Bert Bayliss was the funniest detective you ever saw. He wasn’t the least like Vidocq, Lecoq or Sherlock, either in personality or mentality. And perhaps the chief difference lay in the fact that he possessed a sense of humor, and that not merely an appreciative sense, either. He had an original wit and a spontaneous repartee that made it well-nigh impossible for him to be serious. Not quite, though, for he had his thinking moments; and when he did think, he did it so deeply yet rapidly that he