The Shadow of the Rope by E.W. Hornung — Read

There are eminent men of action who can acquit themselves with equal credit upon the little field of letters, as some of the very best books of late years go to prove. The man of letters, on the other hand, capable of cutting a respectable figure in action, is, one fears, a much rarer type. Langholm was essentially a man of letters. He was at his best among his roses and his books, at his worst in unforeseen collision with the rougher realities of life. But give him time, and he was not the man to run away because his equipment for battle was as short as his confidence in himself; and perhaps such courage as he possessed was not less courageous for the crust of cowardice (mostly moral) through which it always had to break. Langholm had one other qualification for the quest to which he had committed himself, but for which he was as thoroughly unsuited by temperament as by the whole tenor of his solitary life.

In addition to an ingenious imagination (a quality with its own defects, as the sequel will show), he had that capacity for taking pains which has no disadvantageous side, though in Langholm's case, for one, it was certainly not a synonym for genius.