Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Contents
I The Dream Doctor
II The Soul Analysis
III The Sybarite
IV The Beauty Shop
V The Phantom Circuit
VI The Detectaphone
VII The Green Curse
VIII The Mummy Case
IX The Elixir of Life
X The Toxin of Death
XI The Opium Joint
XII The "Dope Trust"
XIII The Kleptomaniac
XIV The Crimeometer
XV The Vampire
XVI The Blood Test
XVII The Bomb Maker
XVIII The "Coke" Fiend
XIX The Submarine Mystery
XX The Wireless Detector
XXI The Ghouls
XXII The X-Ray "Movies"
XXIII The Death House
XXIV The Final Day
"Jameson, I want you to get the real story about that friend of yours,Professor Kennedy," announced the managing editor of the Star, earlyone afternoon when I had been summoned into the sanctum.
From a batch of letters that had accumulated in the litter on the topof his desk, he selected one and glanced over it hurriedly.
"For instance," he went on reflectively, "here's a letter from aConstant Reader who asks, 'Is this Professor Craig Kennedy really allthat you say he is, and, if so, how can I find out about his newscientific detective method?'"
He paused and tipped back his chair.
"Now, I don't want to file these letters in the waste basket. Whenpeople write letters to a newspaper, it means something. I might reply,in this case, that he is as real as science, as real as the fight ofsociety against the criminal. But I want to do more than that."
The editor had risen, as if shaking himself momentarily loose from theordinary routine of the office.
"You get me?" he went on, enthusiastically, "In other words, yourassignment, Jameson, for the next month is to do nothing except followyour friend Kennedy. Start in right now, on the first, andcross-section out of his life just one month, an average month. Takethings just as they come, set them down just as they happen, and whenyou get through give me an intimate picture of the man and his work."
He picked up the schedule for the day and I knew that the interview wasat an end. I was to "get" Kennedy.
Often I had written snatches of Craig's adventures, but never beforeanything as ambitious as this assignment, for a whole month. At firstit staggered me. But the more I thought about it, the better I liked it.
I hastened uptown to the apartment on the Heights which Kennedy and Ihad occupied for some time. I say we occupied it. We did so duringthose hours when he was not at his laboratory at the Chemistry Buildingon the University campus, or working on one of those cases whichfascinated him. Fortunately, he happened to be there as I burst in uponhim.