mportant fact that is indisputable, but which would never
have occurred to me. I suppose this is largely a natural bent of his
brain, for I have not yet been able to achieve it, either by study or
experience.

Of course I can deduce some facts, and my colleagues often say I am
rather clever at it, but they don't know Fleming Stone as well as I
do, and don't realize that by comparison with his talent mine is
insignificant.

And so, it is both by way of entertainment, and in hope of learning from
him, that I am with him whenever possible, and often ask him to "deduce"
for me, even at risk of boring him, as, unless he is in the right mood,
my requests sometimes do.

I met him accidentally one morning when we both chanced to go into a
basement of the Metropolis Hotel in New York to have our shoes shined.

It was about half-past nine, and as I like to get to my office by ten
o'clock, I looked forward to a pleasant half-hour's chat with him. While
waiting our turn to get a chair, we stood talking, and, seeing a pair
of shoes standing on a table, evidently there to be cleaned, I said
banteringly:

"Now, I suppose, Stone, from looking at those shoes, you can deduce all
there is to know about the owner of them."

I remember that Sherlock Holmes wrote once, "From a drop of water, a
logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without
having seen or heard of one or the other," but when I heard Fleming
Stone's reply to my half-laughing challenge, I felt that he had outdone
the mythical logician. With a mild twinkle in his eye, but with a
perfectly grave face, he said slowly,

"Those shoes belong to a young man, five feet eight inches high. He does
not live in New York, but is here to visit his sweetheart. She lives in
Brooklyn, is five feet nine inches tall, and is deaf in her left ear.
They went to the theatre last night, and neither was in evening dress."

"Oh, pshaw!" said I, "as you are acquainted with this man, and know how
he spent last evening, your relation of the story doesn't interest me."

"I don't know him," Stone returned; "I've no idea what his name is,
I've never seen him, and except what I can read from these shoes I know
nothing about him."

I stared at him incredulously, as I always did when confronted by his
astonishing "deductions," and simply said,

"Tell this little Missourian all about it."

"It did sound well, reeled off like that, didn't it?" he observed,
chuckling more at