The Silent Bullet Read online

  THE SILENT BULLET

  By Arthur B. Reeve

  CONTENTS

  CRAIG KENNEDY'S THEORIES

  I The Silent Bullet II The Scientific Cracksman III The Bacteriological Detective IV The Deadly Tube V The Seismograph Adventure VI The Diamond Maker VII The Azure Ring VIII "Spontaneous Combustion" IX The Terror In The Air X The Black Hand XI The Artificial Paradise XII The Steel Door

  CRAIG KENNEDY'S THEORIES

  "It has always seemed strange to me that no one has ever endowed aprofessorship in criminal science in any of our large universities."

  Craig Kennedy laid down his evening paper and filled his pipe with mytobacco. In college we had roomed together, had shared everything, evenpoverty, and now that Craig was a professor of chemistry and I was onthe staff of the Star, we had continued the arrangement. Prosperityfound us in a rather neat bachelor apartment on the Heights, not farfrom the University.

  "Why should there be a chair in criminal science?" I remarkedargumentatively, settling back in my chair. "I've done my turn at policeheadquarters reporting, and I can tell you, Craig, it's no place for acollege professor. Crime is just crime. And as for dealing with it,the good detective is born and bred to it. College professors for thesociology of the thing, yes; for the detection of it, give me a Byrnes."

  "On the contrary," replied Kennedy, his clean-cut features betraying anearnestness which I knew indicated that he was leading up to somethingimportant, "there is a distinct place for science in the detection ofcrime. On the Continent they are far in advance of us in that respect.We are mere children beside a dozen crime-specialists in Paris, whom Icould name."

  "Yes, but where does the college professor come in?" I asked, ratherdoubtfully.

  "You must remember, Walter," he pursued, warming up to his subject,"that it's only within the last ten years or so that we have had thereally practical college professor who could do it. The silk-stockingedvariety is out of date now. To-day it is the college professor who isthe third arbitrator in labour disputes, who reforms our currency, whoheads our tariff commissions, and conserves our farms and forests. Wehave professors of everything--why not professors of crime?"

  Still, as I shook my head dubiously, he hurried on to clinch his point."Colleges have gone a long way from the old ideal of pure culture. Theyhave got down to solving the hard facts of life--pretty nearly all,except one. They still treat crime in the old way, study its statisticsand pore over its causes and the theories of how it can be prevented.But as for running the criminal himself down, scientifically,relentlessly--bah! we haven't made an inch of progress since the hammerand tongs method of your Byrnes."

  "Doubtless you will write a thesis on this most interesting subject," Isuggested, "and let it go at that."

  "No, I am serious," he replied, determined for some reason or other tomake a convert of me. "I mean exactly what I say. I am going to applyscience to the detection of crime, the same sort of methods by which youtrace out the presence of a chemical, or run an unknown germ to earth.And before I have gone far, I am going to enlist Walter Jameson as anaide. I think I shall need you in my business."

  "How do I come in?"

  "Well, for one thing, you will get a scoop, a beat,--whatever you callit in that newspaper jargon of yours."

  I smiled in a skeptical way, such as newspapermen are wont to affecttoward a thing until it is done--after which we make a wild scramble toexploit it.

  Nothing more on the subject passed between us for several days.