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from The Technique of the
Mystery Story (1913)
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The appearance of the detective is always of interest and each author in turn endeavors to make his marvelous-minded creature look as physically unlike other fiction detectives as possible. And especially does he aim to have him totally different in his effects from the popular conception of the conventional detective. In fact the average detective of fiction is always declared to look absolutely unlike the average detective of fiction.
1. Some Early Detective Portraits
M. Dupin is not described physically, as Poe's marvelous economy of attention made him omit every possible bit of material extraneous to his actual story. But, beginning let us say, with Lecoq, all seem to be diametrically opposed to the conventional detective.
To quote from "The Crime of Orcival":
M. Lecoq, whom none of them had ever met
before, in no wise resembled the conventional French
detective. The latter is commonly depicted as a tall
fellow, with heavy moustaches and "imperial," wearing a
military stock collar, a greasy silk hat, and a
threadbare frock-coat buttoned up to the throat so as
to conceal either the complete absence of linen or at
all events the extreme dirtiness of a calico shirt.
Such an individual will have immense feet incaged in
heavy Wellingtons and will carry in his right hand a
powerful sword-stick or bludgeon. Now M. Lecoq, as he
appeared in the dining-room at Valfeuillu, had nothing
whatever in common with this familiar type. It is true,
however, that he can assume whatever air he pleases.
Although his friends declare that he has features of
his own which he retains at home when sitting by his
own fire-side, with his slippers on, this is by no
means certain. At all events, his mobile face lends
itself to strange transformations, and he modifies his
features according to his will just as the sculptor
moulds his modelling clay. He changes everything, even
the expression of his eyes. On this occasion M. Lecoq
had assumed a handsome wig of lank hair, neither fair
nor dark, but rather pretentiously parted on one side.
Whiskers of the same vague colour puffed out with bad
pomade, encircled his pallid face. His eyelids were
very red; his eyes seemed weak and watery, and an open
smile rested on his thick lips, which, in parting,
disclosed a range of long yellow teeth. Timidity,
self-sufficiency, and contentment were equally blended
in the expression of his features. No one would ever
have credited the possessor of such a head with even
average intelligence. He looked the picture of some
dull-minded, money-grubbing haberdasher, who after
cheating his customers for thirty years, had retired on
a large income. His coat was like all other coats, his
trousers like all other trousers. A hair-chain, of the
same colour as his whiskers, spanned his stomach, and a
large silver watch could be seen bulging out of his
left waistcoat pocket. While he spoke he fumbled with a
horn box full of tiny square lozengers, and adorned on
the cover with the portrait of a homely well-dressed
woman, "the dear defunct," no doubt. As the
conversation proceeded, according as he was satisfied
or disturbed, M. Lecoq munched one of these lozenges or
gave the portrait a glance which was quite a poem in
itself.
To be sure, this was Lecoq in disguise.
But the natural man, though seldom seen, was also
unlike the regulation French detective. At his very
first appearance on Gaboriau's pages he is described
thus:
.... he was about twenty-five years old, with a pale
face, red lips and an abundance of curly black hair,
but with scarcely a sign of
beard or mustache. He was short but well-made, and his
whole manner denoted energy of extraordinary character.
With the exception of his eyes, there was nothing very
remarkable in his appearance, but these either shone
brilliantly or else grew dull, according to the
disposition of the moment. His nose, which was rather
wide, possessed an amount of flexibility that was
extraordinary.
Nor is old Father Tabaret, except on
close inspection, apparently possessed of detective
insight. Here is his picture:
In a large, heavily curtained bed,
covered up almost to the nose, lay the oracle of the
Rue de Jerusalem. It was almost impossible to believe
that such great intelligence could exist in that
figure, the face of which showed nothing but the
appearance of the greatest stupidity; a retreating
forehead, huge ears, a little snub nose, small eyes,
and thick lips, made M. Tabaret look more like a
half-witted citizen than the sagacious citizen that he
was. It is true that when he was closely examined there
was something in him resembling a sleuth-hound, the
habits and instincts of which he possessed to such a
great extent. In the street the impudent young urchins
would shout after him, "Oh! what a guy," but he laughed
at all this, and even took a pleasure in putting on an
extra appearance of folly and simplicity.
Vidocq, though not declared to be uncommon in his appearance, is sufficiently so to give him the necessary prestige. We are told that "he was a strong, well-built man with square shoulders and shambling gait. He had gray hair, a thick nose, blue eyes, a smooth face and a perpetual smile."
Although Vidocq really lived, yet his "Memoirs" are believed to be largely fiction, and so we may class him, in part at least, among our story-book friends.
Wilkie Collins deliberately draws his
picture of the official detective thus:
For a family in our situation, the
Superintendent of the Frizinghall police was the most
comforting officer you could wish to see. Mr. Seegrave
was tall and portly, and military in his manners. He
had a fine, commanding voice, and a mighty resolute
eye, and a grand frock coat which buttoned beautifully
up to his leather stock. "I'm the man you want," was
written all over his face; and he ordered his two
inferior policemen about with a severity which
convinced us all that there was no trifling with him.
And then, in every respect a vivid
contrast, he gives us a picture of the engaging
Sergeant Cuff, for after all, the beauty of a detective
is largely in the eye of the beholder.
When the time came for the Sergeant's
arrival I went down to the gate to look out for him.
A fly from the railway drove up as I
reached the lodge; and out got a grizzled, elderly man,
so miserably lean that he looked as if he had not got
an ounce of flesh on his bones in any part of him. He
was dressed all in decent black, with a white cravat
round his neck.
His face was as sharp as a hatchet, and
the skin of it was as yellow and dry and withered as an
autumn leaf. His eyes, of a steely light gray, had a
disconcerting trick, when they encountered your eyes,
of looking as if they expected something more from you
than you were aware of yourself. His walk was soft; his
voice was melancholy; his long, lanky fingers were
hooked like claws. He might have been a parson, or an
undertaker, or anything else you like, except what he
really was. A more complete opposite to Superintendent
Seegrave than Sergeant Cuff, and a less comforting
officer to look at for a family in distress, I defy you
to discover, search where you may.
Sherlock Holmes is too well known to the
reading public to require description here, but a brief
account of his appearance, as detailed by Watson,
proves his unlikeness to those we have previously
looked at:
His very person and appearance were such
as to strike the attention of the most casual observer.
In height he was rather over six feet, and so
exceedingly lean that he seemed to be considerably
taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during
those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and
his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an
air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the
prominence and squareness which mark the man of
determination. His hands were invariably blotted with
ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of
extraordinary delicacy of touch, as I frequently had
occasion to observe when I watched him manipulating his
fragile philosophical instruments.
In almost ludicrous contrast to Holmes is a young detective who never achieved Sherlock's popularity, but whose wonderful instinct for pure reasoning puts him at the head of his own class.
This is Rouletabille, who figures in "The Mystery of the Yellow Room," by Gaston Leroux.
His friend Sainclair, who is his
Watsonian chronicler, says:
I first knew Joseph Rouletabille when he
was a young reporter. At that time I was a beginner at
the Bar and often met him in the corridors of examining
magistrates, when I had gone to get a "permit to
communicate" for the prison of Mazas, or for
Saint-Lazare. He had, as they say, "a good nut." He
seemed to have taken his head — round as a bullet
— out of a box of marbles, and it is from that, I
think, that his comrades of the press — all
determined billiard-players — had given him that
nickname, which was to stick to him and be made
illustrious by him. He was always as red as a tomato,
now gay as a lark, now grave as a judge. How, while
still so young — he was only sixteen and a half
years old when I saw him for the first time — had
he already won his way on the press? That was what
everybody who came into contact with him might have
asked, if they had not known his history.
Practically, however, Rouletabille was
not nominally the great detective of the book —
that honor was given to Frederick Larsan — who seemed to show a few of
Sherlock Holmes' physical characteristics. This is
Larsan:
He might be about fifty years of age. He
had a fine head, his hair turning grey; a colourless
complexion, and a firm profile. His forehead was
prominent, his chin and cheeks clean shaven. His upper
lip, without moustache, was finely chiselled. His eyes
were rather small and round, with a look in them that
was at once searching and disquieting. He was of middle
height and well built, with a general bearing elegant
and gentlemanly. There was nothing about him of the
vulgar policeman. In his way, he was an artist, and one
felt that he had a high opinion of himself. The
sceptical tone of his conversation was that of a man
who had been taught by experience. His strange
profession had brought him into contact with so many
crimes and villainies that it would have been
remarkable if his nature had not been a little
hardened.
An interesting-looking detective is "The
Thinking Machine" of Jacques Futrelle. His description
is written with Mr. Futrelle's individual touch, and
Professor Van Dusen possesses the squint which Mr.
Train regards as a detective's birthright:
Practically all those letters remaining
in the alphabet after Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen was
named, were afterward acquired by that gentleman in the
course of a brilliant scientific career, and, being
honorably acquired, were tacked on to the other end.
His name, therefore, taken with all that belonged to
it, was a wonderfully imposing structure. He was a
Ph.D., an LL.D., an F.R.S. an M.D., and an M.D.S. He
was also some other things — just what, he himself
couldn't say — through recognition of his ability
by various foreign educational and scientific
institutions.
In appearance he was no less striking
than in nomenclature. He was slender, with the droop of
the student in his thin shoulders and the pallor of a
close, sedentary life on his clean-shaven face. His
eyes wore a perpetual, forbidding squint — the
squint of a man who studies little things — and
when they could be seen at all through his thick
spectacles, were mere slits of watery blue. But above
his
eyes was his most striking feature. This was a tall,
broad brow, almost abnormal in height and width,
crowned by a heavy shock of bushy, yellow hair. All
these things conspired to give him a peculiar, almost
grotesque personality.
Anna Katharine Green is one of the very
best constructors of a detective story. The first
introduction of her Mr. Gryce begins:
And here let me say that Mr. Gryce, the
detective, was not the thin, wiry individual with the
piercing eye you are doubtless expecting to see. On the
contrary, Mr. Gryce was a portly, comfortable personage
with an eye that never pierced, that did not even rest
on you. If it rested anywhere, it was always on some
insignificant object in the vicinity, some vase,
inkstand, book, or button. These things he would seem
to take into his confidence, make the repositories of
his conclusions; but as for you — you might as
well be the steeple on Trinity Church, for all
connection you ever appeared to have with him or his
thoughts. At present, then, Mr. Gryce was, as I have
already suggested, on intimate terms with the
door-knob.
And in a later book she again insists
upon this unlikeness to what may be expected:
I was therefore moving reluctantly away,
when I felt a slight but peremptory touch on the arm,
and turning, saw the detective a my side, still
studying his piece of china.
He was, as I have said, of portly build
and benevolent aspect; a fatherly-looking man, and not
at all the person one would be likely to associate with
the police. Yet he could take the lead very naturally,
and when he spoke, I felt bound to answer him.
Grodman, in "Big Bow Mystery," is
briefly described by Mr. Zangwill:
After an age seven minutes by any honest
clock — Grodman made his appearance, looking as
dressed as usual, but with unkempt hair and with
disconsolate side-whisker yet, for it had only recently
come within the margin of cultivation. In active
service Grodman
had been clean-shaven, like all members of the
profession — for surely your detective is the most
versatile of actors.
And this is the picture of Wimp the
official detective in the same book.
Wimp was young and fresh-colored. He had
a Roman nose, and was smartly dressed. He had beaten
Grodman by discovering the wife Heaven meant for him.
He had a bouncing boy, who stole jam out of the pantry
without any one being the wiser. Wimp did what work he
could do at home in a secluded study at the top of the
house. Outside his chamber of horrors he was the
ordinary husband of commerce. He adored his wife, who
thought poorly of his intellect, but highly of his
heart. In domestic difficulties Wimp was helpless. He
could not even tell whether the servant's "character"
was forged or genuine. Probably he could not level
himself to such petty problems. He was like the senior
wrangler who has forgotten how to do quadratics, and
has to solve equations of the second degree by the
calculus.
The reference to Wimp's wife is thus
explained:
In a moment the first floor window was
raised — the little house was of the same pattern
as her own — and Grodman's full, fleshy face
loomed through the fog in sleepy irritation from under
a nightcap. Despite its scowl the detective's face
dawned upon her like the sun upon an occupant of the
haunted chamber.
"What in the devil's the matter?" he
growled. Grodman was not an early bird, now that he had
no worms to catch. He could afford to despise proverbs
now, for the house in which he lived was his, and he
lived in it because several other houses in the street
were also his and it is well for the landlord to be
about his own estate in Bow where poachers often shoot
the moon. Perhaps the desire to enjoy his greatness
among his early cronies counted for something, too, for
he bad been born and bred at Bow, receiving when a
youth his first engagement from the local police
quarters, whence he drew a few shillings a week as an
amateur detective in his leisure hours.
Grodman was still a bachelor. In the
celestial matrimonial bureau a partner might have been
selected for him, but he had never
been able to discover her. It was his one failure as a
detective. He was a self-sufficing person, who
preferred a gas stove to a domestic; but in deference
to Glover Street opinion he admitted a female factotum
between ten a.m. and ten p.m., and, equally in
deference to Glover Street opinion, excluded her
between ten p.m. and ten a.m.
Gordon Holmes inclines to Wilkie
Collins' plan of contrasting the appearance of the real
detective and the fictional at once. In "A Mysterious
Disappearance" he presents these opposite physical
effects:
Inspector White, of Scotland Yard, was
announced, and a short, thick-set man entered. He was
absolutely round in every part. His sturdy, rotund
frame was supported on stout, well-moulded legs. His
bullet head, with close-cropped hair, gave a suggestion
of strength to his rounded face, and a pair of small
bright eyes looked suspiciously on the world from
beneath well-arched eyebrows.
Two personalities more dissimilar than
those of Claude Bruce and Inspector White could hardly
be brought together in the same room. People who are
fond of tracing resemblances to animals in human beings
would liken the one to a gray-hound, the other to a
bull-dog.
Yet they were both masters in the art of
detecting crime — the barrister subtle, analytic,
introspective; the policeman direct, pertinacious,
self-confident. Bruce lost all interest in a case when
the hidden trail was laid bare. Mr. White regarded
investigation as so many hours on duty until his man
was transported or hanged.
In "The Whispering Man," an astonishing
detective story by Henry Kitchell Webster, we have this
description of the detective:
He was the sort of a man who never would
be spoken of as old, if it were not for his attempts to
look young. He was actually, I should judge, somewhere
in the middle forties, a tall, graceful, and commanding
figure, with a strikingly handsome face. There was
nothing weak about it. The features were big and
boldly, though finely, modeled, and the deep-set eyes
singularly expressive. The only fault one could find
with him was that he carried everything just a little
too far. He was too aggressively well dressed; too
painfully clean-shaven; his manner a little too
dignified; his voice and features a little too
expressive. It came upon me all at once what he must be
— an actor. That was it. Everything about him was
heightened just enough to carry itself over the
footlights. He was in evening dress, wore an overcoat
and gloves, and carried a walking stick, as well as an
irreproachable silk hat, in his hand.
In "The Scales of Justice," an
exceptionally clever surprise story by George L. Knapp,
the Hero Detective is not a professional one, but a
young newspaper reporter. He is therefore allowed the
characteristics of our best newspaper men, but in all
probability he inherits his sardonic humor from his
predecessor Holmes.
Kern tossed the shears into a drawer,
and stood up. He was as tall as the other man, and as
straight; and both had that alert look of expectancy,
quite unmixed with either wonder or nervousness, which
marks our best newspaper men. There the resemblance
ended. Jennings was about thirty-five, smooth-shaven,
smiling brown of hair and blue of eye; with humorous
little wrinkles around the eyes to testify of the many
funny things he had seen. Kern was twenty-eight or
twenty-nine; and his coal-black hair and bronze-black
Vandyke beard made him look more like an Austrian
surgeon than an American reporter. His humor was apt to
be sardonic; and a certain element of moodiness was
seldom absent from his face. "Kern is really a secret
sufferer from the artistic temperament," said the
managing editor once, "but so long as he's trying to
live it down, I won't give him away."
"Average Jones," the creation of Samuel
Hopkins Adams, achieves a distinction by being
inconspicuous:
He was, so to speak, a composite
photograph of any thousand well-conditioned, clean
living Americans between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. Happily, his
otherwise commonplace face was relieved by the one
unfailing characteristic of composite photographs,
large, deep-set and thoughtful eyes. Otherwise he would
have passed in any crowd, and nobody would have noticed
him pass. Now, at twenty-seven, he looked back over the
five years since his graduation from college and
wondered what he had done with them; and at the four
previous years of undergraduate life and wondered how
he had done so well with those, and why he had not in
some manner justified the parting words of his favorite
professor: "You have one rare faculty, Jones. You can,
when you choose, sharpen the pencil of your mind to a
very fine point. Specialize, my boy, specialize."
A little like "The Thinking Machine" is
"The Man in the Corner," described thus by the Baroness
Orczy:
The appearance of the man was sufficient
to tickle the most ultramorose fancy. Polly thought to
herself that she had never seen anyone so pale, so
thin, with such funny light-coloured hair, brushed very
smoothly across the top of a very dubiously bald crown.
He looked so timid and nervous as he fidgeted
incessantly with a piece of string; his long, lean, and
trembling fingers tying and untying it into knots of
wonderful and complicated proportions.
Astro, the hero of Gelett Burgess's book of Mystery Stories, is perhaps the farthest possible remove from a conventional detective in appearance. Though not described categorically, we are given various word pictures of him in his "psychic studio." There he lounges among oriental divans and draperies, wearing a jewelled turban, flowing silken robes, and other characteristic apparel, as he indulges in the enjoyment of his silver-mounted water-pipe or his pet white lizard. He has sufficiently unusual eccentricities to put him in the list of correctly made up fiction detectives, and though blase, he is original and interesting.
4. Idiosyncrasies of Fictional Detectives
Most fictional detectives have peculiar and individual tricks of personality which are doubtless intended for the reader to remember them by.
Dupin had the most pronouncedly queer
traits of all. Perhaps none of his successors ever
achieved anything so freakish as this described below;
and which, had he lived to-day, would have given him a
claim to the title of "Sun Dodger."
It was a freak of fancy in my friend
(for what else shall I call it?) to be enamoured of the
night for her own sake, and into this bizarrerie, as
into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up
to his wild whims with a perfect abandon. The sable
divinity would not herself dwell with us always; but we
could counterfeit her presence. At the first dawn of
the morning we closed all the messy shutters of our old
building; lighted a couple of tapers, which, strongly
perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of
rays. By the aid of these we then busied our souls in
dreams — reading, writing, or conversing, until
warned by the clock of the advent of the true darkness.
Then we sallied forth into the streets, arm and arm,
continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and
wide until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights
and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of
mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.
Sherlock Holmes' idiosyncrasies are too well known to need recapitulation. His morphine habit, his musical taste and his sardonic moods are familiar to all. Holmes also had a habit of listening to his clients' recitals with his eyes shut. Though to be sure this was less radical than the proceeding of Dupin who "sat in his accustomed armchair, the embodiment of respectful attention" but he wore green spectacles which allowed him to "sleep not the less soundly, though silently" throughout the long account of the case by the Prefect.
Holmes' odd habits are here referred to:
An anomaly which often struck me in the
character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that,
although in his methods of thought he was the neatest
and most methodical of mankind, and although also he
affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none
the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy
men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not
that I am in the least conventional in that respect
myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan,
coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of
disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a
medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I
find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle,
his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and
his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a
jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden
mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs.
I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be
distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one
of his queer humors would sit in an arm-chair with his
hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and
proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V.R
done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the
atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved
by it.
These are, we must admit, unusual
habits, but still Dr. Watson assures us that:
Holmes was certainly not a difficult man
to live with. He was quiet in his ways and his habits
were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at
night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out
before I rose in the morning. Sometimes he spent his
day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the
dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which
appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the
city. Nothing could exceed his energy when the working
fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would
seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the
sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or
moving a muscle from morning
to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a
dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might
have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some
narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his
whole life forbidden such a notion.
Later, Dr. Watson's suspicions were confirmed.
Lecoq's eccentricity was his habit of
silent communion with a portrait of his wife which he
carried with him:
M. Lecoq had recourse to the portrait on
the lozenge-box. His look was more than a glance, it
was a confidence. He was evidently saying something to
the dear defunct, which he dared not utter aloud.
This habit is also noted in Mr. Gryce.
This delightful old gentleman had a way of addressing
himself to any small inanimate object in his
neighborhood. It might be an inkstand or a doorknob,
but he treated it, to all appearance, as his guide,
philosopher and friend. On one occasion he became very
chummy with a statue at the foot of a staircase:
Whereupon I repeated my words, this time
very quietly but clearly, while Mr. Gryce continued to
frown at the bronze figure he had taken into his
confidence. When I had finished, Mr. Van Burnam's
countenance had changed, so had his manner. He held
himself as erect as before, but not with as much
bravado. He showed haste and impatience also, but not
the same kind of haste and not quite the same kind of
impatience. The corners of Mr. Gryce's mouth betrayed
that he noted this change, but he did not turn away
from the newel-post.
And, upon occasion, Mr. Gryce is unable to take active interest in the evidence being deposed by a witness because of his intense absorption in a "close and confidential confab with his own finger-tips."
Sergeant Cuff, however, has a very sane
and pleasant fad of his own, but he puts it to its
proper use when he employs it to evade impertinent or
unwelcome queries. Instead of dashing madly into his
"investigations" the celebrated detective goes off on a
side track thus:
"Ah, you've got the right exposure here
to the south and sou'west," says the Sergeant, with a
wag of his grizzled head, and a streak of pleasure in
his melancholy voice. "This is the shape for a rosery
— nothing like a circle set in a square. Yes, yes;
with walks between all the beds. But they oughtn't to
be gravel-walks like these. Grass, Mr. Gardener —
grass-walks between your roses; gravel's too hard for
them. That's a sweet pretty bed of white roses and
blush roses. They always mix well together, don't they?
Here's the white musk-rose, Mr. Betteredge — our
old English rose holding up his head along with the
best and newest of them. Pretty dear!" says the
Sergeant, fondling the musk-rose with his lanky
fingers, and speaking to it as if he were speaking to a
child.
This was a nice sort of a man to recover
Miss Rachel's Diamond, and to find out the thief who
stole it!
"You seem to be fond of roses,
Sergeant?" I remarked.
"I haven't much time to be fond of
anything," says Sergeant Cuff. "But, when I have a
moment's fondness to bestow, most times, Mr.
Betteredge, the roses get it. I began my life among
them in my father's nursery garden, and I shall end my
life among them if I can. Yes. One of these days
(please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and
try my hand at growing roses. There will be
grass-walks, Mr. Gardener, between my beds," says the
Sergeant, on whose mind the gravel-paths of a rosery
seemed to dwell unpleasantly.
"It seems an odd taste, sir," I ventured
to say, "for a man in your line of life."
"If you will look about you (which most
people won't do)," says Sergeant Cuff, "you will see
that the nature of a man's tastes is, most times, as
opposite as possible to the nature of a man's business.
Show me any two things more opposite one from the other
than a rose and a thief, and I'll correct my tastes
accordingly — if it isn't too late at my time of
life. You find the damask-rose a goodish
stock for most of the tender sorts, don't you, Mr.
Gardener? Ah! I thought so. Here's a lady coming. Is it
Lady Verinder?"
The peculiarity of "The Whispering Man," and what gives him his title, is a curious vocal defect which at times prevents his audible speech.
5. Favorite Phrases of Detectives
"The Thinking Machine," aside from his
petulance and impatience, continually repeats two or
three favorite phrases that annoy the reader quite as
much as the clients annoy this astute detective. One of
them is, "Don't say it is impossible! that annoys me
exceedingly! Nothing is impossible to the human mind!"
This assertion, innocent enough in itself, is so
frequently repeated as to become intolerable. Another
phrase of which Professor Van Dusen is inordinately
fond, is, "Two and two make four, not
sometimes, but all the time." This
also is repeated so often as to become tiresome. To
quote the Professor:
"Two and two make four, not
sometimes, but all the time," he
began, at last as if disputing some previous assertion.
"As the figure two, wholly disconnected from any other,
gives small indication of a result, so is an isolated
fact of little consequence. Yet that fact added to
another, and the resulting fact added to a third, and
so on, will give a final result. That result, if every
fact is considered must be correct. Thus any problem
may be solved by logic; logic is inevitable.
Indeed, variations on a theme of two and two making four are hackneyed in detective fiction.
As a figure of speech, the proposition
that two and two
make four except in unusual cases, is fair enough. It
is paraphrased thus: in "A Mysterious Disappearance:"
"I can't s'y as I know anythink about
it, sir, but by puttin' two and two together it makes
four sometimes — not always."
"Quite right. You're a philosopher. Let
me hear the two two's. We'll see about the addition
afterwards."
And it is humorously referred to in "The
Circular Staircase," by Mary Roberts At this point in my story, Halsey always
says:
"Trust a woman to add two and two
together, and make six" To which I retort that if two
and two plus X make six, then to discover the unknown
quantity is the simplest thing in the world. That a
houseful of detectives missed it entirely was because
they were busy trying to prove that two and two make
four.
The same proposition is quoted as the keynote of a detective's method in "The Holladay Case" where, in praise of the detective, it is remarked, "Your work convinced us that you know how to put two and two together, which is more than can be said for the ordinary mortal."
And in "The House Opposite" the detective declares that to succeed in his profession requires, "accurate and most minute powers of observation, unlimited patience, and a capacity for putting two and two together."
Sherlock Holmes shows a grasp of the principle, when he says, "If you were asked to prove that two and two make four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact."
Poe disdained the simple reference to
two plus two, but embodied a similar idea in this
subtle manner:
In short, I never yet encountered the
mere mathematician who
could be trusted out of equal roots, or one who did not
clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith that X2
plus px was absolutely and unconditionally equal to q.
Say to one of these gentlemen, by way of experiment, if
you please, that you believe occasions may occur where
X2 plus px is not altogether equal to q, and, having
made him understand what you mean, get out of his reach
as speedily as convenient, for, beyond doubt, he will
endeavor to knock you down.
The aspiring author, then, will do well to omit further references to the adding of two and two as an illuminating point in his story. Eccentricities or freakish habits on the part of his detective are permissible if not harped upon too continuously. But let them be of a pleasant or at least of an unobjectionable nature, and not like a habit attributed to a detective in a series of stories now current, who pulled at the lobe of his ear, until a fastidious reader was fain to close the book in disgust. Let the habits of your hero be whimsical, mysterious, or erratic, if you choose; but let them be agreeable and not too frequently reiterated.
(End of Chapter XIII)