Part 1 (1/2)

Further Foolishness.

by Stephen Leac.o.c.k.

Preface

Many years ago when I was a boy at school, we had over our cla.s.s an ancient and spectacled schoolmaster who was as kind at heart as he was ferocious in appearance, and whose memory has suggested to me the t.i.tle of this book.

It was his practice, on any outburst of gaiety in the cla.s.s-room, to chase us to our seats with a bamboo cane and to shout at us in defiance:

_Now, then, any further foolishness?_

I find by experience that there are quite a number of indulgent readers who are good enough to adopt the same expectant att.i.tude towards me now.

STEPHEN LEAc.o.c.k McGILL UNIVERSITY MONTREAL November 1, 1916

I. Stories Shorter Still

Among the latest follies in fiction is the perpetual demand for stories shorter and shorter still. The only thing to do is to meet this demand at the source and check it. Any of the stories below, if left to soak overnight in a barrel of rainwater, will swell to the dimensions of a dollar-fifty novel.

(I) AN IRREDUCIBLE DETECTIVE STORY

HANGED BY A HAIR OR A MURDER MYSTERY MINIMISED

The mystery had now reached its climax. First, the man had been undoubtedly murdered. Secondly, it was absolutely certain that no conceivable person had done it.

It was therefore time to call in the great detective.

He gave one searching glance at the corpse. In a moment he whipped out a microscope.

”Ha! ha!” he said, as he picked a hair off the lapel of the dead man's coat. ”The mystery is now solved.”

He held up the hair.

”Listen,” he said, ”we have only to find the man who lost this hair and the criminal is in our hands.”

The inexorable chain of logic was complete.

The detective set himself to the search.

For four days and nights he moved, un.o.bserved, through the streets of New York scanning closely every face he pa.s.sed, looking for a man who had lost a hair.

On the fifth day he discovered a man, disguised as a tourist, his head enveloped in a steamer cap that reached below his ears. The man was about to go on board the _Gloritania_.

The detective followed him on board.

”Arrest him!” he said, and then drawing himself to his full height, he brandished aloft the hair.