Quick Action — A Reader’s Guide

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In Category - Romantic Drama

Authors: Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William), 1865-1933, Frederick, Edmund, 1870-1949 [Illustrator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2011 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Love stories; Storytelling -- Fiction; Clairvoyants -- Fiction; Crystal gazing -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 59,717

Reading time 260 min

Text sections 10

The source record for Quick Action — A Reader’s Guide measures this digital text at 59,717 words, 4 hr 20 min estimated reading time, and 10 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 14.0 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Love stories,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #37528

In 'Quick Action,' Chambers pairs a satirical preface on crystal gazing with a romantic drama where a coquina quarry inheritance forces two strangers into a tense, witty standoff on a Florida island.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg37528

Read the Text

There was a new crescent moon in the west which, with the star above it, made an agreeable oriental combination.

In the haze over bay and river enough rose and purple remained to veil the awakening glitter of the monstrous city sprawling supine between river, sound, and sea. And its incessant monotone pulsated, groaning, dying, ceaseless, interminable in the light-shot depths of its darkening streets.

The sky-drawing-room windows of the Countess Athalie were all wide open, but the only light in the room came from a crystal sphere poised on a tripod. It had the quality and lustre of moon-light, and we had never been able to find out its source, for no electric wires were visible, and one could move the tripod about the room.

The crystal sphere itself appeared to be luminous, yet it remained perfectly transparent, whatever the source of its silvery phosphorescence.

At any rate, it was the only light in the room except the dulled glimmer of our cigarettes, and its mild, mysterious light enabled us to see one another as through a glass darkly.

There were a number of men there that evening. I don't remember, now, who they all were. Some had dined early; others, during the evening, strolled away into the city to dine somewhere or other, drifting back afterward for coffee and sweetmeats and cigarettes in the sky-drawing-room of the Countess Athalie.

As usual the girl was curled up by the open window among her silken cushions, one smooth little gem-laden hand playing with the green jade god, her still dark eyes, which slanted a little, fixed dreamily upon infinite distance--or so it always seemed to us.

Through the rusty and corrugated arabesques of the iron balcony she could see, if she chose, the yellow flare where Sixth Avenue crossed the shabby street to the eastward. Beyond that, and parallel, a brighter glow marked Broadway. Further east street lamps stretched away into converging perspective, which vanished to a point in the faint nebular radiance above the East River.

All this the Countess Athalie could see if she chose. Perhaps she did see it. We never seemed to know just what she was looking at even when she turned her dark eyes on us or on her crystal sphere cradled upon its slender tripod.

But the sphere seemed to understand, for sometimes, under her still gaze, it clouded magnificently like a black opal--another thing we never understood, and therefore made light of.

"They have placed policemen before several houses on this street," remarked the Countess Athalie.

Stafford, tall and slim in his evening dress, relieved her of her coffee cup.

"Has anybody bothered you?" he asked.

Young Duane picked up a pack of cards at his elbow and shuffled them, languidly.

"Where is the Ace of Diamonds, Athalie?" he asked.

"Any card you try to draw will be the Ace of Diamonds," replied the girl indifferently.

"Can't I escape drawing it?"

We all turned and looked at Duane. He quickly spread the pack, fan-shaped, backs up. After a moment's choosing he drew a card, looked at it, held it up for us to see. It was the Ace of Diamonds.

"Would you mind trying that again, Athalie?" I asked. And Duane replaced the card and shuffled the pack.

"But it's gone, now," said the girl.

"I replaced it in the pack," explained Duane.

"No, you gave it to me," she said.

We all smiled. Duane searched through the pack in his hands, once, twice; then he laughed. The girl held up one empty hand. Then, somehow or other, there was the Ace of Diamonds between her delicate little thumb and forefinger.

She held it a moment or two for our inspection; then, curving her wrist, sent it scaling out into the darkness. It soared away above the street, tipped up, and describing an aerial ellipse, returned straight to the balcony where she caught it in her fingers.

Twice she did this; but the third time, high in the air, the card burst into violet flame and vanished.

"That," remarked Stafford, "is one thing which I wish to learn how to do."

"Two hundred dollars," said the Countess Athalie, "--in two lessons; also, your word of honour."

"Monday," nodded Stafford, taking out a note-book and making a memorandum, "--at five in the afternoon."

"Monday and Wednesday at five," said the girl, lighting a cigarette and gazing dreamily at nothing.

From somewhere in the room came a voice.

"Did they ever catch that crook, Athalie?"

"The Fifty-ninth Street safe-blower?"

"Did _you_ find him?"

"How? In your crystal?" I asked.

"It's odd," mused Duane, "that you can never do anything of advantage to yourself by gazing into your crystal."

"It's the invariable limit to clairvoyance," she remarked.

Continue Reading →

The preface of Quick Action announces itself as a contribution to “scientific investigation,” specifically the “science of Crystal Gazing,” and lists its tools as “crystals, playing cards, cigarettes, soiled pink wrappers, and the Police.” This deadpan humor sets an ironic tone that carries into the novel proper. The story opens with a will that pits two strangers—Johnson Gray and Constance Leslie—against each other for ownership of a coquina quarry. Their first meeting, excerpted here, is a study in clipped dialogue and mutual suspicion, played out on a beach where they pour sand through their fingers and trade barbs about the deceased testator’s “sense of humour.”

A Preface That Mocks Its Own Genre

Chambers’s preface is a deliberate misdirection. It promises a serious study of crystal gazing, then undercuts itself with a list of mundane objects. The Latin tag Amor nihil est celerius! (“Nothing is swifter than love”) hints at the romantic plot while the preface’s mock-scholarly tone primes the reader for a narrative that will treat its own melodrama with a wink. This ironic framing is not sustained throughout—the main text shifts to a more conventional romantic comedy—but it establishes Chambers’s willingness to play with reader expectations.

Dialogue as a Weapon of Stalemate

The excerpted scene between Gray and Constance is built on rapid, symmetrical exchanges. Each character mirrors the other’s phrasing: “Where is your bungalow?” / “Mine is situated at the west end of a coquina quarry. Where is yours?” / “Mine … on the eastern edge.” The repetition creates a verbal standoff, emphasizing their equal footing and mutual distrust. Chambers uses short, declarative sentences (“The quarry belongs to me.”) and interruptions (“Yes, I do!”) to convey tension without lengthy description. The dialogue carries the burden of characterization: Gray laughs easily, Constance is “unsteady but defiant.” Their sparring over the will’s humor reveals contrasting temperaments—he finds it funny, she does not—while the shared predicament binds them.

Setting as a Source of Unease

The Florida island setting is sketched through discomfort: tarantulas, centipedes, scorpions, and a “most horrid bungalow” near a coquina quarry. Both characters chose the same quarry edge independently, a coincidence that strains credulity but serves the plot’s symmetry. The mention of ghosts—Constance recoils at the hint—adds a gothic undercurrent to the otherwise sunlit beach scene. Chambers does not linger on landscape; instead, he uses it as a backdrop for the characters’ isolation and vulnerability. The quarry itself, a source of potential wealth, becomes a contested space that forces Gray and Constance into proximity, setting the stage for the romantic drama promised by the catalog subjects.

Readers should attend to the shifts in tone between the preface’s satire and the main narrative’s earnest romantic comedy. Chambers’s voice is most distinctive in dialogue, where characters reveal themselves through verbal fencing. The excerpts suggest a novel that balances irony with sentiment, and the unfinished will plot leaves open how the quarry dispute will resolve. Pay attention to how the early symmetry between Gray and Constance evolves—or breaks—as the story progresses.

I keep thinking about that coquina quarry in Quick Action, how two strangers circled each other over an inheritance. There’s a similar quiet stubbornness in The Lady Paramount, the way property becomes a mirror for how we resist connection. Strange how stone and sand can hold such tenderness. The Lady Paramount — Context and Discussion surfaced this morning, and I lingered on it, like turning a familiar shell in my palm.