He didn't tell me what the other six were. Instead he disappeared into local history and left me with the latest best seller I was reading under the counter lest some child come in and be stripped of all innocence by one glance.
It was two hours before Professor Waits reappeared. He carried a small blue notebook in one hand and a stub pencil in the other. He was positively beaming. "A gold mine," he said. "A veritable gold mine. Did you know that Ezekial Webb, a cousin of William Tutworthy was gored by a bull in the year 1862?"
"No—really?"
Then I was truly ashamed of myself. He was such a pleasant, sincere little man and he got such fun out of life. But he misinterpreted my boorishness for true enthusiasm and said, "It's a fact! Imagine! Walking in here and finding one of the links I've hunted for months. I'm indebted to you, my dear, for directing me to that book shelf."
I could have told him he was under no obligation; that I got, each week, the coolie stipend of twenty eight dollars for doing just that; but I didn't want him starting an investigation into peonage system practiced in libraries and schools.
Then something in the little man's manner, sobered me. "Professor—exactly why are you doing this?"
He blinked. "I have plenty of money. I have the time. It interests me. And I feel it a worthy occupation; gathering knowledge through which people may know the true causes of misfortune; may throw off the yoke of superstition."
"You feel, then, that nothing happens by chance?"
"My dear," he said, solemnly, "in this ordered universe there can be no such thing. Action and achievement—cause and result. The revealing pattern of each man's actions is in the pasts of himself and his antecedents."
"And by proving this you will exonerate the Reamer mansion of all guilt?"