got
a hypnotic eye with his other queer features, and that they go like automata.
Pages:
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94