The Gold Bag | Page 4

often say I am

rather clever at it, but they don't know Fleming Stone as well as I do,
and don't realize that by comparison with his talent mine is
insignificant.
And so, it is both by way of entertainment, and in hope of learning
from him, that I am with him whenever possible, and often ask him to
"deduce" for me, even at risk of boring him, as, unless he is in the right
mood, my requests sometimes do.
I met him accidentally one morning when we both chanced to go into a
basement of the Metropolis Hotel in New York to have our shoes
shined.
It was about half-past nine, and as I like to get to my office by ten
o'clock, I looked forward to a pleasant half-hour's chat with him. While
waiting our turn to get a chair, we stood talking, and, seeing a pair of
shoes standing on a table, evidently there to be cleaned, I said
banteringly:
"Now, I suppose, Stone, from looking at those shoes, you can deduce
all there is to know about the owner of them."
I remember that Sherlock Holmes wrote once, "From a drop of water, a
logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without
having seen or heard of one or the other," but when I heard Fleming
Stone's reply to my half-laughing challenge, I felt that he had outdone
the mythical logician. With a mild twinkle in his eye, but with a
perfectly grave face, he said slowly
"Those shoes belong to a young man, five feet eight inches high. He
does not live in New York, but is here to visit his sweetheart. She lives
in Brooklyn, is five feet nine inches tall, and is deaf in her left ear.
They went to the theatre last night, and neither was in evening dress."
"Oh, pshaw!" said I, "as you are acquainted with this man, and know
how he spent last evening, your relation of the story doesn't interest
me."
"I don't know him," Stone returned; "I've no idea what his name is, I've
never seen him, and except what I can read from these shoes I know
nothing about him."
I stared at him incredulously, as I always did when confronted by his
astonishing "deductions," and simply said
"Tell this little Missourian all about it."
"It did sound well, reeled off like that, didn't it?" he observed,

chuckling more at my air of eager curiosity than at his own
achievement. "But it's absurdly easy, after all. He is a young man
because his shoes are in the very latest, extreme, not exclusive style. He
is five feet eight, because the size of his foot goes with that height of
man, which, by the way, is the height of nine out of ten men, any way.
He doesn't live in New York or he wouldn't be stopping at a hotel.
Besides, he would be down-town at this hour, attending to business."
"Unless he has freak business hours, as you and I do," I put in.
"Yes, that might be. But I still hold that he doesn't live in New York, or
he couldn't be staying at this Broadway hotel overnight, and sending his
shoes down to be shined at half-past nine in the morning. His
sweetheart is five feet nine, for that is the height of a tall girl. I know
she is tall, for she wears a long skirt. Short girls wear short skirts,
which make them look shorter still, and tall girls wear very long skirts,
which make them look taller."
"Why d© they do that?" I inquired, greatly interested.
"I don't know. You'll have to ask that of some one wiser than I. But I
know it's a fact. A girl wouldn't be considered really tall if less than
five feet nine. So I know that's her height. She is his sweetheart, for no
man would go from New York to Brooklyn and bring a lady over here
to the theatre, and then take her home, and return to New York in the
early hours of the morning, if he were not in love with her. I know she
lives in Brooklyn, for the paper says there was a heavy shower there
last night, while I know no rain fell in New York. I know that they
were out in that rain, for her long skirt became muddy, and in turn
muddied the whole upper of his left shoe. The fact that only the left
shoe is so soiled proves that he walked only at her right side, showing
that she must be deaf in her left ear, or he would have walked part of
the time on that side. I know that they went to the theatre in New York,
because