uccess just makes it mighty cruel.
I can forgive Dick Turpin if he impersonates Dr. Busby; I can't forgive
him when he impersonates Dr. Johnson. The saint with a tile loose
is a bit too sacred, I guess, to be parodied."

"But how do you know," cried Rosamund desperately, "that Mr. 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.
What's become of all those poor girls nobody knows. Murdered, I dare say;
for we've lots of instances, besides this one, of his turning his hand
to murder, though none ever brought him under the law. Anyhow, our most
modern methods of research can't find any trace of the wretched women.
It's when I think of them that I am really moved, Miss Hunt. And I've
really nothing else to say just now except what Dr. Warner has said."

"Quite so," said Warner, with a smile that seemed moulded in marble--"that
we all have to thank you very much for that telegram."

The little Yankee scientist had been speaking with such evident
sincerity that one forgot the tricks of his voice and manner--
the falling eyelids, the rising intonation, and the poised
finger and thumb--which were at other times a little comic.
It was not so much that he was cleverer than Warner;
perhaps he was not so clever, though he was more celebrated.
But he had wh