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Quick Action

Chapter 1: QUICK ACTION
By Robert W. Chambers
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About This Book

The narrative follows a fashionable social circle gathered around a mysterious luminous crystal and a young countess whose apparent powers of crystal-gazing produce uncanny demonstrations and occasional revelations. Episodes mix light society banter, feats of sleight and clairvoyance, and an underlying criminal mystery that draws police interest and prompts investigations. Romantic tensions and wagers among friends intersect with experiments in divination, exposing the limits and costs of supernatural insight. The book moves through episodic scenes in elegant urban drawing rooms, adventurous confrontations, and final disclosures that balance imaginative fantasy with playful commentary on scientific curiosity and the borderlands between trickery and genuine occult knowledge.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Quick Action

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Quick Action

Author: Robert W. Chambers

Illustrator: Edmund Frederick

Release date: September 25, 2011 [eBook #37528]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Matthew Wheaton and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUICK ACTION ***

 

QUICK ACTION

"'Are you preaching?' asked Athalie, raising her eyes from the Green God." [Page 252]

 

QUICK ACTION

By

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

ILLUSTRATED BY

EDMUND FREDERICK


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON: MCMXIV

 

Copyright, 1914, by

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

Copyright, 1913, by Harper's Bazaar, Inc.
Copyright, 1914, by The Star Co.

 

Printed in the United States of America

 

TO

PENELOPE SEARS

DEBUTANTE

To rhyme your name With something lovely, fresh and young, And sing the same In measures heretofore unsung, Is far beyond me, I'm afraid; I'll not attempt it, dearest maid.
No, not in verse, Synthetic, stately, classic, chaste, Shall I rehearse— Although in perfectly good taste— A catalogue of every grace That you inherit from your race.
Gracious and kind, The gods your beauty gave to you, And with a mind These same kind gods endowed you, too; That charming union is, I fear, Somewhat uncommon on this sphere.
I have no doubt That scores of poets chant your fame; No doubt, about A million suitors press their claim; And fashion, elegance and wit Are at your feet inclined to sit.
Penelope, The fire-light flickers to and fro: In you I see The winsome child I used to know— My little Maiden of Romance Still whirling in your Shadow Dance.
Though woman-grown, To my unreconciled surprise I gladly own The same light lies within your eyes— The same sweet candour which beguiled Your rhymster when you were a child.
And so I come, With limping verse to you again, Amid the hum Of that young world wherein you reign— Only a moment to appear And say: "Your rhymster loves you, dear."
R. W. C.

PREFACE

Always animated by a desire to contribute in a small way toward scientific investigation, the author offers this humble volume to a more serious audience than he has so far ventured to address.

For all those who have outgrown the superficial amusement of mere fiction this volume, replete with purpose, is written in hopes that it may stimulate students to original research in certain obscure realms of science, the borderlands of which, hitherto, have been scarcely crossed.

There is perhaps no division of science as important, none so little understood, as the science of Crystal Gazing.

A vast field of individual research opens before the earnest, patient, and sober minded investigator who shall study the subject and discover those occult laws which govern the intimate relations between crystals, playing cards, cigarettes, soiled pink wrappers, and the Police.

 

Amor nihil est celerius!

 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

 FACING PAGE
"'Are you preaching?' asked Athalie, raising her eyes from the green god"Frontispiece
"They inspected each other, apparently bereft of the power of speech"31
"The magnificent realism of it fascinated the Lady Alene"84
"'I am in possession of the dog and you merely claim possession'"157

QUICK ACTION