Tales of Terror and Mystery Story 3 - The New Catacomb

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
TALES OF TERROR AND MYSTERY by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle THE NEW CATACOMB.
Look here, Burger, said Kennedy. I do wish that you would confide in me.
Sat together in Kennedy's comfortable room overlooking the Corso. The night was cold, and they had both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove, which threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth. Outside, under the bright winter stars, lay the modern room, the long double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted cafes, the rushing carriages, and the dense throng upon the footpaths. But inside, in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist, there was only old room to be seen. Cracked and time-worn freezes hung from the walls, gray old busts of senators and soldiers with their fighting heads, and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners. On the center table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments and ornaments, there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths of Carcalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was exhibited in Berlin.
M4A hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the rich red turkey carpet. And of them all, there was not one which was not of the most unimpeachable authenticity and of the utmost rarity and value. For Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European reputation in this particular branch of research, and was moreover provided with that long purse, which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student's energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him enormous advantage in the race for fame.
Kennedy had often been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high white forehead, its aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensual mouth, was a fair index of the compromise between strength and weakness in his nature.
Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with a robust quality of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the South. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-brown face, and above them rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow curls lying round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven and his companion had frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman busts which peered out from the shadows in the corner of the chamber. Under its bluff German strength, there lay always a suggestion of Italian subtlety, but the smile was so honest and the eyes so frank that one understood that this was only an indication of his ancestry with no actual bearing upon his character.
In age and in reputation, he was on the same level as his English companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous. Twelve years before, he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded to him by the University of Bonn. Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and single-mindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of fame, until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was every reason to believe that he should shortly be promoted to the chair of the greatest of German universities. But the singleness of purpose which had brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant Englishmen had caused him, in everything outside their work, to stand infinitely below him. He had never found a pause in his studies in which to cultivate the social graces. It was only when he spoke of his own subject that his face was filled with life and soul, at other times he was silent and embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in larger subjects, and impatient of the small talk which is the conventional refuge of those who have no thoughts to express.
And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different rivals. The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own studies each was the only one of younger men who had knowledge and enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other. Their common interests and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been attracted by the other's knowledge, and then gradually something had been added to this. Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and simplicity of his arrival, while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the brilliancy and vivacity which had made Kennedy such a favorite in Roman society.