Description
The Silent Bullet
CRAIG KENNEDY’S THEORIES
“It has always seemed strange to me that no one has ever endowed a
professorship in criminal science in any of our large universities.”
Craig Kennedy laid down his evening paper and filled his pipe with my
tobacco. In college we had roomed together, had shared everything, even
poverty, and now that Craig was a professor of chemistry and I was on
the staff of the Star, we had continued the arrangement. Prosperity
found us in a rather neat bachelor apartment on the Heights, not far
from the University.
“Why should there be a chair in criminal science?” I remarked
argumentatively, settling back in my chair. “I’ve done my turn at police
headquarters reporting, and I can tell you, Craig, it’s no place for a
college professor. Crime is just crime. And as for dealing with it,
the good detective is born and bred to it. College professors for the
sociology of the thing, yes; for the detection of it, give me a Byrnes.”
“On the contrary,” replied Kennedy, his clean-cut features betraying an
earnestness which I knew indicated that he was leading up to something
important, “there is a distinct place for science in the detection of
crime. On the Continent they are far in advance of us in that respect.
We are mere children beside a dozen crime-specialists in Paris, whom I
could name.”
“Yes, but where does the college professor come in?” I asked, rather
doubtfully.
“You must remember, Walter,” he pursued, warming up to his subject,
“that it’s only within the last ten years or so that we have had the
really practical college professor who could do it. The silk-stockinged
variety is out of date now. To-day it is the college professor wh