Craig Kennedy laid down his evening paper and filled his pipe
with my tobacco. In college we had roomed together, had shared
everything, even poverty, and now that Craig was a professor of
chemistry and I was on the staff of the Star, we had continued
the arrangement. Prosperity found us in a rather neat bachelor
apartment on the Heights, not far from the University.

"Why should there be a chair in criminal science?" I remarked
argumentatively, settling back in my chair. "I've done my turn at
police headquarters reporting, and I can tell you, Craig, it's no
place for a college professor. Crime is just crime. And as for
dealing with it, the good detective is born and bred to it.
College professors for the sociology of the thing, yes; for the
detection of it, give me a Byrnes."

"On the contrary," replied Kennedy, his clean-cut features
betraying an earnestness which I knew indicated that he was
leading up to something important, "there is a distinct place for
science in the detection of crime. On the Continent they are far
in advance of us in that respect. We are mere children beside a
dozen crime-specialists in Paris, whom I could name."

"Yes, but where does the college professor come in?" I asked,
rather doubtfully.

"You must remember, Walter," he pursued, warming up to his
subject, "that it's only within the last ten years or so that we
have had the really practical college professor who could do it.
The silk-stockinged variety is out of date now. To-day it is the
college professor who is the third arbitrator in labour disputes,