"How did
you work it out, Average?"
"On the previously enunciated principle," returned Average Jones
with a smile, "that when rats leave a sinking ship or a burning
building there's usually something behind, worth investigating."
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN WHO SPOKE LATIN
Mementoes of Average Jones' exploits in his chosen field hang on the
walls of his quiet sanctum. Here the favored visitor may see the
two red-ink dots on a dated sheet of paper, framed in with the card
of a chemist and an advertised sale of lepidopteroe, which drove a
famous millionaire out of the country. Near by are displayed the
exploitation of a lure for black-bass, strangely perforated (a man's
reason hung on those pin-pricks), and a scrawled legend which seems
to spell "Mercy" (two men's lives were sacrificed to that); while
below them, set in somber black, is the funeral notice of a dog
worth a million dollars; facing the call for a trombone-player which
made a mayor, and the mathematical formula which saved a governor.
But nowhere does the observer find any record of one of the
Ad-Visor's most curious cases, running back two thousand years; for
its owner keeps it in his desk drawer, whence the present chronicler
exhumed it, by accident, one day.
Pages:
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284