In response to his urgent request, she allowed him to read her treasured manuscripts. The first was a passionate love story in which a young Spanish officer, stationed on the island of Cuba, and a beautiful young Cuban girl were the principals. It was entitled "Her Native Land," and was replete with startling situations and effective tableaus. Quincy was delighted with it, and told Alice if dramatized it would make a fine acting play. This was, of course, very pleasing to the young author. Quincy was her amanuensis, her audience, and her critic, and she knew that in his eyes she was already a success.
She also gave him to read a series of eight stories, in a line usually esteemed quite foreign to feminine instincts. Alice had conceived the idea of a young man, physically weak and suffering from nervous debility, being left an immense fortune at the age of twenty-one. His money was well invested, and in company with a faithful attendant he travelled for fifteen years, covering every nook and corner of the habitable globe. At thirty-six he returned home much improved in health, but still having a marked aversion to engaging in any business pursuit. A mysterious case and its solution having been related to him, he resolved to devote his income, now amounting to a million dollars yearly, to amateur detective work. His great-desire was to ferret out and solve mysteries, murders, suicides, robberies, and disappearances that baffled the police and eluded their vigilant inquiry.
The titles that Alice had chosen for her stories were as mysterious, in their way, as the stories themselves. Arranged in the order of their writing, they were: Was it Signed? The Man Without a Tongue; He Thought He Was Dead; The Eight of Spades; The Exit of Mrs. Delmonnay; How I Caught the Fire-Bugs; The Hot Hand; and The Mystery of Unreachable Island.
When Quincy reached the city, his first visit was to his father's office, but he found him absent. He was told that he was conducting a case in the Equity Session of the Supreme Court, and would not return to the office that day.
Instead of leaving his letter at his friend's office, he went directly to the Adjutant-General's office at the State House. Here he found that an acquaintance of his was employed as a clerk. He was of foreign birth, but had served gallantly through the war and had left an arm upon the battlefield. He made his request for a copy of the war record of Obadiah Strout, of the —th Mass. Volunteers. Then a thought came suddenly to him and he requested one also of the record of Hiram Maxwell of the same regiment.
Leaving the State House on the Hancock Avenue side, he walked down that narrow but convenient thoroughfare, and was standing at its entrance to the sidewalk on Beacon Street, debating which publisher he would call on first, when a cheery voice said, "Hello, Sawyer." When he looked up he saw an old Latin School and college chum, named Leopold Ernst. Ernst was a Jew, but he had been one of the smartest and most popular of the boys in school and of the men at Harvard.
"What are you up to?" asked Ernst.
"Living on my small fortune and my father's bounty," said Quincy. "Not a very creditable record, I know, but my health has not been very good, and I have been resting for a couple of months in the country."
"Not much going on in the country at this time of the year I fancy," remarked Ernst.
"That's where you are wrong," said Quincy. "There has been the devil to pay ever since I landed in the town, and I've got mixed up in so many complications that I don't expect to get back to town before next Christmas. But what are you doing, Ernst?"