Take the Rockwell case, for example [Quinn went on, after a preliminary puff or two to see that his pipe was drawing well]. No one had the slightest idea that the Central Trust Company wasn't in the best of shape. Its books always balanced to a penny. There was never anything to cause the examiner to hesitate, and its officials were models of propriety. Particularly Rockwell, the cashier. Not only was he a pillar of the church, but he appeared to put his religious principles into practice on the other six days of the week as well. He wasn't married, but that only boosted his stock in the eyes of the community, many of which had daughters of an age when wedding bells sound very tuneful and orange blossoms are the sweetest flowers that grow. When they came to look into the matter later on, nobody seemed to know much about Mr. Rockwell's antecedents. He'd landed a minor position in the bank some fifteen years before and had gradually lifted himself to the cashiership. Seemed to have an absolute genius for detail and the handling of financial matters. So it was that when Todd went back home on a vacation and happened to launch some of his ideas on criminology--ideas founded on an intensive study of Lombroso and other experts--he quickly got himself into deep water. During the course of a dinner at one of the hotels, "E. E." commenced to expound certain theories relating to crime and the physical appearance of the criminal. "Do you know," he inquired, "that it's the simplest thing in the world to tell whether a man--or even a boy, for that matter--has criminal tendencies? There are certain unmistakable physical details that point unerringly to what the world might call 'laxity of conscience,' but which is nothing less than a predisposition to evil, a tendency to crime. The lobes of the ears, the height and shape of the forehead, the length of the little finger, the contour of the hand--all these are of immense value in determining whether a man will go straight or crooked. Employers are using them more and more every day. The old-fashioned phrenologist, with his half-formed theories and wild guesses, has been displaced by the modern student of character, who relies upon certain rules which vary so little as to be practically immutable." "Do you mean to say," asked one of the men at the table, "that you can tell that a man is a criminal simply by looking at him?" "If that's the case," cut in another, "why don't you lock 'em all up?"