Although I am not a smoker, the word "study" arrested my attention. I indicated my preference. The old man instantly clapped a hand to one ear, and, leaning toward me, shouted into my face, "Hey?" So I decided the matter for myself by striding down the hall to where a door stood invitingly open.
Now perhaps you may consider it to have been the first duty of a traditional detective to take advantage of this opportunity, and perhaps you may be right. However, I believe I can assert, with some measure of authority, that a man in my profession may be a man of principle and honor and still succeed. I believe I may go even further: honest, straightforward conduct and upright dealing, by winning the confidence and respect of those with whom he holds intercourse, will carry a detective farther along the road to success in a given undertaking than any other means he may adopt. Honesty, in my calling as in all others, is the best policy.
But there are certain subtle impressions, often difficult to define, which are more potent than foot-prints and thumb-marks. A man's words, for example, are often of far less importance than his manner of uttering them. A man's personality is the stamp by which he declares his status among his fellows, and everybody is entitled to scan it that he may weigh and consider and judge. Hence a man's surroundings bear a thousand tokens of his character; for him to try to obliterate them, to keep them hid, is not to be frank and open, and that in itself invites suspicion.
My sole object in entering Alfred Fluette's study, therefore, was prompted by a hope that I might absorb something of its atmosphere. I did not know the man. Here was the place where he spent his leisure hours, where he unbent and became his normal self. It were indeed strange if I failed to gain some concept of his character.
I leaned against a window-casing, and surveyed the room with much interest. From the appearance of the books on the shelves—they were worn from use, but their coating of dust evidenced neglect—I gathered the idea that the master of the house had once been a bookish man, but that of late he had grown away from such pursuits. Here and there on the wide-topped writing-table were letters and papers in neat piles, while other letters and papers were heaped up and scattered about in the most careless disorder. The ink-well and blotting-pad were scrupulously tidy, but he never troubled to clean his pens after using them, or even to place them in the pen receiver.
To me, all this argued a man whose moral forces were undergoing a slow but certain deterioration; and with a man in Alfred Fluette's position, and with his responsibilities, the possibilities were manifold and ominous. His conscience still had a voice to raise in protest against meddling with his niece's heritage; but he remained deaf to the voice. He could stoop to villainy; but he was not so callous to wrongdoing but that the stooping hurt. Alfred Fluette needed a jolt—somebody to bring him up with a short turn—and I resolved, having the means, to be the one to do it.
As my glance roved hither and thither about the room, it was suddenly arrested and held.
On the writing-table, among a thousand and one odds and ends, was a memorandum calendar. It was in nowise different from scores of other calendars; the date displayed was to-day's, and in the blank space below, written in a large, firm handy appeared a notation.
But this memorandum contained a most peculiar word. Somehow, as my eye encountered it, a thrill ran through me. I could not define it; the thrill was without perceptible meaning, but I felt that the odd word should tell me something. The word was so odd, in fact, that I feared I could not remember it. So I copied it upon the back of an envelope, thus:
TSHEN-BYO-YEN.