Kirk was as much overcome by the beauty, simplicity and economy of this solution as Copernicus must have been when he first thought of putting the sun in the centre of the Solar System and saw all the planets, instead of describing complicated and ugly geometrical capers, move onward in orderly and dignified circles. He sat and contemplated it with affection for nearly ten minutes before venturing to examine it. He was afraid of knocking the bloom off it.
Still, a theory was only a theory; one had got to find evidence to support it. One must at any rate be sure there was no evidence against it. First of all, could a man kill himself like that, simply by falling off a pair of steps?
Side by side with half-crown editions of English poets and philosophers, flanked on the right by Bartlett's
