14 In “Popular Fallacies About Crime” (Saturday Evening Post: April 21, 1923, p. 8) Sir Basil Thomson also upheld this point of view. [↩︎]
15 For years the famous Concert Champêtre in the Louvre was officially attributed to Titian. Vance, however, took it upon himself to convince the Curator, M. Lepelletier, that it was a Giorgione, with the result that the painting is now credited to that artist. [↩︎]
16 Obviously a reference to Tetrazzini’s performance in La Bohème at the Manhattan Opera House in 1908. [↩︎]
17 This quotation from Ecclesiastes reminds me that Vance regularly read the Old Testament. “When I weary of the professional liter’ry man,” he once said, “I find stimulation in the majestic prose of the Bible. If the moderns feel that they simply must write, they should be made to spend at least two hours a day with the Biblical historians.” [↩︎]
18 The book—or a part of it—has, I believe, been recently translated into English. [↩︎]
19 The boy was Jack Prisco, of 621 Kelly Street. [↩︎]
20 Obviously Mrs. Platz. [↩︎]
21 A helixometer, I learned later, is an instrument that makes it possible to examine every portion of the inside of a gun’s barrel through a microscope. [↩︎]
Transcriber’s Notes
This transcription follows the text of the first edition published by A. L. Burt Company and Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1926. However, the following alterations have been made to correct what are believed to be unambiguous errors in the text: