“What a relief it will be when this election is over and the newspapers print news again,” I growled as I turned the first page of the Star with a mere glance at the headlines. “Yes,” observed Kennedy, who was puzzling over a note which he had received in the morning mail. “This is the […]

“Detectives in fiction nearly always make a great mistake,” said Kennedy one evening after our first conversation on crime and science. “They almost invariably antagonize the regular detective force. Now in real life that’s impossible–it’s fatal.” “Yes,” I agreed, looking up from reading an account of the failure of a large Wall Street brokerage house, […]

“Shake hands with Mr. Burke of the secret service, Professor Kennedy.” It was our old friend First Deputy O’Connor who thus in his bluff way introduced a well-groomed and prosperous-looking man whom he brought up to our apartment one evening. The formalities were quickly over. “Mr. Burke and I are old friends,” explained O’Connor. “We […]

“Interesting story, this fight between the Five-Borough and the Inter-River Transit,” I remarked to Kennedy as I sketched out the draft of an expose of high finance for the Sunday Star. “Then that will interest you, also,” said he, throwing a letter down on my desk. He had just come in and was looking over […]

We were lunching with Stevenson Williams, a friend of Kennedy’s, at the Insurance Club, one of the many new downtown luncheon clubs, where the noon hour is so conveniently combined with business. “There isn’t much that you can’t insure against nowadays,” remarked Williams when the luncheon had progressed far enough to warrant a tentative reference […]

Kennedy and I had just tossed a coin to decide whether it should be a comic opera or a good walk in the mellow spring night air and the opera had won, but we had scarcely begun to argue the vital point as to where to go, when the door buzzer sounded – a sure […]

Kennedy’s suit-case was lying open on the bed, and he was literally throwing things into it from his chiffonier, as I entered after a hurried trip up-town from the Star office in response to an urgent message from him. “Come, Walter,” he cried, hastily stuffing in a package of clean laundry without taking off the […]

“Hello! Yes, this is Professor Kennedy. I didn’t catch the name – oh, yes – President Blake of the Standard Burglary Insurance Company. What – really? The Branford pearls – stolen? Maid chloroformed? Yes, I’ll take the case. You’ll be up in half an hour? All right, I’ll be here. Goodbye.” It was through this […]

By this time I was becoming used to Kennedy’s strange visitors and, in fact, had begun to enjoy keenly the uncertainty of not knowing just what to expect from them next. Still, I was hardly prepared one evening to see a tall, nervous foreigner stalk noiselessly and unannounced into our apartment and hand his card […]

A big, powerful, red touring-car, with a shining brass bell on the front of it, was standing at the curb before our apartment late one afternoon as I entered. It was such a machine as one frequently sees threading its reckless course in and out among the trucks and street-cars, breaking all rules and regulations, […]