“Oh, that’s because of your temporary mental——”
“I know it. And I’m going to conquer it,—or get around it some way. Now, if you’ll introduce me,—and, yes, act as my guarantee, my reference,—I know it’s asking a lot, but if you’ll do that, I’ll make good, I promise you!”
“I believe you will, and I’m only too glad to do it. I’ll take you, whenever you say, around to a firm I know of, that I believe will be jolly glad to get you. You see, so many men of your gifts have gone to war——”
“Yes, I know, and I’d like to enlist myself, but Doc says I can’t, being a—a defective.”
“I wish you were a detective instead,” I said, partly to turn the current of his thoughts from his condition and partly because my mind was so full of my own interests that he was a secondary consideration.
“I’d like to be. I’ve been reading a bunch of detective stories since I’ve been here in hospital, and I don’t see as that deduction business is such a great stunt. Sherlock Holmes is all right, but most of his imitators are stuff and nonsense.”
And then, unable to hold it back any longer, I told him all about the Gately case and about Pennington Wise.
He was deeply interested, and his eyes sparkled when I related Wise’s deductions from the hatpin.
“Has he proved it yet?” he asked; “have you checked him up?”
“No, but there hasn’t been time. He’s only just started his work. He has another task; to find Amory Manning.”