rtical,
was enjoying well-earned slumber, with a pinch in his fingers
of scentless and delicate dust. But now that things are moving
a little more, there is something I should really like to know.
I have hung on Dr. Pym's lips, of course, with an interest that it
were weak to call rapture, but I have so far been unable to form
any conjecture about what the accused, in the present instance,
is supposed to have been and gone and done."

"If Mr. Moon will have patience," said Pym with dignity, "he will find
that this was the very point to which my exposition was di-rected.
Kleptomania, I say, exhibits itself as a kind of physical attraction
to certain defined materials; and it has been held (by no less a man
than Harris) that this is the ultimate explanation of the strict
specialism and vurry narrow professional outlook of most criminals.
One will have an irresistible physical impulsion towards pearl
sleeve-links, while he passes over the most elegant and celebrated
diamond sleeve-links, placed about in the most conspicuous locations.
Another will impede his flight with no less than forty-seven buttoned boots,
while elastic-sided boots leave him cold, and even sarcastic.
The specialism of the criminal, I repeat, is a mark rather of insanity
than of any brightness of business habits; but there is one kind
of depredator to whom this principle is at first sight hard to apply.
I allude to our fellow-citizen the housebreaker.

"It has been maintained by some of our boldest young
truth-seekers, that the eye of a burglar beyond the back-garden
wall could hardly be caught and hypnotized by a fork
that is insulated in a locked box under the butler's bed.
They have thrown down the gauntlet to American science on this point.
They declare that diamond links are not left about in conspicuous
locations in the haunts of the lower classes, as they were
in the great test experiment of Calypso College. We hope this
experiment here will be an answer to that young ringing challenge,
and will bring the burglar once more into line and union
with his fellow criminals."

Moon, whose face had gone through every phase of black bewilderment
for five minutes past, suddenly lifted his hand and struck the table
in explosive enlightenment.

"Oh, I see!" he cried; "you mean that Smith is a burglar."

"I thought I made it quite ad'quately lucid," said Mr. Pym,
folding up his eyelids. It was typical of this topsy-turvy private
trial that all the