The Four Pools Mystery | Page 2

preamble in which he set forth his view of the Patterson-Pratt case--and
a clearsighted view it was--he commenced asking questions. They were
such amazingly impudent questions that they nearly took my breath
away. But he asked them in a manner so engagingly innocent that I
found myself answering them before I was aware of it. There was a
confiding air of bonne camaraderie about the fellow which completely
put one off one's guard.
At the end of fifteen minutes he was on the inside track of most of my
affairs, and was giving me advice through a kindly desire to keep me
from getting things in a mess. The situation would have struck me as
ludicrous had I stopped to think of it; but it is a fact I have noted since,
that, with Terry, one does not appreciate situations until it is too late.
When he had got from me as much information as I possessed, he
shook hands cordially, said he was happy to have made my
acquaintance, and would try to drop in again some day. After he had
gone, and I had had time to review our conversation, I began to grow
hot over the matter. I grew hotter still when I read his report in the
paper the next morning. I could not understand why I had not kicked
him out at first sight, and I sincerely hoped that he would drop in again,
that I might avail myself of the opportunity.
He did drop in, and I received him with the utmost cordiality. There
was something entirely disarming about Terry's impudence. And so it
went. He continued to comment upon the case in the most sensational

manner possible, and I railed against him and forgave him with
unvarying regularity. In the end we came to be quite friendly over the
affair. I found him diverting at a time when I was in need of diversion,
though just what attraction he found in me, I have never been able to
fathom. It was certainly not that he saw a future source of "stories," for
he frankly regarded corporation law as a pursuit devoid of interest.
Criminal law was the one branch of the profession for which he felt any
respect.
We frequently had lunch together; or breakfast, in his case. His day
commenced about noon and lasted till three in the morning. "Well,
Terry, what's the news at the morgue today?" I would inquire as we
settled ourselves at the table. And Terry would rattle off the details of
the latest murder mystery with a cheerfully matter-of-fact air that
would have been disgusting had it not been so funny.
It was at this time that I learned his history prior to the days of the
Post-Dispatch. He was entirely frank about himself, and if one half of
his stories were true, he has achieved some amazing adventures. I
strongly suspected at times that the reporting instinct got ahead of the
facts, and that he embroidered incidents as he went along.
His father, Terry Senior, had been an Irish politician of considerable
ability and some prominence on the East River side of the city. The
boy's early education had been picked up in the streets (his father had
got the truant officer his position) and it was thorough. Later he had
received a more theoretical training in the University of New York, but
I think it was his early education which stuck by him longest, and
which, in the end, was probably the more useful of the two. Armed
with this equipment, it was inevitable that he should develop into a star
reporter. Not only did he write his news in an entertaining form, but he
first made the news he wrote about. When any sensational crime had
been committed which puzzled the police, Terry had an annoying way
of solving the mystery himself, and publishing the full particulars in the
Post-Dispatch with the glory blatantly attributed to "our reporter." The
paper was fully aware that Terence K. Patten was an acquisition to its
staff. It had sent him on various commissions to various entertaining

quarters of the globe, and in the course of his duty he had encountered
experiences. One is forced to admit that he was not always fastidious as
to the rôle he played. He had cruised about the Mediterranean as
assistant cook on a millionaire's yacht, and had listened to secrets
between meals. He had wandered about the country with a monkey and
a hand-organ in search of a peddler he suspected of a crime. He had
helped along a revolution in South America, and had gone up in a
captive war balloon which had broken loose and floated off.
But all this is of no concern at present. I am merely going to