and he had two half-conscious tricks by which people who only met
him once remembered him. One was a trick of closing his eyes
when he wished to be particularly polite; the other was one of
lifting his joined thumb and forefinger in the air as if holding
a pinch of snuff, when he was hesitating or hovering over a word.
But those who were longer in his company tended to forget these
oddities in the stream of his quaint and solemn conversation
and really singular views.

"Miss Hunt," said Dr. Warner, "this is Dr. Cyrus Pym."

Dr. Cyrus Pym shut his eyes during the introduction, rather as if he were
"playing fair" in some child's game, and gave a prompt little bow,
which somehow suddenly revealed him as a citizen of the United States.

"Dr. Cyrus Pym," continued Warner (Dr. Pym shut his eyes again), "is perhaps
the first criminological expert of America. We are very fortunate to be able
to consult with him in this extraordinary case--"

"I can't make head or tail of anything," said Rosamund. "How can
poor Mr. Smith be so dreadful as he is by your account?"

"Or by your telegram," said Herbert Warner, smiling.

"Oh, you don't understand," cried the girl impatiently.
"Why, he's done us all more good than going to church."

"I think I can explain to the young lady," said Dr. Cyrus Pym. "This criminal
or maniac Smith is a very genius of evil, and has a method of his own,
a method of the most daring ingenuity. He is popular wherever he goes,
for he invades every house as an uproarious child. People are
getting suspicious of all the respectable disguises for a scoundrel;
so he always uses the disguise of--what shall I say--the Bohemian,
the blameless Bohemian. He always carries people off their feet.
People are used to the mask of conventional good conduct.
He goes in for eccentric good-nature. You expect a Don Juan to dress
up as a solemn and solid Spanish merchant; but you're not prepared
when he dresses up as Don Quixote. You expect a humbug to behave like
Sir Charles Grandison; because (with all respect, Miss Hunt, for the deep,
tear-moving tenderness of Samuel Richardson) Sir Charles Grandison
so often behaved like a humbug. But no real red-blooded citizen is quite
ready for a humbug that models himself not on Sir Charles Grandison
but on Sir Roger de Coverly. Setting up to be a good man a little cracked
is a new criminal incognito, Miss Hunt. It's been a great notion,
and uncommonly successful; but its s