ICS

XVI. Are the Rich Happy?

XVII. Humour as I See It

Follies in Fiction

I. Stories Shorter Still

Among the latest follies in fiction is the perpetual
demand for stories shorter and shorter still. The only
thing to do is to meet this demand at the source and
check it. Any of the stories below, if left to soak
overnight in a barrel of rainwater, will swell to the
dimensions of a dollar-fifty novel.

(I) AN IRREDUCIBLE DETECTIVE STORY

HANGED BY A HAIR
OR A MURDER MYSTERY MINIMISED

The mystery had now reached its climax. First, the man
had been undoubtedly murdered. Secondly, it was absolutely
certain that no conceivable person had done it.

It was therefore time to call in the great detective.

He gave one searching glance at the corpse. In a moment
he whipped out a microscope.

"Ha! ha!" he said, as he picked a hair off the lapel of
the dead man's coat. "The mystery is now solved."

He held up the hair.

"Listen," he said, "we have only to find the man who lost
this hair and the criminal is in our hands."

The inexorable chain of logic was complete.

The detective set himself to the search.

For four days and nights he moved, unobserved, through
the streets of New York scanning closely every face he
passed, looking for a man who had lost a hair.

On the fifth day he discovered a man, disguised as a
tourist, his head enveloped in a steamer cap that reached
below his ears. The man was about to go on board the
_Gloritania_.

The detective followed him on board.

"Arrest him!" he said, and then drawing himself to his
full height, he brandished aloft the hair.

"This is his," said the great detective. "It proves his
guilt."

"Remove his hat," said the ship's captain sternly.

They did so.

The man was entirely bald.

"Ha!" said the great detective without a moment of
hesitation. "He has committed not one murder but about
a million."

(II) A COMPRESSED OLD ENGLISH NOVEL

SWEARWORD THE UNPRONOUNCEABLE

CHAPTER ONE AND ONLY

"Ods bodikins!" exclaimed Swearword the Saxon, wiping
his mailed brow with his iron hand, "a fair morn withal!
Methinks twert lithlier to rest me in yon glade than to
foray me forth in yon fray! Twert it not?"

But there happened to be a real Anglo-Saxon standing by.

"Where in heaven's name," he said in sudden passion, "did
you get that line of English?"

"Churl!" said Swearword, "it is Anglo-Saxon."

"You're a liar!" shouted the Sax