The Skull of the Waltzing Clown by Harry Stephen Keeler

Author:Harry Stephen Keeler [Keeler, Harry Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XV

Foolscap

It was indeed!

For it at least began, “Deer Titus.” And I inferred that Simon Stannard had elicited further, somewhere within in that it was a Titus Fenwick to whom it was written—and not some other Titus.

I riffled over the sheets curiously first, however. For there were about 10 of them. Single-spaced. And I saw that the writing of them had indeed been a long-drawn-out process, for the quality and nature of the ribbon imprint did change several times, and there were two colors of ink where the 2-color ribbon had been turned over; also, in many cases, a sheet had been taken out of the machine—sometimes right in the middle of a paragraph—presumably while the writer went to bed—and put back in again later, on resumption of the typing, but with a resultant different left margin.

With the exactitude of a highly superior man, however, Simon Stannard—as was quite evident—had corrected the punctuation in many, many cases with a pencil—though not beginning to tamper with the letter at all until about its 3rd paragraph, where its illiteracy had plainly gotten on his nerves. He had also, in many cases, scratched out a badly misspelled word and replaced it by a properly spelled one, written meticulously in between the closely packed lines; but, as in the case of the other alterations, he had begun to insert these changes only after the first two paragraphs of the letter had manifestly jarred on his scholarly attainments! Here and there, too, I saw, he had translated some crook expression into its obvious equivalent—but only here and there, for the most of them, I saw, had contained a precise shade of criminal thought that had baffled him from trying to render them into the English of virtuous people! I would have said, personally, that the document, as it was typed and originally written, was something worth keeping exactly as it was; but no, he had the true reformer’s enthusiasm to improve it!

I settled back in my chair, however, and proceeded to read the peculiar missive.

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