Quotes by Arthur B. Reeve

“a dark, evil, malodorous place on the street level of a five-story, alleged “new-law” tenement. Without hesitation Kennedy entered, and we followed, acting the part of a slumming party. There were a few customers at this early hour, men out of employment and an inoffensive””

“Then take this little glass bottle. Go into the back room and order something cheap, in keeping with your looks. Then when you are all alone break the bottle. It is full of gas drippings. Your nose will dictate what to do next. Just tell the proprietor you saw the gas company’s wagon on the next block and come up here and tell me.” I entered. There was a sinister-looking man, with a sort of unscrupulous intelligence, writing at a table. As he wrote and puffed at his cigar, I noticed a scar on his face, a deep furrow running from the lobe of his ear to his mouth. That, I knew, was a brand set upon him by the Camorra. I sat and smoked and sipped slowly for several minutes, cursing him inwardly more for his presence than for his evident look of the “mala vita.” At last he went out to ask the barkeeper for a stamp. Quickly I tiptoed over to another corner of the room and ground the little bottle under my heel. Then I resumed my seat.””

“The odour that pervaded the room was sickening. The sinister-looking man with the scar came in again and sniffed. I sniffed. Then the proprietor came in and sniffed. “Say,” I said in the toughest voice I could assume, “you got a leak. Wait. I seen the gas company wagon on the next block when I came in. I’ll get the man.” I dashed out and hurried up the street to the place where Kennedy was waiting impatiently. Rattling his tools, he followed me with apparent reluctance. As he entered the wine-shop he snorted, after the manner of gas-men, “Where’s de leak?” “You find-a da leak,” grunted Albano. “What-a you get-a you pay for? You want-a me do your work?” “Well, half a dozen o’ you wops get out o’ here, that’s all. D’youse all wanter be blown ter pieces wid dem pipes and cigarettes? Clear out,” growled Kennedy. They retreated precipitately, and Craig hastily opened his bag of tools. “Quick, Walter, shut the door and hold it,” exclaimed Craig, working rapidly. He unwrapped a little package and took out a round, flat disc-like thing of black vulcanised rubber. Jumping up on a table, he fixed it to the top of the reflector over the gas-jet. “Can you see that from the floor, Walter?” he asked under his breath. “No,” I replied, “not even when I know it is there.” Then he attached a couple of wires to it and led them across the ceiling””

“This is my ‘electric ear’”

“We strolled into one of the rooms in which the play was on. The game was at its height, with huge stacks of chips upon the tables and the players chatting gayly. There was no large crowd there, however. Indeed, as we found afterward, it was really in the afternoon that it was most crowded, for it was rather a poolroom than a gambling joint, although we gathered from the gossip that some stiff games of bridge were played there. Both men and women were seated at the poker game that was in progress before the little green table. The women were richly attired and looked as if they had come from good families.””

“I have lately been studying,” he remarked casually, “the experiments of Dr. Von Pfungen of Vienna showing the protective resistance of the human skin against an electric current. Normally, this resistance averages from seventy to eighty thousand ohms. In the morning, owing to the accumulation of waste products, the resistance may mount to almost double. In persons suffering from nervous anxiety, it decreases to five thousand and even down to a thousand ohms in cases of hysteria. Von Pfungen has also measured a human being’s emotional feelings by the electric current. I have a copy of his instrument here. There is one person who sits gripping the carbon electric handle connected with this galvanometer who, to begin with, had a resistance of over sixty thousand. But when I began to tell of how Rawaruska met her death, of the hypothetical case I have built up by my observations and experiments here in this very laboratory, the needle of the galvanometer started to oscillate downward. It went down until it reached thirty-eight thousand at the mention of murder. When I said the case was perfect, it had got as low as under twenty thousand, swinging lower and lower as the””

“portières.””