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"Ah, I have
it!" he said. "A real mystery, too. Look at that four-story house near
the western end of the block, the one a trifle shabbier than its
neighbors. Do you see, in the open window, a man with a pale,
intellectual face, gray hair, and arms bare to the elbows, filing away
at something held in a vise before him? Now he stops to examine a
paper--a plan, probably--which he holds in his hand. Now he wipes the
perspiration from his forehead. Can't you see him?"
"Distinctly," was the joint reply.
"What do you suppose he is doing?" asked Overtop.
"No idea," said Wilkeson. "Perhaps mending a teakettle."
"Or repairing an umbrella," suggested Maltboy.
Overtop smiled, and said:
"A person with the slightest powers of observation, would see that that
man has genius in his face; that his thin arm is not used to hard
mechanical labor; that his brain is so heated with great ideas, that he
tries to cool it by opening the window. The tinkering of an umbrella or
teakettle would not make a man sweat in midwinter. You won't deny the
force of that suggestion.


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