But after lunch I sat down at my desk and began to concentrate upon my complications. I wrote down some names of characters that occurred to me, and put them into a hat. Then I took them out of the hat and wrote after them the type of person that belonged to the name. Then I put them into the hat again, shook the hat, and drew them out. This is entirely my own invention in writing a mystery-story. The first name that came out was that of “Rudolph Habakkuk, soap manufacturer.”
It was an excellent beginning. I was immediately interested in the story. I began it at once.
“'Ha!' exclaimed Rudolph Habakkuk, soap manufacturer, starting violently at what he saw before him upon the broad pavements of Fifth Avenue. The round, yellow object glistened in the oblique rays of the afternoon sun. It was a Chinaman's head!”
I thought it excellent, pithy, precise. Scene, the whole character of one of the principal figures in the story, the crux of the mystery—all at a glance, as it were. And what more revealing than that simple, yet complete, designation, soap manufacturer! I couldn't resist going into the next room and reading it to my wife. I said:
“Doesn't it arouse your curiosity?”
“Yes,” said my wife, biting off a thread. “But how did it get there?”
“What? The Chinaman's head? Oh, that is the mystery.”
“I should say it was,” said my wife to herself.
I left the begrudging woman and returned to my study. I sat down to think about how it got there. I thought almost an hour about how it got there. Do you know, it quite eluded me? I took my hat and overcoat and went down the street to talk to Theodore Rowe, who is an author of sorts.
“Let's hear your plot,” said Theodore, giving me a cigarette and a cocktail.