The silk-stockinged variety is out of date now.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 it can be prevented. But as for running the
criminal himself down, scientifically, relentlessly--bah! we
haven't made an inch of progress since the hammer and tongs
method of your Byrnes."
"Doubtless you will write a thesis on this most interesting
subject," I suggested, "and let it go at that."
"No, I am serious," he replied, determined for some reason or
other to make a convert of me. "I mean exactly what I say. I am
going to apply science to the detection of crime, the same sort
of methods by which you trace out the presence of a chemical, or
run an unknown germ to earth. And before I have gone far, I am
going to enlist Walter Jameson as an aide.
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