The Silent Bullet | Page 3

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THE SILENT BULLET
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
CRAIG
KENNEDY'S THEORIES
I The Silent Bullet
II The Scientific Cracksman
III The Bacteriological Detective
IV The Deadly Tube
V The Seismograph Adventure
VI The Diamond Maker
VII The Azure Ring
VIII "Spontaneous Combustion"
IX The Terror In The Air

X The Black Hand
XI The Artificial Paradise
XII The Steel Door

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is out of date now.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 who is the third
arbitrator in labour disputes, who reforms our currency, who heads our
tariff commissions, and conserves our farms and forests. We have
professors of everything--why not professors of crime"
Still, as I shook my head dubiously, he hurried on to clinch his point.
"Colleges have gone a long way from the old ideal of pure culture.
They have got down to solving the hard facts of life--pretty nearly all,
except one. They still treat crime in the old way, study its statistics and
pore over its causes and the theories of how