Evening star., 1922-02-16
1.-THE Silent Bullet"
One of the Three-Part Stories Of
THE STARS WEEKEND FICTION
The Last Installment of This Story appears
in Sofurdnx's Sfnr
One of the Three-Part Stories I
IN Saturdays Star.

ing paper and filled his pipe with
my tobacco In college We had roomed
together, had shared everything,
even poverty. and now that Craig
was a professor of chemistry and
was on the staff of the Star, we had
continued the arrangement. Pros
perity found US in a rather neat bach
elor apartment on the Heights, not
! far from the university.
| why should there be a chair in
| criminal science?" l remarked argu-
mentatively, settling back In my chair.
quarters reporting, and can tell you.
| Craig. it's no place for a college pro
| fessor Crime Is just crime. And as
for dealing with it. the good detec-
tive is born and bred to it. College
professors for the sociology OF the
1 thing, yes; for the detectlon OF H.
give me a Byrnes."
ION the contrary" replied Ken
Indy, his clean-cut features betray-
ling an earnestness which knew IN
Idicated that he was leading up to
I something important. there Is dis
ltinct place for science IN the detec-
| ton of crime. On the continent they
are far In advance OF US In that re-
| spect. We are mere children beside
a dozen crime SPECIALISTS IN faFls
1
"Yes, but where does the college
professor come in?" l asked. rather
4 doubtfully.
pursued. warming up to his suo)ecl,
that it's only within the last ten
| wears or SO that we have had the
! really practical college professor who
could do it. The silk stockinged va
| riety is out of date now. Today II
! is the college professor who Is the
1 IT, lah n
| reforms our currency, who heads our
tariff commissions, and conserVes
our farms and forests. We have pro-
| fessors of everything-why not pro-
! fesSors of crime
| Still, as l shook my head obviously,
he hurried on to clinch his point.
! colleges have gone a long way from
| the old ideal of pure culture. They
| have got down to solving the haru
! facts of life-pretty nearly all, eN
| cept one. They still treat crime In
| the old way. study its statistics ana
J more over its causes and the theories
Of how 1t can be prevented. But As
! for running the criminal himself
| down. scientifically. neutrality-suspicious.!
we haven't made an inch OF progress
| since the hammer and tongs methoo
| of your Byrnes.
| "Doubtless you will write a thesis
| on this most interesting subject, 1
| suggested, "and let it go at that
| NO, l am serious" he replied, de-
| termined for some reason or other
| to make a convert OF me. mean
exactly what l say. l am going 70
apply science to the detection or
! crime, the same sort of methods oy
| which you trace out the presence OF
| a chemical, or run an unknown germ
I to earth. And before l have gone 1ar
as an aide. 1 think 1 shall need you
| in my business"
| How do 1 come in?'
We'll, for one thing. you Will get
a scoop, @ beat-whatever you cali II
l in that newspaper jargon of yours.
smiled in a skepticaI way, such
| as newspaper men are wont to anect
toward thing until it is done.
| after which we make Wiid scramble
| to exploit il.
| Nothing more on the suoJect passed
fbetween US for several days.
I Detectives in fiction nearly always
make a great mistake" said Kennedy
I one evening after our first converse
| ton on crime and science. They al
I most Invariably antagonize the reg.
lite that's impossible-it's fatal"
! Yes" 1 agreed, looking up from
| reading an account OF the faalure OF
| a large Wall Street brokerage house,
! Kerr Parker & Co. and the peculiar
the regular detectives to antagonize the
newspapers. Scotland Yard found that
I out in the Crippen case. -,
+ MY idea of the thing. Jameson
continued Kennedy, lis that the pro-
! ifessor OF criminal science ought to
work with, not against. the regular
detectives. They're all right. They re
i indispensable. of course. Half the
| secret of success nowadays is organi-
| zation. The professor OF criminal
/ s.h he
professor in a technical school often
}is-a sort of consulting engineer
For instance, I believe that organi-
| zation plus science would go far
toward clearing up that wall street
case I see you are reading, 1d,sx, .. %
| whether the regular police were en-
lightened enough to take that view
Of it
Yesterday the chief of police in a
western city sent man east to
| know the case?"
| of the town had been murdered on
the road to the golf club, no one
knew why or by whonA Every clue
had proved fruitless. and the list of
/ suspects was itself so long and so
| impossible as to seem most discour-
aging.
handkerchief with a deep blood
| stain on it," pursued Kennedy. "He
! said it clearly didn't belong to the
! murdered man, that it indicated that
| the murderer had himself been
| wounded in the sussle. but as yet it
had proved utterly valueless as a
1 clue. Would see what l could
! make of it?
"After his man had told me the
story I had a feeling that the mur-
der was committed by either a Sicil-
tan laborer on the links or a negro
waiter at the club. Well. to make
1 test the bloodstain. Probably YOU
didn't know it. but the Carnegie In
stitute has just published minute.
| careful and dry study of the blood
Of human beings and Of animals. In
\ fact, they have been able to reclas-
sify the whole animal kingdom on
this basis, and have made some most
surprising additions to our knowl-
edge of evolution. Now I don't pro-
nose to bore you with the details of
| the tests, but one of the things they
showed was that the blood OF a cer-
| tain branch of the human race gives
a reaction much like the blood of
certain group of monkeys. the Chin
J., panzee, while the blood Of another
branch gives a reaction like that of
. the gorilla. OF course, there's lots
more to 1t. but this Is all that need
concern us now.
"I tried the tests. The blood on
the handkerchief conformed strictly
Ito the latter test. Now the gorilla
was, Of course, out of the question
this was no Rue Morgue murder.
Therefore it was the negro waiter"
But" interrupted. the negro