The achievements of Luther Trant

By Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg

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Title: The achievements of Luther Trant

Author: Edwin Balmer
        William MacHarg

Illustrator: William Oberhardt

Release date: March 4, 2025 [eBook #75523]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston, MA: Small, Maynard & Company, 1909

Credits: Brian Raiter


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF LUTHER TRANT ***


The Achievements of Luther Trant

by Edwin Balmer & William MacHarg
illustrated by William Oberhardt

Published 1910 by Small, Maynard & Company
Copyright, 1909–1910 by Benj. B. Hampton



CONTENTS

       Foreword
    I. The Man in the Room
   II. The Fast Watch
  III. The Red Dress
   IV. The Private Bank Puzzle
    V. The Man Higher Up
   VI. The Chalchihuitl Stone
  VII. The Empty Cartridges
 VIII. The Axton Letters
   IX. The Eleventh Hour



  [Illustration: A gentleman seated in an armchair looks on in
  consternation at a man standing before him with a placid expression.
  Surrounding them are three other gentlemen and a lady, all studying
  the seated gentleman carefully.]

  Caption: “I do not know him,” Axton’s eyes glanced furtively about.
  “I have never seen him before. This is not Lawler.” (See “The Axton
  Letters”)



FOREWORD

Except for its characters and plot, this book is not a work of the
imagination.

The methods which the fictitious _Trant_—one time assistant in a
psychological laboratory, now turned detective—here uses to solve the
mysteries which present themselves to him, are real methods; the tests
he employs are real tests.

Though little known to the general public, they are precisely such as
are being used daily in the psychological laboratories of the great
universities—both in America and Europe—by means of which modern men
of science are at last disclosing and defining the workings of that
oldest of world-mysteries—the human mind.

The facts which _Trant_ uses are in no way debatable facts; nor do
they rest on evidence of untrained, imaginative observers. Innumerable
experiments in our university laboratories have established beyond
question that, for instance, the resistance of the human body to a
weak electric current varies when the subject is frightened or
undergoes emotion; and the consequent variation in the strength of the
current, depending directly upon the amount of emotional disturbance,
can be registered by the galvanometer for all to see. The hand resting
upon an automatograph _will_ travel toward an object which excites
emotion, however capable its possessor may be of restraining all other
evidence of what he feels.

If these facts are not used as yet except in the academic experiments
of the psychological laboratories and the very real and useful purpose
to which they have been put in the diagnosis of insanities, it is not
because they are incapable of wider use. The results of the “new
psychology” are coming every day closer to an exact interpretation.
The hour is close at hand when they will be used not merely in the
determination of guilt and innocence, but to establish in the courts
the credibility of witnesses and the impartiality of jurors, and by
employers to ascertain the fitness and particular abilities of their
employees.

_Luther Trant_, therefore, nowhere in this book needs to invent or
devise an experiment or an instrument for any of the results he here
attains; he has merely to adapt a part of the tried and accepted
experiments of modern, scientific psychology. He himself is a
character of fiction; but his methods are matters of fact.

The Authors.



CHAPTER I

The Man in the Room

“Amazing, Trant.”

“More than merely amazing! Face the fact, Dr. Reiland, and it is
astounding, incredible, disgraceful, that after five thousand years of
civilization, our police and court procedures recognize no higher
knowledge of men than the first Pharaoh put into practice in Egypt
before the pyramids!”

Young Luther Trant ground his heel impatiently into the hoar frost on
the campus walk. His queerly mismated eyes—one more gray than blue,
the other more blue than gray—flashed at his older companion
earnestly. Then, with the same rebellious impatience, he caught step
once more with Reiland, as he went on in his intentness:

“You saw the paper this morning, Dr. Reiland? ‘A man’s body found in
Jackson Park’; six suspects seen near the spot have been arrested.
‘The Schlaack’s abduction or murder’; three men under arrest for that
since last Wednesday. ‘The Lawton trial progressing’; with the
likelihood that young Lawton will be declared innocent; eighteen
months he has been in confinement—eighteen months of indelible
association with criminals! And then the big one: ‘Sixteen men held as
suspected of complicity in the murder of Bronson, the prosecuting
attorney.’ Did you ever hear of such a carnival of arrest? And put
beside that the fact that for ninety-three out of every one hundred
homicides no one is ever punished!”

The old professor turned his ruddy face, glowing with the frosty,
early-morning air, patiently and questioningly toward his young
companion. For some time Dr. Reiland had noted uneasily the growing
restlessness of his brilliant but hotheaded young aid, without being
able to tell what it portended.

“Well, Trant,” he asked now, “what is it?”

“Just that, professor! Five thousand years of being civilized,” Trant
burst on, “and we still have the ‘third degree’! We still confront a
suspect with his crime, hoping he will ‘flush’ or ‘lose color,’ ‘gasp’
or ‘stammer.’ And if in the face of this crude test we find him
prepared or hardened so that he can prevent the blood from suffusing
his face, or too noticeably leaving it; if he inflates his lungs
properly and controls his tongue when he speaks, we are ready to call
him innocent. Is it not so, sir?”

“Yes,” the old man nodded, patiently. “It is so, I fear. What then,
Trant?”

“What, Dr. Reiland? Why, you and I and every psychologist in every
psychological laboratory in this country and abroad have been playing
with the answer for years! For years we have been measuring the effect
of every thought, impulse and act in the human being. Daily I have
been proving, as mere laboratory experiments to astonish a row of
staring sophomores, that which—applied in courts and jails—would
conclusively prove a man innocent in five minutes, or condemn him as a
criminal on the evidence of his own uncontrollable reactions. And more
than that, Dr. Reiland! Teach any detective what you have taught to
me, and if he has half the persistence in looking for the marks of
crime on _men_ that he had in tracing its marks on _things_, he can
clear up half the cases that fill the jail in three days.”

“And the other half within the week, I suppose, Trant?”

The older man smiled at the other’s enthusiasm.

For five years Reiland had seen his young companion almost daily;
first as a freshman in the elementary psychology class—a red-haired,
energetic country-boy, ill at ease among even the slight restrictions
of this fresh-water university. The boy’s eager, active mind had
attracted his attention in the beginning; as he watched him change
into a man, Trant’s almost startling powers of analysis and
comprehension had aroused the old professor’s admiration. The compact,
muscular body, which endured without fatigue the great demands Trant
made upon it and brought him fresh to recitations from two hours sleep
after a night of work; and the tireless eagerness which drove him at a
gallop through courses where others plodded, had led Reiland to
appoint Trant his assistant just before his graduation. But this
energy told Reiland, too, that he could not hope to hold Trant long to
the narrow activities of a university; and it was with marked
uneasiness that the old professor glanced sideways now while he waited
for the younger man to finish what he was saying.

“Dr. Reiland,” Trant went on more soberly, “you have taught me the use
of the cardiograph, by which the effect upon the heart of every act
and passion can be read as a physician reads the pulse chart of his
patient, the pneumograph, which traces the minutest meaning of the
breathing; the galvanometer, that wonderful instrument which, though a
man hold every feature and muscle passionless as death, will betray
him through the sweat glands in the palms of his hands. You have
taught me—as a scientific experiment—how a man not seen to stammer or
hesitate, in perfect control of his speech and faculties, must surely
show through his thought associations, which he cannot know he is
betraying, the marks that any important act and every crime must make
indelibly upon his mind—”

“Associations?” Dr. Reiland interrupted him less patiently. “That is
merely the method of the German doctors—Freud’s method—used by Jung in
Zurich to diagnose the causes of adolescent insanity.”

“Precisely.” Trant’s eyes flashed, as he faced the old professor.
“Merely the method of the German doctors! The method of Freud and
Jung! Do you think that I, with that method, would not have known
eighteen months ago that Lawton was innocent? Do you suppose that I
could not pick out among those sixteen men the Bronson murderer? If
ever such a problem comes to me I shall not take eighteen months to
solve it. I will not take a week.”

In spite of himself Dr. Reiland’s lips curled at this arrogant
assertion. “It may be so,” he said. “I have seen, Trant, how the work
of the German, Swiss and American investigators, and the delicate
experiments in the psychological laboratory which make visible and
record the secrets of men’s minds, have fired your imagination. It may
be that the murderer would be as little, or even less, able to conceal
his guilt than the sophomores we test are to hide their knowledge of
the sentences we have had previously read to them. But I myself am too
old a man to try such new things; and you will not meet here any such
problems,” he motioned to the quiet campus with its skeleton trees and
white-frosted grass plots. “But why,” he demanded suddenly in a
startled tone, “is a delicate girl like Margaret Lawrie running across
the campus at seven o’clock on this chilly morning without either hat
or jacket?”

The girl who was speeding toward them along an intersecting walk, had
plainly caught up as she left her home the first thing handy—a
shawl—which she clutched about her shoulders. On her forehead, very
white under the mass of her dark hair, in her wide gray eyes and in
the tense lines of her straight mouth and rounded chin, Trant read at
once the nervous anxiety of a highly-strung woman.

“Professor Reiland,” she demanded, in a quick voice, “do you know
where my father is?”

“My dear Margaret,” the old man took her hand, which trembled
violently, “you must not excite yourself this way.”

“You do not know!” the girl cried excitedly. “I see it in your face.
Dr. Reiland, father did not come home last night! He sent no word.”

Reiland’s face went blank. No one knew better than he how great was
the break in Dr. Lawrie’s habits that this fact implied, for the man
was his dearest friend. Dr. Lawrie had been treasurer of the
university twenty years, and in that time only three events—his
marriage, the birth of his daughter, and his wife’s death—had been
allowed to interfere with the stern and rigorous routine into which he
had welded his lonely life. So Reiland paled, and drew the trembling
girl toward him.

“When did you see him last, Miss Lawrie?” Trant asked gently.

“Dr. Reiland, last night he went to his university office to work,”
she replied, as though the older man had spoken. “Sunday night. It was
very unusual. All day he had acted so strangely. He looked so tired,
and he has not come back. I am on my way there now to see—if—I can
find him.”

“We will go with you,” Trant said quickly, as the girl helplessly
broke off. “Harrison, if he is there so early, can tell us what has
called your father away. There is not one chance in a thousand, Miss
Lawrie, that anything has happened to him.”

“Trant is right, my dear.” Reiland had recovered himself, and looked
up at University Hall in front of them with its fifty windows on the
east glimmering like great eyes in the early morning sun. Only, on
three of these eyes the lids were closed—the shutters of the
treasurer’s office, all saw plainly, were fastened. Trant could not
remember that ever before he had seen shutters closed on University
Hall. They had stood open until, on many, the hinges had rusted solid.
He glanced at Dr. Reiland, who shuddered, but straightened again,
stiffly.

“There must be a gas leak,” Trant commented, sniffing, as they entered
the empty building. But the white-faced man and girl beside him paid
no heed, as they sped down the corridor.

At the door of Dr. Lawrie’s office—the third of the doors with high,
ground-glass transoms which opened on both sides into the corridor—the
smell of gas grew stronger. Trant stooped to the keyhole and found it
plugged with paper. He caught the transom bar, set his foot upon the
knob and, drawing himself up, pushed against the transom. It resisted;
but he pounded it in, and, as its glass panes fell tinkling, the fumes
of illuminating gas burst out and choked him.

“A foot,” he called down to his trembling companions, as he peered
into the darkened room. “Some one on the lounge!”

Dropping down, he hurried to a recitation room across the corridor and
dragged out a heavy table. Together they drove a corner of this
against the lock; it broke, and as the door whirled back on its hinges
the fumes of gas poured forth, stifling them and driving them back.
Trant rushed in, threw up the three windows, one after the other, and
beat open the shutters. As the gray autumn light flooded the room, a
shriek from the girl and a choking exclamation from Reiland greeted
the figure stretched motionless upon the couch. Trant leaped upon the
flat-topped desk under the gas fixtures in the center of the room and
turned off the four jets from which the gas was pouring. Darting
across the hall, he opened the windows of the room opposite.

As the strong morning breeze eddied through the building, clearing the
gas before it, while Reiland with tears streaming from his eyes knelt
by the body of his lifelong friend, it lifted from a metal tray upon
the desk scores of fragments of charred paper which scattered over the
room, over the floor and furniture, over even the couch where the
still figure lay, with its white face drawn and contorted.

Reiland arose and touched his old friend’s hand, his voice breaking.
“He has been dead for hours. Oh, Lawrie!”

He caught to him the trembling, horrified girl, and she burst into
sobs against his shoulder. Then, while the two men stood beside the
dead body of him in whose charge had been all finances of this great
institution, their eyes met, and in those of Trant was a silent
question. Reddening and paling by turns, Reiland answered it, “No,
Trant, nothing lies behind this death. Whether it was of purpose or by
accident, no secret, no disgrace, drove him to it. That I know.”

The young man’s oddly mismated eyes glowed into his, questioningly.
“We must get President Joslyn,” Reiland said. “And Margaret,” he
lifted the girl’s head from his shoulder, while she shuddered and
clung to him, “you must go home. Do you feel able to go home alone,
dearie? Everything that is necessary here shall be done.”

She gathered herself together, choked and nodded. Reiland led her to
the door, and she hurried away, sobbing.

While Trant was at the telephone Dr. Reiland swept the fragments of
glass across the sill, and closed the door and windows.

Already feet were sounding in the corridors; and the rooms about were
fast filling before Trant made out the president’s thin figure bending
against the wind as he hurried across the campus.

Dr. Joslyn’s swift glance as Trant opened the door to him—a glance
which, in spite of the student pallor of his high-boned face, marked
the man of action—considered and comprehended all.

“So it has come to this,” he said, sadly. “But—who laid Lawrie there?”
he asked sharply after an instant.

“He laid himself there,” Reiland softly replied. “It was there we
found him.”

Trant put his finger on a scratch on the wall paper made by the sharp
corner of the davenport lounge; the corner was still white with
plaster. Plainly, the lounge had been violently pushed out of its
position, scratching the paper.

Dr. Joslyn’s eyes passed on about the room, passed by Reiland’s
appeal, met Trant’s direct look and followed it to the smaller desk
beside the dead treasurer’s. He opened the door to his own office.

“When Mr. Harrison comes,” he commanded, speaking of Dr. Lawrie’s
secretary and assistant, “tell him I wish to see him. The treasurer’s
office will not be opened this morning.”

“Harrison is late,” he commented, as he returned to the others. “He
usually is here by seven-thirty. We must notify Branower also.” He
picked up the telephone and called Branower, the president of the
board of trustees, asking him merely to come to the treasurer’s office
at once.

“Now give me the particulars,” the president said, turning to Trant.

“They are all before you,” Trant replied briefly. “The room was filled
with gas. These four outlets of the fixture were turned full on. And
besides,” he touched now with his fingers four tips with composition
ends to regulate the flow, which lay upon the table, “these tips had
been removed, probably with these pincers that lie beside them. Where
the nippers came from I do not know.”

“They belong here,” Joslyn answered, absently. “Lawrie had the
tinkering habit.” He opened a lower desk drawer, filled with tools and
nails and screws, and dropped the nippers into it.

“The door was locked inside?” inquired the president.

“Yes, it is a spring lock,” Trant answered.

“And he had been burning papers.” The president pointed quietly to the
metal tray.

Dr. Reiland winced.

“Some one had been burning papers,” Trant softly interpolated.

“Some one?” The president looked up sharply.

“These ashes were all in the tray, I think,” Trant contented himself
with answering. “They scattered when I opened the windows.”

Joslyn lifted a stiletto letter-opener from the desk and tried to
separate, so as to read, the carbonized ashes left in the tray. They
fell into a thousand pieces; and as he gave up the hopeless attempt to
decipher the writing on them, suddenly the young assistant bent before
the couch, slipped his hand under the body, and drew out a crumpled
paper. It was a recently canceled note for twenty thousand dollars
drawn on the University regularly and signed by Dr. Lawrie, as
treasurer. But as the young psychologist started to study it more
closely, President Joslyn’s hand closed over it and took it from
Trant’s grasp. The president himself merely glanced at it; then, with
whitening face, folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.

“What is the matter, Joslyn?” Dr. Reiland started up.

“A note,” the president answered shortly. He took a turn or two
nervously up and down the room, paused and stared down at the face of
the man upon the couch; then turned almost pityingly to the old
professor.

“Reiland,” he said compassionately, “I must tell you that this
shocking affair is not the surprise to me that it seems to have been
to you. I have known for two weeks, and Branower has known for nearly
as long—for I took him into my confidence—that there were
irregularities in the treasurer’s office. I questioned Lawrie about it
when I first stumbled upon the evidence. To my surprise, Lawrie—one of
my oldest personal friends and certainly the man of all men in whose
perfect honesty I trusted most implicitly—refused to reply to my
questions. He would neither admit nor deny the truth of my
accusations; and he begged me almost tearfully to say nothing about
the matter until the meeting of the trustees to-morrow night. I
understood from him that at, or before, the trustees’ meeting he would
have an explanation to make to me; I did not dream, Reiland, that he
would make instead this”—he motioned to the figure on the couch, “this
confession! This note,” he nervously unfolded the paper again, “is
drawn for twenty thousand dollars. I recall the circumstances of it
clearly, Reiland; and I remember that it was authorized by the
trustees for two thousand dollars, not twenty.”

“But it has been canceled. See, he paid it! And these,” the old
professor pointed in protest to the ashes in the tray, “if these, too,
were notes—raised, as you clearly accuse—he must have paid them. They
were returned.”

“Paid? Yes!” Dr. Joslyn’s voice rang accusingly. “Paid from the
university funds! The examination which I made personally of his
books, unknown to Lawrie—for I could not confess at first to my old
friend the suspicions I held against him—showed that he had
methodically entered the notes at the amounts we authorized, and later
entered them again at their face amounts as he paid them. The total
discrepancy exceeds one hundred thousand dollars!”

“Hush!” Reiland was upon him. “Hush.”

The morning was advancing. The halls resounded with the tread of
students passing to recitation rooms.

Trant’s eyes had registered all the room, and now measured Joslyn and
Dr. Reiland. They had ceased to be trusted men and friends of his as,
with the quick analysis that the old professor had so admired in his
young assistant, he incorporated them in his problem.

“Who filled this out?” Trant had taken the paper from the hand of the
president and asked this question suddenly.

“Harrison. It was the custom. The signature is Lawrie’s, and the note
is regular. Oh, there can be no doubt, Reiland!”

“No, no!” the old man objected. “James Lawrie was not a thief!”

“How else can it be? The tips taken from the fixture, the keyhole
plugged with paper, the shutters—never closed before for ten
years—fastened within, the door locked! Burned notes, the single one
left signed in his own hand! And all this on the very day before his
books must have been presented to the trustees! You must face it,
Reiland—you, who have been closer to Lawrie than any other man—face it
as I do! Lawrie is a suicide—a hundred thousand dollars short in his
accounts!”

“I have been close to him,” the old man answered bravely. “You and I,
Joslyn, were almost his only friends. Lawrie’s life has been open as
the day; and we at least should know that there can have been no
disgraceful reason for his death.

“Luther,” the old professor turned, stretching out his hands
pleadingly to his young assistant, as he saw that the face of the
president did not soften, “Do you, too, believe this? It is not so!
Oh, my boy, just before this terrible thing, you were telling me of
the new training which could be used to clear the innocent and prove
the guilty. I thought it braggadocio. I scoffed at your ideas. But if
your words were truth, now prove them. Take this shame from this
innocent man.”

The young man sprang to his friend as he tottered. “Dr. Reiland, I
_shall_ clear him!” he promised wildly. “I shall prove, I swear, not
only that Dr. Lawrie was not a thief, but—he was not even a suicide!”

“What madness is this, Trant,” the president demanded impatiently,
“when the facts are so plain before us?”

“So plain, Dr. Joslyn? Yes,” the young man rejoined, “very plain
indeed—the fact that _before_ the papers were burned, _before_ the gas
was turned on or the tips taken from the fixture, _before_ that door
was slammed and the spring lock fastened it from the outside—Dr.
Lawrie was dead and was laid upon that lounge!”

“What? What—what, Trant?” Reiland and the president exclaimed
together. But the young man addressed himself only to the president.

“You yourself, sir, before we told you how we found him, saw that Dr.
Lawrie had not himself lain down, but had been laid upon the lounge.
He is not light; some one almost dropped him there, since the edge of
the lounge cut the plaster on the wall. The single note not burned lay
under his body, where it could scarcely have escaped if the notes were
burned first; where it would most surely have been overlooked if the
body already lay there. Gas would not be pouring out during the
burning, so the tips were probably taken off later. It must have
struck you how theatric all this is, that some one has thought of its
effect, that some one has arranged this room, and, leaving Lawrie
dead, has gone away, closing the spring lock—”

“Luther!” Dr. Reiland had risen, his hands stretched out before him.
“You are charging murder!”

“Wait!” Dr. Joslyn was standing by the window, and his eyes had caught
the swift approach of a limousine automobile which, with its plate
glass shimmering in the sun, was taking the broad sweep into the
driveway. As it slowed before the entrance, the president swung back
to those in the room.

“We two,” he said, “were Lawrie’s nearest friends—he had but one
other. Branower is coming now. Go down and prepare him, Trant. His
wife is with him. She must not come up.”

Trant hurried down without comment. Through the window of the car he
could see the profile of a woman, and beyond it the broad, powerful
face of a man, with sandy beard parted and brushed after a foreign
fashion. Branower had succeeded his father as president of the board
of trustees of the university. At least half a dozen of the
surrounding buildings had been erected by the elder Branower, and
practically his entire fortune had been bequeathed to the university.

“Well, Trant, what is it?” the trustee asked. He had opened the door
of the limousine and was preparing to descend.

“Mr. Branower,” Trant replied, “Dr. Lawrie was found this morning dead
in his office.”

“Dead? This morning?” A muddy grayness appeared under the flush of
Branower’s cheeks. “Why! I was coming to see him—even before I heard
from Joslyn. What was the cause?”

“The room was filled with gas.”

“Asphyxiation!”

“An accident?” the woman asked, leaning forward. Even as she whitened
with the horror of this news, Trant found himself wondering at her
beauty. Every feature was so perfect, so flawless, and her manner so
sweet and full of charm that, at this first close sight of her, Trant
found himself excusing and approving Branower’s marriage. She was an
unknown American girl, whom Branower had met in Paris and had brought
back to reign socially over this proud university suburb where his
father’s friends and associates had had to accept her and—criticise.

“Dr. Lawrie asphyxiated,” she repeated, “accidentally, Mr. Trant?”

“We—hope so, Mrs. Branower.”

“There is no clew to the perpetrator?”

“Why, if it was an accident, Mrs. Branower, there was no perpetrator.”

“Cora!” Branower ejaculated.

“How silly of me!” She flushed prettily. “But Dr. Lawrie’s lovely
daughter; what a shock to her!”

Branower touched Trant upon the arm. After his first personal shock,
he had become at once a trustee—the trustee of the university whose
treasurer lay dead in his office just as his accounts were to be
submitted to the board. He dismissed his wife hurriedly. “Now, Trant,
let us go up.”

President Joslyn met Branower’s grasp mechanically and acquainted the
president of the trustees, almost curtly, with the facts as he had
found them.

Then the eyes of the two men met significantly.

“It seems, Joslyn,” Branower used almost the same words that Joslyn
had used just before his arrival, “like a—confession! It is suicide?”
the president of the trustees was revolting at the charge.

“I can see no other solution,” the president replied, “though Mr.
Trant—”

“And I might have saved this, at least!” The trustee’s face had grown
white as he looked down at the man on the couch. “Oh, Lawrie, why did
I put you off to the last moment?”

He turned, fumbling in his pocket for a letter. “He sent this
Saturday,” he confessed, pitifully. “I should have come to him at
once, but I could not suspect this.”

Joslyn read the letter through with a look of increased conviction. It
was in the clear hand of the dead treasurer. “This settles all,” he
said, decidedly, and he re-read it aloud:

  Dear Branower: I pray you, as you have pity for a man with sixty
  years of probity behind him facing dishonor and disgrace, to come to
  me at the earliest possible hour. Do not, I pray, delay later than
  Monday, I implore you.

        James Lawrie.

Dr. Reiland buried his face in his hands, and Joslyn turned to Trant.
On the young man’s face was a look of deep perplexity.

“When did you get that, Mr. Branower?” Trant asked, finally.

“He wrote it Saturday morning. It was delivered to my house Saturday
afternoon. But I was motoring with my wife. I did not get it until I
returned late Sunday afternoon.”

“Then you could not have come much sooner.”

“No; yet I might have done something if I had suspected that behind
this letter was hidden his determination to commit suicide.”

“Not suicide, Mr. Branower!” Trant interrupted curtly.

“What?”

“Look at his face. It is white and drawn. If asphyxiated, it would be
blue, swollen. Before the gas was turned on he was dead—struck dead—”

“Struck dead? By whom?”

“By the man in this room last night! By the man who burned those
notes, plugged the keyhole, turned on the gas, arranged the rest of
these theatricals, and went away to leave Dr. Lawrie a thief and a
suicide to—protect himself! Two men had access to the university
funds, handled these notes! One lies before us; and the man in this
room last night, I should say, was the other—” he glanced at the
clock—“the man who at the hour of nine has not yet appeared at his
office!”

“Harrison?” cried Joslyn and Reiland together.

“Yes, Harrison,” Trant answered, stoutly. “I certainly prefer him for
the man in the room last night.”

“Harrison?” Branower repeated, contemptuously. “Impossible.”

“How impossible?” Trant asked, defiantly.

“Because Harrison, Mr. Trant,” the president of the trustees rejoined,
“was struck senseless at Elgin in an automobile accident Saturday
noon. He has been in the Elgin hospital, scarcely conscious, ever
since.”

“How did you learn that, Mr. Branower?”

“I have helped many young men to positions here. Harrison was one.
Because of that, I suppose, he filled in my name on the ‘whom to
notify’ line of a personal identification card he carried. The
hospital doctors notified me just as I was leaving home in my car. I
saw him at the Elgin hospital that afternoon.”

Young Trant stared into the steady eyes of the president of the
trustees. “Then Harrison could not have been the man in the room last
night. Do you realize what that implies?” he asked, whitening. “I
preferred, I said, to fix him as Harrison. That would keep both Dr.
Lawrie from being the thief and any close personal intimate of his
from being the man who struck him dead here last night. But with
Harrison not here, the treasurer himself must have known all the
particulars of this crime,” he struck the canceled note in his hand,
“and been concealing it for—that close friend of his who came here
with him. You see how very terribly it simplifies our problem? It was
some one close enough to Lawrie to cause him to conceal the thing as
long as he could, and some one intimate enough to know of the
treasurer’s tinkering habits, so that, even in great haste, he could
think at once of the gas nippers in Lawrie’s private tool drawer.
Gentlemen,” the young assistant tensely added, “I must ask you which
of you three was the one in this room with Dr. Lawrie last night?”

“What!” The word in three different cadences burst from their
lips—amazement, anger, threat.

He lifted a shaking hand to stop them.

“I realize,” he went on more quickly, “that, after having suggested
one charge and having it shown false, I am now making a far more
serious one, which, if I cannot prove it, must cost me my position
here. But I make it now again, directly. One of you three was in this
room with Dr. Lawrie last night. Which one? I could tell within the
hour if I could take you successively to the psychological laboratory
and submit you to a test. But, perhaps I need not. Even without that,
I hope soon to be able to tell the other two, for which of you Dr.
Lawrie concerned himself with this crime, and who it was that in
return struck him dead Sunday night and left him to bear a double
disgrace as a suicide.”

The young psychologist stood an instant gazing into their startled
faces, half frightened at his own temerity in charging thus the three
most respected men in the university; then, as President Joslyn eyed
him sternly, he caught again the enthusiasm of his reasoning, and
flushed and paled.

“One of you, at least, knows that I speak the truth,” he said,
determinedly; and without a backward look he burst from the room and,
running down the steps, left the campus.

It was five o’clock that afternoon, when Trant rang the bell at Dr.
Joslyn’s door. He saw that Mr. Branower and Dr. Reiland had been taken
into the president’s private study before him; and that the manner of
all three was less stern toward him than he had expected.

“Dr. Reiland and Mr. Branower have come to hear the coroner’s report
to me,” Joslyn explained. “The physicians say Lawrie did not die from
asphyxiation. An autopsy to-morrow will show the cause of his death.
But, at least, Trant—you made accusations this morning which can have
no foundation in truth, but in part of what you said you must have
been correct; for obviously some other person was in the room.”

“But not Harrison,” Trant replied. “I have just come from Elgin,
where, though I was not allowed to speak with him, I saw him in the
hospital.”

“You doubted he was there?” Branower asked.

“I wanted to make sure, Mr. Branower. And I have traced the notes,
too,” the young man continued. “All were made out as usual, signed
regularly by Dr. Lawrie and paid by him personally, upon maturity,
from the university reserve. So I have made only more certain that the
man in the room must have been one of Dr. Lawrie’s closest friends. I
came back and saw Margaret Lawrie.”

Reiland’s eyes filled with tears. “This terrible thing, with her
unfortunate presence with us at the finding of her father’s body, has
prostrated poor Margaret,” he said.

“I found it so,” Trant rejoined. “Her memory is temporarily destroyed.
I could make her comprehend little. Yet she knows only of her father’s
death; nothing at all has been said to her of the suspicions against
him. Does his death alone seem cause enough for her prostration? More
likely, I think, it points to some guilty knowledge of her father’s
trouble and whom he was protecting. If so, her very condition makes it
impossible for her to conceal those guilty associations under
examination.”

“Guilty associations?” Dr. Reiland rose nervously. “Do you mean,
Trant, that you think Margaret knows anything of the loss of this
money? Oh, no, no; it is impossible!”

“It would at any rate account for her prostration,” the assistant
repeated quietly, “and I have determined to make a test of her for
association with her father’s guilt. I will use in this case, Dr.
Reiland, only the simple association of words—Freud’s method.”

“How? What do you mean?” Branower and Joslyn exclaimed.

“It is a method for getting at the concealed causes of mental
disturbance. It is especially useful in diagnosing cases of insanity
or mental breakdown from insufficiently known causes.

“We have a machine, the chronoscope,” Trant continued, as the others
waited, interrogatively, “which registers the time to a thousandth
part of a second, if necessary. The German physicians merely speak a
series of words which may arouse in the patient ideas that are at the
bottom of his insanity. Those words which are connected with the
trouble cause deeper feeling in the subject and are marked by longer
intervals of time before the word in reply can be spoken. The nature
of the word spoken by the patient often clears the causes for his
mental agitation or prostration.

“In this case, if Margaret Lawrie had reason to believe that any one
of you were closely associated with her father’s trouble, the speaking
of that one’s name or the mentioning of anything connected with that
one, must betray an easily registered and decidedly measurable
disturbance.”

“I have heard of this,” Joslyn commented.

“Excellent,” the president of the trustees agreed, “if Margaret’s
physician does not object.”

“I have already spoken with him,” Trant replied. “Can I expect you all
at Dr. Lawrie’s to-morrow morning when I test Margaret to discover the
identity of the intimate friend who caused the crime charged to her
father?”

Dr. Lawrie’s three dearest friends nodded in turn.


Trant came early the next morning to the dead treasurer’s house to set
up the chronoscope in the spare bedroom next to Margaret Lawrie’s.

The instrument he had decided to use was the pendulum chronoscope, as
adapted by Professor Fitz of Harvard University. It somewhat resembled
a brass dumb-bell very delicately poised upon an axle so that the
lower part, which was heavier, could swing slowly back and forth like
a pendulum. A light, sharp pointer paralleled this pendulum. The
weight, when started, swung to and fro in the arc of a circle; the
pointer swung beside it. But the pointer, after starting to swing,
could be instantaneously stopped by an electro-magnet. This magnet was
connected with a battery and wires led from it to the two instruments
used in the test. The first pair of wires connected with two bits of
steel which Trant, in conducting the test, would hold between his
lips. The least motion of his lips to enunciate a word would break the
electric circuit and start swinging the pendulum and the pointer
beside it. The second pair of wires led to a sort of telephone
receiver. When Margaret would reply into this, it would close the
circuit and instantaneously the electro-magnet clamped and held the
pointer. A scale along which the pointer traveled gave, down to
thousandths of a second, the time between the speaking of the
suggesting word and the first associated word replied.

Trant had this instrument set up and tested before he had to turn and
admit Dr. Reiland. Mr. Branower and President Joslyn soon joined them,
and a moment after a nurse entered supporting Margaret Lawrie. Dr.
Reiland himself scarcely recognized her as the same girl who had come
running across the campus to them only the morning before. Her whole
life had been centered on the father so suddenly taken away.

Trant nodded to the nurse, who withdrew. He looked to Dr. Reiland.

“Please be sure that she understands,” he said, softly. The older man
bent over the girl, who had been placed upon the bed.

“Margaret,” he said tenderly, “we know you cannot speak well this
morning, my dear, and that you cannot think very clearly. We shall not
ask you to do much. Mr. Trant is merely going to say some words to you
slowly, one word at a time; and we want you to answer—you need only
speak very gently—anything at all, any word at all, my dear, which you
think of first. I will hold this little horn over you to speak into.
Do you understand, my dear?”

The big eyes closed in assent. The others drew nervously nearer.
Reiland took the receiving drum at the end of the second set of wires
and held it before the girl’s lips. Trant picked up the mouth metals
attached to the starting wires.

“We may as well begin at once,” Trant said, as he seated himself
beside the table which held the chronoscope and took a pencil to write
upon a pad of paper the words he suggested, the words associated and
the time elapsing. Then he put his mouthpiece between his lips.

“Dress!” he enunciated clearly. The pendulum, released by the magnet,
started to swing. The pointer swung beside it in an arc along the
scale. “Skirt!” Miss Lawrie answered, feebly, into the drum at her
lips. The current caught the pointer instantaneously, and Trant noted
the result thus:

        Dress—2.7 seconds—skirt.

“Dog!” Trant spoke, and started the pointer again. “Cat!” the girl
answered and stopped it. Trant wrote:

        Dog—2.6 seconds—cat.

A faint smile appeared on the faces of Mr. Branower and Dr. Joslyn,
but Reiland knew that his young assistant was merely establishing the
normal time of Margaret’s associations through words without probable
connection with any disturbance in her mind.

  [Illustration: A man and a woman are seated, several feet apart,
  with speaking horns held up to them. The man sits before an
  instrument with a curved scale. Three older gentlemen stand around,
  watching the proceedings carefully.]

  Caption: “Dress!” he enunciated clearly. “Skirt!” Miss Lawrie
  answered feebly

“Home,” Trant said; and it was five and two-tenths seconds before he
could write “father.” Reiland moved, sympathetically, but the other
men still watched without seeing any significance in the time
extension. Trant waited a moment. “Money!” he said, suddenly. Dr.
Reiland watched the swinging pointer tremblingly. But “purse” from
Margaret stopped it before it had registered more than her established
normal time for innocent associations.

        Money—2.7 seconds—purse.

“Note!” Trant said, suddenly; and “letter” he wrote again in two and
six-tenths seconds.

Dr. Joslyn moved impatiently; and Trant brusquely pulled his chair
nearer the table. The chair legs rasped on the hard-wood floor.
Margaret shivered and, when Trant tried her with the next words, she
merely repeated them. President Joslyn moved again.

“Cannot you proceed, Trant?” he asked.

“Not unless we can make her understand again, sir,” the young man
answered. “But I think, Dr. Joslyn, if you would show her what we
mean—not merely try to explain again—we might go on. I mean, when I
say the next word, will you take the mouthpiece from Dr. Reiland and
speak into it some different one?”

“Very well,” the president agreed, impatiently, “if you think it will
do any good.”

“Thank you!” Trant replaced his mouthpieces. “October!” He named the
month just ended. The pointer started. “Recitations!” the president of
the university answered in one and nine-tenths seconds.

“Thank you. Now for Miss Lawrie, Dr. Reiland!”

“Steal!” he tried; and the girl associated “iron” in two and
seven-tenths seconds.

“Good!” Trant exclaimed. “If you will show her again, I think we can
go ahead. Fourteenth!” he said to the president. Joslyn replied
“fifteenth” in precisely two seconds and passed the drum back. All
watched Miss Lawrie. But again Trant rasped carelessly his chair upon
the floor and the girl merely repeated the next words. Reiland was
unable to make her understand. Joslyn tried to help. Branower shook
his head skeptically. But Trant turned to him.

“Mr. Branower, you can help me, I believe, if you will take Dr.
Joslyn’s place. I beg your pardon, Dr. Joslyn, but I am sure your
nervousness prevents you from helping now.”

Branower hesitated a moment, skeptically; then, smiling, acquiesced
and took up the drum. Trant replaced his mouthpieces.

“Blow!” he said. “Wind!” Branower answered, quietly. Trant
mechanically noted the time, two seconds, for all were intent upon the
next trial with the girl.

“Books!” Trant said. “Library!” said the girl, now able to associate
the different words and in her minimum time of two and a half seconds.

“I think we are going again,” said Trant. “If you will keep on, Mr.
Branower. Strike!” he exclaimed, to start the pointer. “Labor
trouble,” Branower returned in just under two seconds; and again he
guided the girl. For “conceal” she answered “hide” at once. Then Trant
tested rapidly this series:

        Margaret, conceal—2.6—hide.
        Branower, figure—2.1—shape.
        Margaret, thief—2.8—silver.
        Branower, twenty-fifth—4.5—twenty-sixth.

“Joslyn!” Trant tried an intelligible test word suddenly. He had just
suggested “thief” to the girl; now he named her father’s friend, the
president of the university. But “friend” she was able to associate in
two and six-tenths seconds. Trant sank back and wrote this series
without comment:

        Margaret, Joslyn—2.6—friend.
        Branower, wife—4.4—Cora.
        Margaret, secret—2.7—Alice.

Trant glanced up, surprised, considered a moment, but then bowed to
Mr. Branower to guide the girl again, saying “wound,” to which he
wrote the reply “no,” after four and six-tenths seconds. Immediately
Trant made the second direct and intelligible test.

“Branower!” he shot, suggestively, to the girl; but “friend” she was
again able to associate at once. As the moment before the president of
the trustees had glanced at Joslyn, now the president of the
University nodded to Branower. Trant continued his list rapidly:

        Margaret, Branower—2.7—friend.
        Branower, letter-opener—4.9—desk.

“Father!” Trant tried next. But from this there came no association,
as the emotion was too deep. Trant, recognizing this, nodded to Mr.
Branower to start the next test, and wrote:

        Margaret, father—no association.
        Branower, Harrison—5.3—Cleveland.
        Margaret, university—2.5—study.
        Branower, married—2.1—wife.
        Margaret, expose—2.6—camera.
        Branower, brother—4.9—sister.
        Margaret, sink—2.7—kitchen.
        Branower, collapse—4.8—balloon.

“Reiland!” Trant said to the girl at last. It was as if he had put off
the trial for his own old friend as long as he could. Yet if anyone
had been watching him, they would have noted now the quick flash of
his mismated eyes. But all eyes were upon the swinging pointer of the
chronoscope which, at the mention of her father’s best and oldest
friend in that way, Margaret was unable to stop. One full second it
swung, two, three, four, five, six—

The young assistant in psychology picked up his papers and arose. He
went to the door and called in the nurse from the next room. “That is
all, gentlemen,” he said. “Shall we go down to the study?”

“Well, Trant?” President Joslyn demanded impatiently, as the four
filed into the room below, which had been Dr. Lawrie’s. “You act as if
you had discovered some clew. What is it?”

Trant was closing the door carefully, when a surprised exclamation
made him turn.

“Cora!” Mr. Branower exclaimed; “you here? Oh! You came to see poor
Margaret!”

“I couldn’t stay home thinking of you torturing her so this morning!”
The beautiful woman swept their faces with a glance of anxious
inquiry.

“I told Cora last night something about our test, Joslyn,” Branower
explained, leading his wife toward the door. “You can go up to
Margaret now, my dear.”

She seemed to resist. Trant fixed his eyes upon her, speculatively.

“I see no reason for sending Mrs. Branower away if she wishes to stay
and hear with us the results of our test which Dr. Reiland is about to
give us.” Trant turned to the old professor and handed him the sheets
upon which he had written his record.

“Now, Dr. Reiland, please! Will you explain to us what these tell
you?”

Dr. Joslyn’s hands clenched and Branower drew toward his wife as
Reiland took the papers and examined them earnestly. But the old
professor raised a puzzled face.

“Luther,” he appealed, “to me these show nothing! Margaret’s normal
association-time for innocent words, as you established at the start,
is about two and one-half seconds. She did not exceed that in any of
the words with guilty associations which you put to her. From these
results, I should say, it is scientifically impossible that she even
knows her father is accused. Her replies indicate nothing
unless—unless,” he paused, painfully, “because she could associate
nothing with my name you consider that implies—”

“That you are so close to her that at your name, as at the name of her
father, the emotion was very deep, Dr. Reiland,” the young man
interrupted. “But do not look only at Margaret’s associations! Tell
us, instead, what Dr. Joslyn’s and Mr. Branower’s show!”

“Dr. Joslyn’s and Mr. Branower’s?”

“Yes! For they show, do they not—unconsciously, but scientifically and
quite irrefutably—that Dr. Joslyn could not possibly have been
concerned in any way with those notes, part of which were due and paid
upon the fourteenth of October; but that Mr. Branower has a far from
innocent association with them, and with the twenty-fifth of the
month, on which the rest were paid!”

He swung toward the trustee. “So, Mr. Branower, you were the man in
the room Sunday night! _You_, to save the rascal Harrison, your wife’s
brother and the real thief, struck Dr. Lawrie dead in his office,
burned the raised notes, turned on the gas and left him to seem a
suicide and a thief!”

For the second time within twenty-four hours, Trant held Dr. Reiland
and the president of the university astounded before him. But Branower
gave an ugly laugh.

“If you could not spare me, you might at least have spared my wife
this last raving accusation! Come, Cora!” he commanded.

“I thought you might control yourself, Mr. Branower,” Trant returned.
“And when I saw your wife wished to stay I thought I might keep her to
convince even President Joslyn. You see?” he quietly indicated Mrs.
Branower as she fell, white and shaking, into a chair. “Do not think
that I would have told it in this way if these facts were new to her.
I was sure the only surprise to her would be that we knew them.”

Branower bent to his wife; but she straightened and recovered.

“Mr. Branower,” Trant continued then, “if you will excuse chance
errors, I will make a fuller statement.

“I should say, first, that since you kept his relationship a secret,
this Harrison, your wife’s brother, was a rascal before he came here.
Still you procured him his position in the treasurer’s office, where
he soon began to steal. It was very easy. Dr. Lawrie merely signed
notes; Harrison made them out. He could make them out in erasable ink
and raise them after they were signed, or in any other simple way.
Suffice it that he did raise them and stole one hundred thousand
dollars. When the notes were presented for payment, the matter was
laid before you. You must have promised Dr. Lawrie to make up the
loss, for he paid the notes and entered the payment in his books. Then
the time came when the books must be presented for audit. Lawrie wrote
that last appeal to you to put off the settlement no longer. But
before the letter was delivered you and Mrs. Branower had hurried off
to Elgin to see this Harrison, who was hurt. You got back Sunday
evening and read Dr. Lawrie’s note. You went to him; and, unable to
make payment, there in his office you struck him dead—”

But Branower was upon him with a harsh cry.

“You devil! You—devil! But you lie! I did not kill him!”

“With a blow? Oh, no! You raised no hand against him. But his heart
was weak. At your refusal to carry out your promise, which meant his
ruin, he collapsed before you—dead. Do you wish to continue the
statement now yourself?”

The wife gathered herself. “It is not so! No!” she forbade, “no!” But
Branower turned on President Joslyn a haggard face.

“Is this true?” the president demanded sternly. Branower buried his
face in his hands.

“I will tell you all,” he said thickly. “Harrison, as this fellow
found out somehow, is my wife’s brother. He has always been reckless,
wild; but she—Cora, do not stop me now—loved him and clung to him
as—as a sister sometimes clings to such a brother. They were alone in
the world, Joslyn. She married me only on condition that I save and
protect him. He demanded a position here. I hesitated. His life had
been one long scandal; but never before had he been dishonest with
money. Finally I made it a condition to keep his relationship secret,
and sent for him. I myself first discovered he had raised the notes,
weeks before you came to me with the evidence you had discovered that
something was wrong in the treasurer’s office. As soon as I found it
out, I went to Lawrie. He agreed to keep Harrison about the office
until I could remove him quietly. He paid the notes from the
university reserve, just raised, upon my promise to make it up. David
had lost all speculating in stocks. I could not pay this tremendous
amount in cash at once; but the books were to be audited. Lawrie, who
had expected immediate repayment from me, would not even once present
a false statement. In our argument his heart gave out—I did not know
it was weak—and he collapsed in his chair—dead.”

Dr. Reiland groaned, wringing his hands.

“Oh, Professor Reiland!” Mrs. Branower cried now. “He has not told
everything. I—I had followed him!”

“You followed him?” Trant cried. “Ah, of course!”

“I thought—I told him,” the wife burst on, “this had happened by
Providence to save David!”

“Then it was you who suggested to him to leave the stiletto letter
opener in Lawrie’s hand as an evidence of suicide!”

Branower and his wife both stared at Trant in fresh terror.

“But you, Mr. Branower,” Trant went on, “not being a woman with a
precious brother to save, could not think of making a wound. You
thought of the gas. Of course! But it was inexcusable in me not to
test for Mrs. Branower’s presence. It was her odd mental association
of a perpetrator with the news of the suspected suicide that first
aroused my suspicions.”

He turned as though the matter were finished; but met Dr. Joslyn’s
perplexed eyes. The end attained was plain; but to the president of
the university the road by which they had come was dark as ever.
Branower had taken his wife into another room. He returned.

“Dr. Joslyn,” said Trant, “it is scientifically impossible—as any
psychologist will tell you—for a person who associates the first
suggested idea in two and one-half seconds, like Margaret, to
substitute another without almost doubling the time interval.

“Observe Margaret’s replies. ‘Iron’ followed ‘steal’ as quickly as
‘cat’ followed ‘dog.’ ‘Silver,’ the thing a woman first thinks of in
connection with burglary, was the first association she had with
‘thief.’ No possible guilty thought there. No guilty secret connected
with her father prevented her from associating, in her regular time,
some girl’s secret with Alice Seaton next door. I saw her innocence at
once and continued questioning her merely to avoid a more formal
examination of the others. I rasped my chair over the floor to disturb
her nerves, therefore, and got you into the test.

“The first two tests of you, Dr. Joslyn, showed that you had no
association with the notes. The date half of them came due meant
nothing to you. ‘October’ suggested only recitations and ‘fourteenth’
permitted you to associate simply the succeeding day in an entirely
unsuspicious time. I substituted Mr. Branower. I had explained this
system as getting results from persons with poor mental resistance. I
had not mentioned it as even surer of results when the person tested
is in full control of his faculties, even suspicious and trying to
prevent betraying himself. Mr. Branower clearly thought he could guard
himself from giving me anything. Now notice his replies.

“The twenty-fifth, the day most of the notes were due, meant so much
that it took double the time, before he could drive out his first
suspicious association, merely to say ‘twenty-sixth.’ I told you I
suspected his wife was at least cognizant of something wrong. It took
him twice the necessary time to say ‘Cora’ after ‘wife’ was mentioned.
He gave the first association, but the chronoscope registered
mercilessly that he had to think it over. ‘Wound’ then brought the
remarkable association ‘no’ at the end of four and six-tenths seconds.
There was no wound; but something had made it so that he had to think
it over to see if it was suspicious. When I first saw that dagger
letter opener on Dr. Lawrie’s desk, I thought that if a man were
trying to make it seem suicide, he must at least have thought of using
the dagger before the gas. Now note the next test, ‘Harrison.’ Any
innocent man, not overdoing it, would have answered at once the name
of the Harrison immediately in all our minds. Mr. Branower thought of
him first, of course, and could have answered in two seconds. To drive
out that and think of President Harrison so as to give a seemingly
‘innocent’ association, ‘Cleveland,’ took him over five seconds. I
then went for the hold of this Harrison, probably, upon Mrs. Branower.
I tried for it twice. The second trial, ‘brother,’ made him think
again for five seconds, practically, before he could decide that
sister was not a guilty word to give. As the first words ‘blow’ only
brought ‘wind’ in two seconds and ‘strike’ suggested ‘labor’ at once,
I knew he could not have struck Dr. Lawrie a blow; and my last words
showed, indeed, that Lawrie probably collapsed before him. And I was
done.”

Dr. Joslyn was pacing the room with rapid steps. “It is plain.
Branower, you offer nothing in your defense?”

“There is nothing.”

“There is much. The university owes a great debt to your father. The
autopsy will show conclusively that Dr. Lawrie died of heart failure.
The other facts are private with ourselves. You can restore this
money. Its absence I will reveal only to the trustees. I shall present
to them at the same time your resignation from the board.”

He turned to Trant. “But this secrecy, young man, will deprive you of
the reputation you might have gained through the really remarkable
method you used through this investigation.”

“It makes no difference,” Trant answered, “if you will give me a short
leave from the university. As I mentioned to Dr. Reiland yesterday,
the prosecuting attorney of Chicago was murdered two weeks ago.
Sixteen men—one of them surely guilty—are held; but the criminal
cannot be picked among them. I wish to try the scientific psychology
again. If I succeed, I shall resign and keep after crime—in the new
way!”



CHAPTER II

The Fast Watch

Police Captain Crowley—red-headed, alert, brave—stamped into the North
Side police station an hour later than usual and in a very bad temper.
He glared defiantly at the row of patrolmen, reporters, and
busybodies, elbowed aside his desk sergeant without a word, and
slammed into his private office. The customary pile of morning papers,
flaying him in stinging front-page columns, covered his desk. He
glanced them over, grunting; then swept them to the floor and let
himself drop heavily into his chair.

“He’s _got_ to be guilty!” The big fist struck the table top
desperately. “It’s got to be,” the hoarse voice iterated
determinedly—“_him!_” He had checked the last word as the door swung
open, only to utter it more forcibly as he recognized the desk
sergeant.

“Kanlan, eh, Ed?” the desk sergeant ventured. “You have him at
Harrison Street station again the boys tell me.”

“Yes, we have him.”

“You got nothing out of him yet?”

“No, nothing—yet!”

“But you think it’s him?”

“Who said anything about thinking?” Crowley glanced to see that the
door was shut. “I said it’s _got_ to be him! And—it’s got to, whether
or no, ain’t it?”

A month before, Randolph Bronson—the city prosecuting attorney for
whose unpunished murder Crowley was under fire—had dared to try to
break up and send to the penitentiary the sixteen men who formed the
most notorious and dangerous gambling “ring” in the city. It grew
certain that some of the sixteen would stick at nothing to put the
prosecutor out of the way. The chief of police particularly charged
Crowley, therefore, to see to Bronson’s safety in the North Side
precinct, where the young attorney boarded. But Crowley had failed;
for within twelve days of the warning, early one morning, Bronson had
been found dead a block from his boarding house—murdered. Crowley had
been unable to fix a clew upon a single one of the sixteen. He had
confidently arrested them all at once, but after his stiffest “third
degree” had to release them. Now, in desperation, he had rearrested
Kanlan.

“Sure,” said the desk sergeant, “Kanlan or some one’s got to be guilty
soon—whether or no. But if you ain’t got the goods on Kanlan yet,
maybe you’d want to talk to a lad that’s waiting in front.”

“Who is he? What does he know?”

“Trant’s his name—from the university, he says. And he says he can
pick our man.”

“What is he—student?”

“He says some sort of perfesser.”

“Professor!” Crowley half turned away.

“Not that kind, Ed.” The desk sergeant bent one arm and tapped his
biceps. “He’s got plenty of this; and he’s got hair, too”—the sergeant
glanced at Crowley’s red head—“as red as any, Cap.”

“Send him in.”

Crowley looked up quickly at Trant when he entered. He saw a young man
with hair indeed as thick and red as his own; and with a figure, for
his more medium height, quite as muscular as any police officer’s. He
saw that the young man’s blue-gray eyes were not exact mates—that the
right was quite noticeably more blue than the other, and under it was
a small, pink scar which reddened conspicuously with the slightest
flush of the face.

“Luther Trant, Captain Crowley,” Trant introduced himself. “For two
years I have been conducting experiments in the psychological
laboratory of the university—”

“Psycho—Lord! Another clairvoyant!”

“If the man who killed Bronson is one of the sixteen men you suspect,
and you will let me examine them, properly, I can pick the murderer at
once.”

“Examine them properly! Saints in Heaven, son! Say! that gang needed a
stiff drink all round when we were through examining them; and never a
word or a move gave a man away!”

“Those men—of course not!” Trant returned hotly. “For they can hold
their tongues and their faces, and you looked at nothing else! But
while you were examining them, if I, or any other trained
psychologist, had had a galvanometer contact against the palms of
their hands, or—”

“A palmist, Lord preserve us!” Crowley cried. “Say! don’t ever think
we needed you. We got our man yesterday—Kanlan—and we’ll have a
confession out of him by night. Sergeant!” he called, as the door
opened to admit a man, “do you know what you let in—a palmist!” But it
was not the sergeant who entered. “A-ah! Inspector Walker!”

“Morning, Crowley,” Trant heard the quiet response behind him as he
turned. A giant in the uniform of an inspector of police almost filled
the doorway.

“Come with me, young man,” he said. “Miss Allison was passing with me
outside here and we heard some of what you’ve been saying. We’d like
to hear more.”

Trant looked up at the intelligent face and followed. A young woman
was waiting outside the door. As the inspector pointed Trant toward a
quiet room in the rear of the building, she followed. Inspector Walker
fastened the door behind them. The girl had seated herself beside the
table in the center, and as she turned to Trant she raised her veil
above her brown, curling hair, and pinned it over her hat. He
recognized her at once as the girl to whom Bronson had become engaged
barely a week before he had been killed. On her had fallen all the
horrors as well as the grief of Bronson’s murder, and Trant did not
wonder that the shadow of that event was visible in her sweet face.
But he read there also another look—a look of apprehension and
defiance.

“I was coming in with Inspector Walker to see Captain Crowley,” the
girl explained to Trant, “when I overheard you telling him that you
think this—Kanlan—couldn’t have killed Mr. Bronson. I hope this is
so.”

Trant looked to Walker. “Miss Allison’s father was Judge Allison, the
truest man who ever sat on the bench in this city,” Walker responded.
“His daughter knows she must not try to prevent us from punishing a
man who murders; but neither of us wants to believe Kanlan is the
man—for good reasons. Now, what was that you were telling Crowley?”

“I was trying to tell Captain Crowley of a simple test which must
prove Kanlan’s guilt or innocence at once, and, if necessary, then
find the guilty man. I have been conducting experiments to register
and measure the effects and reactions of emotions. A person under the
influence of fear or the stress of guilt must always betray signs. A
hardened man can control all the signs for which the police ordinarily
look; he can control his features, prevent his face flushing
noticeably. But no man, however hardened or trained to control
himself, can prevent many minute changes which by scientific means are
measurable and betray him hopelessly. No man, however on his guard—to
take the simplest test—can control the sweat glands in the palms of
his hands, which always moisten under emotion.”

“A scared man sweats; that’s so,” Walker assented.

“So psychologists have devised a simple way of registering the
emotions shown through the glands in the palms of the hand,” Trant
continued, “by means of the galvanometer. I have one in the box I left
with the desk sergeant. It is merely a device for measuring the
varying strength of an ordinary electric current. The man tested holds
in each hand a contact metal wired to the battery. When he grasps them
a weak and imperceptible current passes through his body or—if his
hands are very dry—perhaps no current at all. He is then examined and
confronted with circumstances or objects connected with the crime. If
he is innocent, the objects have no significance in his mind, and
cause no emotion. His face betrays none; neither can his hands. But if
he is guilty, though he still manages to control his face, he cannot
prevent the moisture from flowing from the glands in his palms.
Understand me; I do not mean an amount of moisture noticeable to the
eye, but it is _enough to make an electric contact through the metals
which he holds—enough to register very plainly upon the galvanometer,
whose moving needle, traveling in the scale, betrays him pitilessly_!”

The inspector shook his head skeptically.

“I recognize that this is new to you,” said Trant. “But I am telling
you no theory. Using the galvanometer properly, we can this morning
determine—scientifically and irrefutably—whether or not Kanlan killed
Mr. Bronson, and later, if it is not he, which of the others is the
assassin. May I try it?”

Miss Allison, more white than before, had risen, and laid her hand
upon Trant’s sleeve.

“Oh, try it, Mr. Trant!” she cried. “Try—try anything which can stop
them from showing through this gambler, Kanlan, and Mrs. Hawtin that
Mr. Bronson—” She broke off, and turned to the inspector. Walker was
looking Trant over again. The psychologist faced the police officer
eagerly. “I can’t believe it’s Kanlan,” said Walker.

  [Illustration: A gentleman, a man in a police uniform, and a
  gentlewoman are speaking at a table. The woman is dressed in black,
  with an elaborate hat and veil, and is standing up from her chair,
  placing one hand on the arm of the police officer as she speaks.]

  Caption: “Oh, try it, Mr. Trant!” she cried. “Try—try anything”

Until now Trant had been impressed chiefly by the huge bulk of the
inspector, but as Walker spoke of the gambler whom Crowley, to save
his own face, was trying to “railroad” to execution, Trant saw in the
inspector something approaching sentimentality. For he was that common
anomaly of the police department, an officer born and bred among the
criminals he is set to watch.

“I’ll take you to Kanlan,” the inspector granted at last. “As things
are going with him, you can’t hurt, and maybe you can help. Everyone
knows Kanlan would have put out Bronson; but not—I am certain—that
way. I was born in the basement opposite Kanlan’s. If Mr. Bronson had
been attacked in broad day, with a detective on each side of him and
all of them had been beaten up or killed, I’d have been the first to
step over to Kanlan and say, ‘Jake, you’re wanted.’ But Bronson was
not caught that way. The man that killed him waited till the house was
quiet, until Crowley’s guards were asleep, and then somehow or
other—how is a bigger mystery than the murder itself—got him out alone
in the street at two o’clock in the morning, and struck him dead from
a dark doorway.

“But I’m not taking you to Kanlan only to help save him from Crowley.”
Walker straightened suddenly as his eyes met the girl’s. “It’s to help
Miss Allison, too. For the only clew Crowley or anyone else has to the
man who murdered Bronson is in connection with the means of getting
Bronson out of the house that way. Crowley has discovered that a Mrs.
Hawtin, whom Kanlan can control through her gambling debts to him, is
living a few doors beyond the place where Bronson’s body was found.
Crowley claims he can show Mrs. Hawtin was a friend of Bronson’s,
and—” The inspector hesitated, glancing at the girl.

“Captain Crowley’s case,” said Miss Allison, finishing, “is based on
the charge that after Randolph—Mr. Bronson—had returned to his rooms
from seeing me that evening, he went out again two hours later to
answer a summons from this—this Mrs. Hawtin. So long as Captain
Crowley can convict some one for this crime, they seem to care nothing
how they slander and blacken the name of the man who is killed—as
little as they care for those left who—love him.”

“I see,” said Trant. His eyes rested a moment upon the inspector, then
again upon the girl. It surprised him to feel, as his eyes met hers
that short moment, how suddenly this problem, which he had set himself
to solve, had changed from a scientific examination and selection of a
guilty man to the saving—though through the same science—of the
reputation of a man no longer able to defend himself, and the honor of
a woman devoted to that man’s memory.

“But before I can examine Kanlan, or help you in any other way, Miss
Allison,” he explained gently, “I must be sure of my facts. It is not
too much to ask you to go over them with me? No, Inspector Walker,” he
anticipated the big police officer’s objection as Walker started to
speak, “if I am to help Miss Allison, I cannot spare her now.”

“Please do not, Mr. Trant,” the girl begged bravely.

“Thank you. Mr. Bronson, I believe, was still boarding on Superior
Street at a bachelor’s boarding house?”

“Yes,” the girl replied. “It is kept by Mrs. Mitchell, a very
respectable widow with a little boy. Randolph had boarded with her for
six years. She had once been in great trouble and he was kind to her.
He often spoke of how she gave him motherly care.”

“Motherly?” Trant asked. “How old is she?”

“Twenty-seven or eight, I should think.”

“Thank you. How long had you known Mr. Bronson, Miss Allison?”

“A little over two years.”

“Yes; and intimately, how long?”

“Almost from the first.”

“But you were not engaged to him until just the week before his
death?”

“Yes; our engagement was not made known till just two days before
his—death.”

“Inspector Walker, how long before Mr. Bronson was killed was any of
the ‘ring’ likely to put him out of their way?”

“For two weeks at least.”

“It fits Crowley’s case, of course, as well as—any other,” said Trant,
thoughtfully, “that two days after the announcement of his engagement
was the first time anyone could actually catch him alone. But it is
worth noting, inspector. Mr. Bronson called upon you that evening,
Miss Allison? Everything was as usual between you?”

“Entirely, Mr. Trant. Of course we both recognized the constant danger
he was in. I knew how and why he had to be guarded. His regular man,
from the city detail, had been with him all day downtown; and Captain
Crowley’s man came with him to our house. Mr. Bronson went back to his
boarding house with him precisely at half past ten.”

“He reached the boarding house,” Inspector Walker took up the account,
“a little before eleven and went at once to his room. At twelve-thirty
the last boarder came in. Crowley’s man immediately chained the front
door and made all fast. He went to the kitchen to get something to
eat, he says, and may have fallen asleep, though he denies it.
However, until after Bronson’s body was found, we have made certain,
there was no alarm inside or out.”

“There is no doubt that Mr. Bronson was in the house when it was
locked up?”

“None. The last boarder, as he went to his room, saw Bronson sitting
at his table going over some papers. He was still dressed but said he
was going to bed immediately. An hour and a half later—with no clew as
to how he went out, with no discoverable reason for his going out
except that given by Crowley—a patrolman found Bronson’s body on the
sidewalk a block east of his boarding house. He had been struck in the
forehead and killed instantly by a man who must have waited for him in
the vestibule of a little electro-plating shop.”

“_Must_ have, inspector?” Trant questioned.

“Yes; he chose this shop doorway because it was the darkest place in
the block.”

“At what time was that—exactly?” Trant interrupted. “The papers say
the attack was made ten minutes after two o’clock—that the watch in
his pocket was broken and stopped by his fall at exactly ten minutes
after two. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” the inspector replied. “The watch stopped at 2.10; but, in
spite of that, the exact time of the murder must have been nearer two
than ten minutes later, for Mr. Bronson’s watch was fast.”

“What?” Trant cried. “You say his watch was fast? I had not heard of
that!”

“It was noticed two days ago,” the inspector explained, “that the
record shows that the patrolman who found Bronson’s body rang up from
the nearest patrol box at five minutes after two. If the attack was
made just before, the watch must have been at least ten minutes fast,
so we have the time, after all, only approximately.”

“I see.” Trant turned to the girl. “It is strange, Miss Allison, that
a man like Mr. Bronson carried an incorrect watch.”

“He did not. It was always right.”

“Was it right that evening?”

“Why, yes. I remember that he compared his time with our clock before
leaving.”

Trant leaped up, excitedly. “What? What? But still,” he calmed
himself, “whether at two or ten minutes after two, the main question
is the same. You, too, Miss Allison, can you give no possible reason
why Mr. Bronson might have gone out?”

“I have tried a thousand times in these terrible two weeks to think of
some reason, but I cannot. Our house is in a different direction than
that he took. The car line to the city is another way. He knew no one
in that direction—except Mrs. Hawtin.”

“You knew that he knew her?”

“Of course, Mr. Trant! He had convicted her once for shoplifting, but,
like everyone whom his place had made him punish, he watched her
afterwards, and, when she tried to be honest, he helped her as he had
helped a hundred like her—men and women—though his enemies tried to
discredit and disgrace him by accusing him of untrue motives. Oh, Mr.
Trant, you do not know—you cannot understand—what shadows and pitfalls
surround a man in the position Mr. Bronson held. That is why, though
for two years we had known and loved each other, he waited so long
before asking me to marry him. I am thankful that he spoke in time to
give me the right to defend him now before the world! They took his
life; they shall not take his good name! No! No! They shall not! Help
me, Mr. Trant, if you can—help me!”

“Inspector Walker!” said Trant tensely, “I understand that all of the
sixteen men of the ring claimed alibis. Was Kanlan’s one of the best
or the worst?”

The inspector hesitated. “One of the worst,” he replied, unwillingly.
“I am sorry to say, the very worst.”

To his surprise, Trant’s eyes blazed triumphantly. “Miss Allison,”
said he, quietly and decidedly, “I had not expected till I had tested
Kanlan to be able to assure you that he is not guilty. But now I think
I am safe in promising it—provided you are sure that Mr. Bronson’s
watch was right when he left you that night. And, Inspector Walker, if
you are also certain that the murderer waited in the vestibule of that
electro-plating shop, it will be soon, indeed, that we can give
Crowley a better—or rather a worse—man to send to trial in Kanlan’s
place.”

Again Trant was conscious that the giant inspector was estimating not
the incomprehensible statement he had made, but Trant himself. And
again Walker seemed satisfied.

“When can I go with you to Harrison Street to prove this, inspector?”

“I shall see Miss Allison home, and meet you at Harrison Street in an
hour.”

“You will let me know the result of the test at once, Mr. Trant?”

“At once, Miss Allison.” Trant took his hat and dashed from the
station.


Harrison Street police station, Chicago, is headquarters of the first
police division in the third city of the world. But neither London nor
New York, the two larger cities, nor Paris, whose population of two
million and a half Chicago is now passing, possesses a police division
more complex, diverse, and puzzling in the cosmopolitan diversity of
the persons arrested than this first of Chicago.

But from all the dozen diversities brought to the Harrison Street
station daily, for two weeks none had challenged in interest the case
against Jake Kanlan, the racing man and gambler, rearrested and held
for the murder of Bronson. Trant appreciated this as, with his
galvanometer and batteries in a suit case, he pushed his way among
patrolmen, detectives, reporters, and the curious into the station.
But at once he caught sight of the giant inspector, Walker.

“You’re late.” Walker led him into a side room. “I’ve been putting in
the time telling Sweeny here,” Walker introduced him to one of the two
men within, “and Captain Crowley, how you mean to work your scheme.
We’ve been waiting for you an hour!”

“I’m sorry,” Trant apologized. “I have been going over the files of
the papers just before and after the murder. And I must admit, Captain
Crowley,” Trant conceded, “that Kanlan had as strong a reason as any
for wanting Bronson out of the way. But I found one remarkably
significant thing. You have seen it?” He pulled a folded newspaper
from his pocket and handed it to them. “I mean this paragraph at the
bottom of the front page.”

The captain read it eagerly, then leaned back and laughed. “Sure, I
saw it,” he derided. “It’s that old Johanson fake, Sweeny—and he
thought it was a clew!” The inspector took the paper.

“Threatener of Bronson Breaks Jail” was the heading, and under it was
this short paragraph:

  James Johanson, the notorious Stockyards murderer, whom City
  Attorney Bronson sent up for life three years ago, escaped from the
  penitentiary early this morning and is thought by the officials to
  be making his way to this city. His trial will be remembered for the
  dramatic and spectacular denunciation of the Prosecuting Attorney by
  the convicted man upon his condemnation, and his threat to free
  himself and “do for” Bronson.

“You see the date of the paper?” said Trant. “It is the five o’clock
edition of the evening before Bronson was murdered! Johanson is
reported escaped and at once Bronson is killed.”

Crowley snickered patronizingly. “So you thought, before your
palmistry, you could string us with that?” he jeered. “You might
better have kept us waiting a little longer, young man, and you’d have
found out that Johanson couldn’t have done it, for he never escaped.
It was a slip of a sneak thief, Johnson, that escaped, and he was on
his way back to Joliet before night. The _News_ got the name wrong,
that’s all, son.”

“I was quite able to find that out, too, before coming here, Captain
Crowley,” Trant said quietly, “both that Johanson never escaped and
that all evening papers except the _News_ had the name correctly. Even
the _News_ corrected its account in its later edition. And I did not
say that Johanson himself had anything to do with it. But either you
must claim it a strange coincidence that, within eight hours after a
report was current in the city that Johanson had broken out and was
coming to murder Bronson, Bronson was actually murdered, or else you
must admit the practical certainty that the man waiting to murder
Bronson saw this account, and, not knowing it was incorrect, chose
that night to kill the attorney, so as to lay it to Johanson.” He
picked up his suit case. “But come, let us test Kanlan.”

“I haven’t told Jake what you’re going to do to him,” Walker
volunteered, as he led the three to the cells below. Sweeny, at
Crowley’s nod, had brought with him a satchel from the upper office.

Trant had trained himself to avoid definite expectation; yet as he
faced the man within he felt a momentary surprise. For at first he
could see in Kanlan only a portly, quiet man, carelessly dressed in
clothes a knowing tailor had cut. But as his eyes saw clearer he
perceived that the portliness was not of flesh but of huge muscles,
thinly coated with fat, that the plump, olive-skinned cheeks concealed
a square, fighting jaw, and that his quiet was the loll of the
successful, city-bred animal, bound by no laws but his own—but an
animal powerful enough to prefer to fight fair. His heavy lids lifted
to watch listlessly as Trant opened his suit case and took out the
instruments for the test.

The galvanometer consisted merely of a little dial with a needle
arranged to register on a scale an electric current down to hundredths
of a milliampère. Trant attached two wires to the binding posts of the
instrument, the circuit including a single cell battery. Each wire
connected with a simple steel cylinder electrode. With one held in
each hand, and the palms of the hands slightly dampened to perfect the
contact, a light current passed through the body and swung the
delicate needle over the scale to register the change in the current.
Walker, and even Captain Crowley, saw more clearly now how, if it was
a fact that moisture must come from the glands in the palm of the hand
under emotion, the changes in the amount of the current passing
through the person holding the electrodes must register upon the dial,
and the subject be unable to conceal his emotional change when
confronted with guilty objects. Kanlan, comprehending nothing, but
assured by Walker’s nod that the test was fair, put out his hands for
the electrodes.

“You’re wrong, friend,” he said, quietly. “I don’t know your game. But
I ain’t afraid, if it’s on the square. Of course, I ain’t sorry he’s
dead, but—I didn’t do it!”

Trant glanced quickly at the dial. A current, so very slight that he
knew it must be entirely imperceptible to Kanlan, registered upon the
scale; and having registered it, the needle remained steady.

“Watch it!” he commanded; then checked himself. “No; wait.” He felt in
his pocket. Removing the newspaper which he had there, still folded at
the account of the escape of the convict Johanson, he looked about for
some place to put it, and then laid it upon Kanlan’s knee. He took a
little phial from his pocket, uncorked it as if to oil the mechanism
about the galvanometer, but spilled it on the floor. The stifling,
sickening odor of banana oil pervaded the cell; and as Kanlan smiled
at his clumsiness, Trant took his watch from his pocket and—with the
gamester still watching him curiously—slowly set it forward an hour.
The needle of the galvanometer dial, in plain view of all, waited
steady in its place. The young psychologist glanced at it satisfiedly.

“Well, what’s the matter with the show?” Crowley jeered, impatiently.
“Commence.”

“Commence, Captain Crowley?” Trant raised himself triumphantly. “I
have finished it.” They stared at him as though distrusting his
sanity. “You have seen for yourself the needle stand steady in place,”
Trant continued. “Inspector Walker”—he turned to the friendly superior
officer as he recognized the hopelessness of explaining to Crowley—“I
understood, of course, when I asked you to bring me here that, even if
my test should prove conclusive to me, yet I could scarcely hope to
have the police yet accept it. I shall let Miss Allison know that
Kanlan can have had no possible connection with the crime against Mr.
Bronson; but I understand that I can clear Kanlan in the eyes of the
police only by giving Captain Crowley,” Trant bowed to that astounded
officer, “the real murderer in his place.”

“You say you have made the test, Trant?” Walker challenged, in
stupefaction. But before Trant could answer, Crowley pushed him aside,
roughly, and stooped to the satchel which Sweeny had brought.

“Of course he hasn’t, Walker!” he answered, disgustedly. “He don’t
dare to, and is throwing a bluff. But I’ll show him, with his own
machine, too, if there’s anything to it at all!” The captain stooped
and, pulling from the opened valise a photograph of the spot where the
murder was committed, he dashed it before Kanlan’s face. Instantly, as
both the captain and inspector turned to Trant’s galvanometer needle,
the little instrument showed a reaction. Up it crept, higher and
higher, over the scale of the dial, as the sweat, surprised by the
guilty picture from the gambler’s hands, made the contact with the
electrodes in his palms and the current flowed through his body.

“See! So it wasn’t all a lie!” Crowley pointed triumphantly to the
instrument. He stooped again to the satchel and put a photograph of
the body of the murdered attorney before the suspect’s eyes. The
stolid Kanlan still held the muscles of his face firm and no flush
betrayed him; but again, as Crowley, Sweeny, and Walker excitedly
stared at the galvanometer needle it jumped and registered the
stronger current. Crowley, with a victorious grunt, lifted the
blood-stained coat of the murdered attorney and rubbed the sleeve
against Kanlan’s cheek. At this, and again and again with each
presentation of objects connected with the crime, the merciless little
galvanometer showed an ever-increasing reaction. Trant shrugged his
shoulders.

“Jake, we got the goods on you now!” Crowley took the gambler’s chin
roughly between his tough fists and pushed back his head until the
uneasy eyes met his own. “You’d best confess. You killed him!”

“I did not!” Kanlan choked.

“You’re a liar! You killed him. I knew it, anyway. If you were a
nigger you’d have been lynched before this!”

For the first time since Crowley took the test into his own hands,
Trant, watching the galvanometer needle, started in surprise. He gazed
suddenly at Kanlan’s olive face, surmounted by his curly black hair,
and smiled. The needle had jumped up higher again, completing
Crowley’s triumph. They filed out of the cell, and back to the little
office.

“So I proved him on your own machine,” Crowley rejoiced openly, “you
four-flushing patent palmist!”

“You’ve proved, Captain Crowley,” Trant returned quietly, “what I
already knew, that in your previous examinations with Kanlan, and
probably with the rest also, you have ruined the value of those things
you have there for any proper test, by exhibiting them with threats
again and again. That was why I had to make the test I did. I tell you
once more that Kanlan is not the murderer of Bronson. And I am glad to
be able to tell Miss Allison the same thing, as I promised her, at the
very earliest moment.” He picked up the telephone receiver and gave
the Allisons’ number. But suddenly the receiver was wrenched from his
hand.

“Not yet,” Inspector Walker commanded. “You’ll tell Miss Allison
nothing until we know more about this case.”

“I don’t ask you to release Kanlan yet, inspector,” Trant said
quietly. Crowley laughed offensively. “That is, not until I have
proved for you the proper man in his place.” He drew a paper from his
pocket. “I cannot surely name him yet; but picking the most likely of
them from what I read, I advise you to rearrest Caylis.”

Crowley, throwing himself into a chair, burst into loud laughter. “He
chose Caylis, Sweeny, did you hear that?” Crowley gasped. “That’s in
the same class as the rest of your performance, young fellow. Say, I’m
sorry not to be able to oblige you,” he went on, derisively, “but, you
see, Caylis was the only one of the whole sixteen who _couldn’t_ have
killed Bronson; for he was with me—talking to me—in the station, from
half past one that morning, half an hour before the murder, till half
past two, a half hour after!”

Trant sprang to his feet excitedly. “He was?” he cried. “Why didn’t
you tell me that before? Inspector Walker, I said a moment ago that I
could not be sure which of the other fifteen killed Bronson; but now I
say arrest Caylis—Caylis is the murderer!”

Captain Crowley and Sweeny stared at him again, as if believing him
demented.

“I would try to explain, Inspector Walker,” said Trant, “but believe
me, I mean no offense when I say that I think it would be absolutely
useless now. But—” he hesitated, as the inspector turned coldly away.
“Inspector Walker, you said this morning you knew Kanlan from his
birth. How much negro blood is there in him?”

“How did you know that?” cried Walker, staring at Trant in amazement.
“He’s always passed for white. He’s one eighth nigger. But not three
people know it. Who told you?”

“The galvanometer,” Trant replied, quietly, “the same way it told me
that he was innocent and Crowley’s test useless. Now, will you
rearrest Caylis at once and hold him till I can get the galvanometer
on him?”

“I will, young fellow!” Walker promised, still staring at him. “If
only for that nigger blood.”

But Crowley had one more shot to make. “Say, you,” he interrupted,
“you threw a bluff about an hour back that the man who killed Bronson
got the idea from the _News_. Sweeny, here, has been having these
fellows shadowed since weeks before the murder. Sweeny knows what
papers they read.” He turned to the detective. “Sweeny, what paper did
Kanlan always read?”

“The _News_.”

“And Caylis—what did he _never_ read?”

“The _News_,” the detective answered.

“Well, what have you for that now, son?” Crowley swung back.

“Only thanks, Captain Crowley, for that additional help. Inspector
Walker, I am willing to rest my case against Caylis upon the fact that
he was with Crowley at two o’clock. That alone is enough to hang him,
and not as an accessory, but as the principal who himself struck the
blow. But as there obviously was an accessory—and what Crowley has
just said makes it more certain—perhaps I had better make as sure of
that accessory, and also get a better answer for the real mystery,
which is why and how Bronson left his house and went in that direction
at that time in the morning, before I give Miss Allison the news for
which she is waiting.”

He took his hat and left them staring after him.


An hour later Trant jumped from a North Side car and hurried down
Superior Street. Two blocks east of the car line he recognized from
the familiar pictures in the newspapers the frescoed and once
fashionable front of the Mitchell boarding house, where Bronson had
lived. He was seeing it for the first time, but with barely more than
a curious glance, he went on toward the place, a block east, where the
attorney’s body had been found. He noted carefully the character of
the buildings on both sides of the street.

There was a grocery, between two old mansions; beyond the next house a
cigar store; then another boarding house, and the electroplater’s shop
before which the body was found. The little shop, smelling strongly of
the oils and acids used in the electroplater’s trade, was of one
story. Trant noted the convenient vestibule flush with the walk, and
the position of the street lamp which would throw its light on anyone
approaching, while concealing with a dark shadow one waiting in the
vestibule.

The physical arrangement was all as he had seen it a score of times in
the newspapers; but as he stared about, the true key to the mystery of
Bronson’s death came to him magnified a hundred times in its
intensity. Who waited there in that vestibule and struck the blow
which slew Bronson, he had felt from the first would be at once
answerable under scientific investigation. But the other question, how
could the murderer wait so confidently there, knowing that Bronson
would come out of his house alone at that time of the night and pass
that way, was less simple of solution.

He glanced beyond the shop to the house where, Inspector Walker had
told him, the questionable Mrs. Hawtin lived. Beyond that he saw a
sign—that of a Dr. O’Connor. He swung about and returned to the house
where Bronson had boarded.

“Tell Mrs. Mitchell that Mr. Trant, who is working with Inspector
Walker, wishes to speak with her,” he said to the maid, and he had a
moment to estimate the parlor before the mistress of the house
entered.

A white-faced, brown-eyed little boy of seven, with pallid cheeks and
golden hair, had fled between the portières as Trant entered. The room
was not at all typical of the boarding house. Its ornament and its
arrangement showed the imprint of a decided, if not cultivated,
feminine personality. The walls lacked the usual faded family
portraits, and there was an entire absence of ancient knickknacks to
give evidence of a past gentility. So he was not surprised when the
mistress of this house entered, pretty after a spectacular fashion,
impressing him with a quiet reserve of passion and power.

“I am always ready to see anyone who comes to help poor Mr. Bronson,”
she said.

The little boy, who had fled at Trant’s approach, ran to her. But even
as she sat with her arms about the child, Trant tried in vain to cloak
her with that atmosphere of motherliness of which Miss Allison had
spoken.

“I heard so, Mrs. Mitchell,” said Trant. “But as you have had to tell
the painful details so many times to the police and the reporters, I
shall not ask you for them again.”

“Do you mean,” she looked up quickly, “that you bring me news instead
of coming to ask it?”

“No, I want your help, but only in one particular. You must have known
Mr. Bronson’s habits and needs more intimately than any other person.
Recently you may have thought of some possible reason for his going
out in that manner and at that time, other than that held by the
police.”

“Oh, I wish I could, Mr. Trant!” the woman cried. “But I cannot!”

“I saw the sign of a doctor—Doctor O’Connor—just beyond the place
where he was killed. Do you think it possible that he was going to
Doctor O’Connor’s, or have you never thought of that?”

“I thought of that, Mr. Trant,” the woman returned, a little
defiantly. “I tried to hope, at first, that that might be the reason
for his going out. But, as I had to tell the detectives who asked me
of that some time ago, I know that Mr. Bronson so intensely disliked
Doctor O’Connor that he could not have been going to him, no matter
how urgent the need. Besides, Doctor Carmeachal, who always attended
him, lives around this corner, the other way.” She indicated the
direction of the car line.

“I see,” Trant acknowledged, thoughtfully. “Yet, if Mr. Bronson
disliked Doctor O’Connor, he must have met him. Was it here?” He
leaned over and took the hand of the pallid little boy. “Perhaps
Doctor O’Connor comes to see your son?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Trant!” the child put in eagerly. “Doctor O’Connor
always comes to see me. I like Doctor O’Connor.”

“Still, I agree with you, Mrs. Mitchell,” Trant raised his eyes calmly
to meet the woman’s suddenly agitated ones, “that Mr. Bronson could
scarcely have been going to consult Doctor O’Connor for himself in
such a fashion and at—half past one.”

“At two, Mr. Trant,” the woman corrected.

“Ten minutes after, to be exact, if you mean when the watch was
stopped!” The woman arose suddenly, with a motion sinuous as that of a
startled tiger. It was as though in the quiet parlor a note of passion
and alarm had been struck. Trant bowed quietly as she rang for the
maid to show him out. But when he was alone with the maid in the hall
his eyes flashed suddenly.

“Tell me,” he demanded, swiftly, “the night Mr. Bronson was killed,
was there anything the matter with the telephone?”

The girl hesitated and stared at him queerly. “Why, yes, sir,” she
said. “A man had to come next day to fix it.”

“The break was on the inside—I mean, the man worked in the house?”

“Why—yes, sir.” The maid had opened the door. Trant stopped with a
smothered exclamation and picked up a newspaper just delivered. He
spread it open and saw that it was the five o’clock edition of the
_News_.

“This is Mrs. Mitchell’s paper,” he demanded, “the one she always
reads?”

“Why, yes, sir,” the girl answered again.

Trant paused to consider. “Tell Mrs. Mitchell everything I asked you,”
he decided finally, and hurried down the steps and back to the police
station.

In the room where the desk sergeant told him Inspector Walker was
awaiting him Trant found both Crowley and Sweeny with the big officer,
and a fourth man, a stranger to him. The stranger was slight and dark.
He had a weak, vain face, but one of startling beauty, with great,
lazy brown eyes, filled with childlike innocence. He twisted his
mustache and measured Trant curiously, as the blunt, red-headed young
man entered.

“So this is the fellow,” he asked Crowley, derisively, “that made you
think I sent a double to talk with you while I went out to do
Bronson?”

“Will you have Caylis taken out of the room for a few moments,
inspector?” Trant requested, in reply. The inspector motioned to
Sweeny, who led out the prisoner.

“Where’s your accessory?” asked Crowley, grinning.

“I’ll tell you presently,” Trant put him off. “I want to test Caylis
without his knowing anything unusual is being tried. Captain Crowley,
can we have the brass-knobbed chair from your office?”

“What for?” Crowley demanded.

“I will show you when I have it.”

At Walker’s nod Crowley brought in the chair. It was a deep,
high-backed, wooden chair, with high arms; and on each arm was a brass
knob, so placed that a person sitting in the chair would almost
inevitably place his palms over them. As the captain brought in the
chair, Trant opened his suit case and took out his galvanometer,
batteries and wires. Cutting off the cylinder electrodes which Kanlan
had held in his hands during the test of that morning, Trant ran the
wires under each arm of the chair and made a contact with each brass
knob. He connected them with the battery, which he hid under the
chair, and with the galvanometer dial, which he placed behind the
chair upon a table, concealing it behind his hat.

He seated himself in the chair and grasped the knobs in his palms.
With his hands dry no perceptible current passed through his body from
knob to knob to register upon the dial.

“Scare me!” he suddenly commanded the inspector.

“What?” Walker bent his brows.

“Scare me, and watch the needle.”

Walker, half comprehending, fumbled in the drawer of a desk,
straightened suddenly, a cocked revolver in his hand, and snapped it
at Trant’s head. At once the needle of the galvanometer leaped across
the scale, and Crowley and Walker both stared.

“Thank you, inspector,” said Trant as he rose from the chair. “It
works very well; you see, my palms couldn’t help sweating when you
snapped the gun at me before I appreciated that it wasn’t loaded. Now,
we’ll test Caylis as we did Kanlan.”

The inspector went to the door, took Caylis from Sweeny, and led him
to the chair.

“Sit down,” he said. “Mr. Trant wants to talk to you.”

The childlike, brown eyes, covertly alert and watchful, followed
Trant, and Caylis nervously grasped the two inviting knobs on the arms
of his chair. Walker and Crowley, standing where they could watch both
Trant and the galvanometer dial, saw that the needle stood where it
had stood for Trant before Walker put the revolver to his head.

Trant quietly took from his pocket the newspaper containing the false
account of Johanson’s escape, and, looking about as though for a place
to put it—as he had done in his trial of Kanlan—laid it, with the
Johanson paragraph uppermost, in Caylis’s lap. Walker smothered an
exclamation; Crowley looked up startled. The needle—which had remained
so still when the paper was laid upon Kanlan’s knee—had jumped across
the scale.

Caylis gave no sign; his hands still grasped the brass knobs
nervously; his face was quiet and calm. Trant took from his pocket the
little phial refilled with banana oil and emptied its contents on the
floor as he had done that morning. Again Walker and Crowley, with
startled eyes, watched the needle move. Trant took his watch from his
pocket, and, as in the morning, before Caylis’s face he set it an hour
ahead.

“What are all these tricks?” said Caylis, contemptuously.

But Walker and Crowley, with flushed faces bent above the moving
needle, paid no heed. Trant posted himself between Caylis and the
door.

“You see now,” Trant cried, triumphantly, to the police officers, “the
difference between showing the false account of the escape of Johanson
to an innocent man, and showing it to the man whom it sent out to do
murder. You see the difference between loosing the stench of banana
oil before a man who associates nothing with it, and before the
criminal who waited in the vestibule of the electro-plater’s shop and
can never in his life smell banana oil again without its bringing upon
him the fear of the murderer. You see the difference, too, Captain
Crowley, between setting a watch forward in front of a man to whom it
can suggest nothing criminal, and setting it an hour ahead in front of
the man who, after he had murdered Bronson—not at two, but a little
after one—stooped to the body and set the watch at least an hour fast,
then rushed in to talk coolly with you, in order to establish an
incontestable alibi for the time he had so fixed for the murder!”

Police Captain Crowley, livid with the first flash of fear that the
murderer had made of him a tool, swung threateningly toward Caylis.
For a moment, as though stiffened by the strain of following the
accusation, Caylis had sat apparently paralyzed. Now in the sudden
change from his absolute security to complete despair, he faced
Crowley, white as paper; then, as his heart began to pound again, his
skin turned to purple. His handsome, vain face changed to the face of
a demon; his childlike eyes flared; he sprang toward Trant. But when
he had drawn the two police officers together to stop his rush, he
turned and leaped for a window. Before he could dash it open, Walker’s
powerful hand clutched him back.

“This, I think,” Trant gasped, and controlled himself, as he surveyed
the now weak and nerveless prisoner, “should convince even Captain
Crowley. But it was not needed, Caylis. From the time Mrs. Mitchell
showed you the report of Johanson’s escape in the _News_ and you
thought you could kill Bronson safely, and you got her to send him out
to you, until you had struck him down, set his watch forward and
rushed to Crowley for your alibi, my case was complete.”

“She—she”—Caylis’s hands clenched—“peached on me—but you—got her?” he
shouted vengefully.

Walker and Crowley turned to Trant in amazement.

“Mrs. Mitchell?” they demanded.

“Yes—your wife, Caylis?” Trant pressed.

“Yes, my wife, and _mine_,” the man hissed defiantly, “eight years ago
back in St. Louis till, till this cursed Bronson broke up the gang and
sent me over the road for three years, and she got to thinking he must
be stuck on her and might marry her, because he helped her,
until—until she found out!”

“Ah; I thought she had been your wife when I saw you, after the boy;
but, of course—” Trant checked himself as he heard a knock on the
door.

“Miss Allison is in her carriage outside sir,” the officer who had
knocked saluted Inspector Walker. “She has come to see you, sir. She
says you sent no word.” Walker looked from the cringing Caylis to
Trant.

“We do not need Caylis any longer, inspector,” said Trant. “I can tell
Miss Allison all the facts now, if you wish to have her hear them.”

The door, which shut behind Crowley and his prisoner, reopened almost
immediately to admit the inspector, and Miss Allison. With her fair,
sweet face flushed with the hope which had taken the place of the
white fear and defiance of the morning, Trant barely knew her.

“The inspector tells me, Mr. Trant,” she stretched out both her hands
to him, “that you have good news for me—that Kanlan was not guilty—and
so Randolph was not going out as—as they said he was when they killed
him.”

“No; he was not!” Trant returned, triumphantly. “He was going instead
on an errand of mercy, Miss Allison, to summon a doctor for a little
child whom he had been told was suddenly and dangerously ill. The
telephone in the house had been broken, so at the sudden summons he
dashed out, without remembering his danger. I am glad to be able to
tell you of that fine, brave thing when I must tell you, also, the
terrible truth that the woman whom he had helped and protected was the
one who, in a fit of jealousy, when she found he had merely meant to
be kind to her, sent him out to his death.”

“Mrs. Mitchell?” the girl cried in horror. “Oh, not Mrs. Mitchell!”

“Yes, Mrs. Mitchell, for whom he had done so much and whose past he
protected, in the noblest way, even from you. But as she was the wife
of the criminal we have just caught, I am glad to believe this man
played upon her old passions, so that for a while he held his old sway
over her and she did his bidding without counting the consequences.

“I told you this morning, Inspector Walker, that I could not explain
to you my conclusions in the test of Kanlan. But I owe you now a full
explanation. You will recall that I commented upon the fact that the
crime which was puzzling you was committed within so short a time
after the knowledge of Mr. Bronson’s engagement became known, that I
divined a possible connection. But that, at best, was only indirect.
The first direct thing which struck me was the circumstance that the
man waited in the vestibule of the electro-plater’s shop. I was
certain that the very pungent fruit-ether odor of banana oil—the
thinning material used by electro-platers in preparing their
lacquers—must be forever intimately connected with the crime in the
mind of the man who waited in that vestibule. To no one else could
that odor connect itself with crime. So I knew that if I could test
all sixteen men it would be child’s play to pick the murderer. But
such a test was cumbersome. And the next circumstance you gave me made
it unnecessary. I mean the fact of the ‘fast watch’ which, Miss
Allison was able to tell me, could not have been fast at all. I saw
that the watch must therefore have been set forward at least ten
minutes, probably much longer. Who, between half past ten and two,
could have done this, and for what reason? The one convincing
possibility was that the assassin had set it forward, trusting it
would not be found till morning, and his only object could have been
to establish for himself an alibi—for two o’clock.

“I surprised you, therefore, by assuring you, even before I saw
Kanlan, that he was innocent, because Kanlan had no alibi whatever. I
proved his innocence to my own satisfaction by exhibiting before him
without exciting any emotional reaction at all, the report in the
_News_ which, I felt fairly sure, must have had something to do with
the crime; by loosing the smell of banana oil, and setting forward a
watch in his presence. The objects which Crowley used had been so
thoroughly connected with the crime in Kanlan’s mind that—though he is
innocent—they caused reactions to which I paid no attention, except
the one reaction which, at Crowley’s threat, told me of Kanlan’s negro
blood. As for the rest, they merely scared Kanlan as your pistol
scared me, and as they would have scared any innocent man under the
same conditions. My own tests could cause reactions only in the guilty
man.

“That man, I think you understand now,” Trant continued rapidly, “I
was practically sure of when Crowley told me of Caylis’s alibi. You
have just seen the effect upon him of the same tests I tried on
Kanlan, and the conclusive evidence the galvanometer gave. The fact
that Caylis himself never read the _News_ only contributed to my
certainty that another person was concerned, a person who could have
either decoyed or sent Mr. Bronson out. So I went to the place, found
the doctor’s sign just beyond, discovered that that doctor treated,
not Bronson, but the little Mitchell boy, that the telephone had been
broken inside the house that evening to furnish an excuse for sending
Bronson out, and that Mrs. Mitchell reads the _News_.”

“The Mitchell woman sent him out, of course,” Walker checked him
almost irritably. “Six blocks away—Crowley ought to have her by now.”

Miss Allison gathered herself together and arose. She clutched the
inspector’s sleeve. “Inspector Walker, must you—” she faltered.

“None of us is called upon to say how she shall be punished, Miss
Allison,” Trant said, compassionately. “We must trust all to the
twelve men who shall try these two.” But to her eyes, searching his,
Trant seemed to be awaiting something. Suddenly the telephone rang.
Walker took up the receiver. “It’s Crowley,” he cried. “He says Mrs.
Mitchell skipped—cleared. You could have taken her,” he accused Trant,
“but you let her go!”

Trant stood watching the face of Miss Allison, unmoved. The desk
sergeant burst in upon them.

“Mrs. Mitchell’s outside, inspector! She said she’s come to give
herself up!”

“You counted upon that, I suppose,” Walker turned again upon Trant.
“But don’t do it again,” he warned, “for the sake of what’s before
you!”



CHAPTER III

The Red Dress

“Another morning; and nothing! Three days gone and no word, no sign
from her; or any mark of weakening!”

The powerful man at the window clenched his hands. Then he swung about
to face his confidential secretary and stared at her uncertainly. It
was the tenth time that morning, and the fiftieth time in the three
days just gone, that Walter Eldredge, the young president of the great
Chicago drygoods house of Eldredge and Company, had paused, incapable
of continuing business.

“Never mind that letter, Miss Webster,” he commanded. “But tell me
again—are you sure that no one has come to see me, and there has been
no message, about my wife—I mean about Edward—about Edward?”

“No; no one, I am sure, Mr. Eldredge!”

“Send Mr. Murray to me!” he said.

“Raymond, something more effective must be done!” he cried, as his
brother-in-law appeared in the doorway. “It is impossible for matters
to remain longer in this condition!” His face grew gray. “I am going
to put it into the hands of the police!”

“The police!” cried Murray. “After the way the papers treated you and
Isabel when you married? You and Isabel in the papers again, and the
police making it a public scandal! Surely there’s still some private
way! Why not this fellow Trant. You must have followed in the papers
the way he got immediate action in the Bronson murder mystery, after
the police force was at fault for two weeks. He’s our man for this
sort of thing, Walter! Where can we get his address?”

“Try the University Club,” said Eldredge.

Murray lifted the desk phone. “He’s a member; he’s there. What shall I
tell him,” Eldredge himself took up the conversation.

“Yes! Mr. Trant? Mr. Trant, this is Walter Eldredge, of Eldredge and
Company. Yes; there is a private matter—something has happened in my
family; I cannot tell you over the phone. If you could come to me
here. . . . Yes! It is criminal.” His voice broke. “For God’s sake
come and help me!”

Ten minutes later a boy showed Trant into the young president’s
private room. If the psychologist had never seen Walter Eldredge’s
portrait in the papers he could have seen at a glance that he was a
man trained to concentrate his attention on large matters; and he as
quickly recognized that the pale, high-bred, but weak features of
Eldredge’s companion belonged to a dependent, subordinate to the
other.

Eldredge had sprung nervously to his feet and Trant was conscious that
he was estimating him with the acuteness of one accustomed to judge
another quickly and to act upon his judgment. Yet it was Murray who
spoke first.

“Mr. Eldredge wished to apply to the police this morning, Mr. Trant,”
he explained, patronizingly, “in a matter of the most delicate nature;
but I—I am Raymond Murray, Mr. Eldredge’s brother-in-law—persuaded him
to send for you. I did this, trusting quite as much to your delicacy
in guarding Mr. Eldredge from public scandal as to your ability to
help us directly. We understand that you are not a regular private
detective.”

“I am a psychologist, Mr. Eldredge,” Trant replied to the older man,
stifling his irritation at Murray’s manner. “I have merely made some
practical applications of simple psychological experiments, which
should have been put into police procedure years ago. Whether I am
able to assist you or not, you may be sure that I will keep your
confidence.”

“Then this is the case, Trant.” Murray came to the point quickly. “My
nephew, Edward Eldredge, Walter’s older son, was kidnaped three days
ago.”

“What?” Trant turned from one to the other in evident astonishment.

“Since the Whitman case in Ohio,” continued Murray, “and the Bradley
kidnaping in St. Louis last week—where they got the description of the
woman but have caught no one yet—the papers predicted an epidemic of
child stealing. And it has begun in Chicago with the stealing of
Walter’s son!”

“That didn’t surprise me—that the boy may be missing,” Trant rejoined.
“But it surprised me, Mr. Eldredge, that no one has heard of it! Why
did you not at once give it the greatest publicity? Why have you not
called in the police? What made you wait three days before calling in
even me?”

“Because the family,” Murray replied, “have known from the first that
it was Mrs. Eldredge who had the child abducted.”

“_Mrs. Eldredge?_” Trant cried incredulously. “Your wife, sir?” he
appealed to the older man.

“Yes, Mr. Trant,” Eldredge answered, miserably.

“Then why have you sent for me at all?”

“Because in three days we have gained nothing from her,” the
brother-in-law replied before Eldredge could answer. “And, from the
accounts of your ability, we thought you could, in some way, learn
from her where the child is concealed.”

The young president of Eldredge and Company was twisting under the
torture of these preliminaries. But Trant turned curiously to Murray.
“Mrs. Eldredge is not your sister?”

“No; not the present Mrs. Eldredge. My sister, Walter’s first wife,
died six years ago, when Edward was born. She gave her life for the
boy whom the second Mrs. Eldredge—” he remembered himself as Eldredge
moved quickly.

“Isabel, my second wife, Mr. Trant,” Eldredge burst out in the
bitterness of having to explain to a stranger his most intimate
emotion, “as I thought all the world knew, was my private secretary—my
stenographer—in this office. We were married a little over two years
ago. If you remember the way the papers treated her then, you will
understand what it would mean if this matter became public! The boy—”
he hesitated. “I suppose I must make the circumstances plain to you.
Seven years ago I married Edith Murray, Raymond’s sister. A year later
she died. About the same time my father died, and I had to take up the
business. Mrs. Murray, who was in the house at the time of Edith’s
death, was good enough to stay and take charge of my child and my
household.”

“And Mr. Murray? He stayed too?”

“Raymond was in college. Afterwards he came to my house, naturally.
Two years ago I married my second wife. At Mrs. Eldredge’s wish, as
much as my own, the Murrays remained with us. My wife appreciated even
better than I that her training had scarcely fitted her to take up at
once her social duties: the newspapers had prejudiced society against
her, so Mrs. Murray remained to introduce her socially.”

“I see—for over two years. But meanwhile Mrs. Eldredge had taken
charge of the child?”

“My wife was—not at ease with the boy.” Eldredge winced at the direct
question. “Edward liked her, but—I found her a hundred times crying
over her incompetence with children, and she was contented to let Mrs.
Murray continue to look after him. But after her own son was born—”

“Ah!” said Trant, expectantly.

“I shall conceal nothing. After her own son was born, I am obliged to
admit that Mrs. Eldredge’s attitude changed. She became insistent to
have charge of Edward, and his grandmother, Mrs. Murray, still
hesitated to trust Isabel. But finally I agreed to give my wife charge
of everything and complete control over Edward. If all went well, Mrs.
Murray was to reopen her old home and leave us, when—it was Tuesday
afternoon, three days ago, Mr. Trant—my wife took Edward, with her
maid, out in the motor. It was the boy’s sixth birthday. It was almost
the first time in his life he had left the house to go any distance
without his grandmother. My wife did not bring him back.

“Why she never brought him back—what happened to the boy, Mr. Trant,”
Eldredge stooped to a private drawer for papers, “I wish you to
determine for yourself from the evidence here. As soon as I saw how
personal a matter it was, I had my secretary, Miss Webster, take down
the evidence of the four people who saw the child taken away: my
chauffeur, Mrs. Eldredge’s maid, Miss Hendricks and Mrs. Eldredge. The
chauffeur, Morris, has been in my employ for five years. I am
confident that he is truthful. Moreover, he distinctly prefers Mrs.
Eldredge over everyone else. The maid, Lucy Carew, has been also
singularly devoted to my wife. She, too, is truthful.

“The testimony of the third person—Miss Hendricks—is far the most
damaging against my wife. Miss Hendricks makes a direct and inevasive
charge; it is practical proof. For I must tell you truthfully, Mr.
Trant, that Miss Hendricks is far the best educated and capable
witness of all. She saw the whole affair much nearer than any of the
others. She is a person of irreproachable character, a rich old maid,
living with her married sister on the street corner where the
kidnaping occurred. Moreover, her testimony, though more elaborate, is
substantiated in every important particular by both Morris and Lucy
Carew.”

Eldredge handed over the first pages.

“Against these, Mr. Trant, is this statement of—my wife’s. My home
faces the park, and is the second house from the street corner. There
is, however, no driveway entrance into the park at this intersecting
street. There are entrances a long block and a half away in one
direction and more than two blocks in the other. But the winding drive
inside the park approaches the front of the house within four hundred
feet, and is separated from it by the park greensward.”

“I understand.” Trant took the pages of evidence eagerly. Eldredge
went to the window and stood knotting the curtain cord in suspense.
But Murray crossed his legs, and, lighting a cigarette, watched Trant
attentively. Trant read the testimony of the chauffeur, which was
dated by Eldredge as taken Tuesday afternoon at five o’clock. It read
thus:

  Mrs. Eldredge herself called to me about one o’clock to have the
  motor ready at half-past two. Mrs. Eldredge and her maid and Master
  Edward came down and got in. We went through the park, then down the
  Lake Shore Drive almost to the river and turned back. Mrs. Eldredge
  told me to return more slowly; we were almost forty minutes
  returning where we had been less than twenty coming down. Reaching
  the park, she wanted to go slower yet. She was very nervous and
  undecided. She stopped the machine three or four times while she
  pointed out things to Master Edward. She kept me winding in and out
  the different roads. Suddenly she asked me the time, and I told her
  it was just four; and she told me to go home at once. But on the
  curved park road in front of the house and about four hundred feet
  away from it, I “killed” my engine. I was some minutes starting it.
  Mrs. Eldredge kept asking how soon we could go on; but I could not
  tell her. After she had asked me three or four times, she opened the
  door and let Master Edward down. I thought he was coming around to
  watch me—a number of other boys had been standing about me just
  before. But she sent him across the park lawn toward the house. I
  was busy with my engine. Half a minute later the maid screamed. She
  jumped down and grabbed me. A woman was making off with Master
  Edward, running with him up the cross street toward the car line.
  Master Edward was crying and fighting. Just then my engines started.
  The maid and I jumped into the machine and went around by the park
  driveway as fast as we could to the place where the woman had picked
  up Master Edward. This did not take more than two minutes, but the
  woman and Master Edward had disappeared. Mrs. Eldredge pointed out a
  boy to me who was running up the street, but when we got to him it
  was not Master Edward. We went all over the neighborhood at high
  speed, but we did not find him. I think we might have found him if
  Mrs. Eldredge had not first sent us after the other boy. I did not
  see the woman who carried off Master Edward very plainly. She was
  small.

Eldredge swung about and fixed on the young psychologist a look of
anxious inquiry. But without comment, Trant picked up the testimony of
the maid. It read:

  Mrs. Eldredge told me after luncheon that we were going out in the
  automobile with Master Edward. Master Edward did not want to go,
  because it was his birthday and he had received presents from his
  grandmother with which he wanted to play. Mrs. Eldredge—who was
  excited—made him come. We went through the park and down the Lake
  Shore Drive and came back again. It seemed to me that Mrs. Eldredge
  was getting more excited, but I thought that it was because this was
  the first time she had been out with Master Edward. But when we had
  got back almost to the house the automobile broke down, and she
  became more excited still. Finally she said to Master Edward that he
  would better get out and run home, and she helped him out of the car
  and he started. We could see him all the way, and could see right up
  to the front steps of the house. But before he got there a woman
  came running around the corner and started to run away with him. He
  screamed, and I screamed, too, and took hold of Mrs. Eldredge’s arm
  and pointed. But Mrs. Eldredge just sat still and watched. Then I
  jumped up, and Mrs. Eldredge, who was shaking all over, put out her
  hand. But I got past her and jumped out of the automobile. I
  screamed again, and grabbed the chauffeur, and pointed. Just then
  the engine started. We both got back into the automobile and went
  around by the driveway in the park. All this happened as fast as you
  can think, but we did not see either Master Edward or the woman.
  Mrs. Eldredge did not cry or take on at all. I am sure she did not
  scream when the woman picked up Master Edward, but she kept on being
  very much excited. I saw the woman who carried Master Edward off
  very plainly. She was a small blond, and wore a hat with
  violet-colored flowers in it and a violet-colored tailor-made dress.
  She looked like a lady.

Trant laid the maid’s testimony aside and looked up quickly.

“There is one extremely important thing, Mr. Eldredge,” he said. “Were
the witnesses examined separately?—that is, none of them heard the
testimony given by any other?”

“None of them, Mr. Trant.”

Then Trant picked up the testimony of Miss Hendricks, which read as
follows:

  It so happened that I was looking out of the library window—though I
  do not often look out at the window for fear people will think I am
  watching them—when I saw the automobile containing Mrs. Eldredge,
  Edward, the maid, and the chauffeur stop at the edge of the park
  driveway opposite the Eldredge home. The chauffeur descended and
  began doing something to the front of the car. But Mrs. Eldredge
  looked eagerly around in all directions, and finally toward the
  street corner on which our house stands; and almost immediately I
  noticed a woman hurrying down the cross street toward the corner.
  She had evidently just descended from a street car, for she came
  from the direction of the car line; _and her haste made me
  understand at once that she was late for some appointment_. As soon
  as Mrs. Eldredge caught sight of the woman she lifted Edward from
  the automobile to the ground, and pushed him in the woman’s
  direction. She sent him across the grass toward her. At first,
  however, the woman did not catch sight of Edward. Then she saw the
  automobile, raised her hand and made a signal. _The signal was
  returned by Mrs. Eldredge_, who pointed to the child. Immediately
  the woman ran forward, pulled Edward along in spite of his
  struggles, and ran toward the car line. It all happened very
  quickly. I am confident the kidnaping was prearranged between Mrs.
  Eldredge and the woman. I saw the woman plainly. She was small and
  dark. Her face was marked by smallpox and she looked like an
  Italian. She wore a flat hat with white feathers, a gray coat, and a
  black skirt.

“You say you can have no doubt of Miss Hendricks’ veracity?” asked
Trant.

Eldredge shook his head, miserably. “I have known Miss Hendricks for a
number of years, and I should as soon accuse myself of falsehood. She
came running over to the house as soon as this had happened, and it
was from her account that I first learned, through Mrs. Murray, that
something had occurred.”

Trant’s glance fell to the remaining sheets in his hand, the testimony
of Mrs. Eldredge; and the psychologist’s slightly mismated eyes—blue
and gray—flashed suddenly as he read the following:

  I had gone with Edward for a ride in the park to celebrate his
  birthday. It was the first time we had been out together. We stopped
  to look at the flowers and the animals. My husband had not told me
  that he expected to be home from the store early, but Edward
  reminded me that on his birthday his father always came home in the
  middle of the afternoon and brought him presents. The time passed
  quickly, and I was surprised when I learned that it was already four
  o’clock. I was greatly troubled to think that Edward’s father might
  be awaiting him, and we hurried back as rapidly as possible. We had
  almost reached the house when the engine of the automobile stopped.
  It took a very long time to fix it, and Edward was all the time
  growing more excited and impatient to see his father. It was only a
  short distance across the park to the house, which we could see
  plainly. Finally I lifted Edward out of the machine and told him to
  run across the grass to the house. He did so, but he went very
  slowly. I motioned to him to hurry. Then suddenly I saw the woman
  coming toward Edward, and the minute I saw her I was frightened. She
  came toward him slowly, stopped, and talked with him for quite a
  long time. She spoke loudly—I could hear her voice but I could not
  make out what she said. Then she took his hand—it must have been ten
  minutes after she had first spoken to him. He struggled with her,
  but she pulled him after her. She went rather slowly. But it took a
  very long time, perhaps fifteen minutes, for the motor to go around
  by the drive; and when we got to the spot Edward and the woman had
  disappeared. We looked everywhere, but could not find any trace of
  them, and she would have had time to go a considerable distance—

Trant looked up suddenly at Eldredge who had left his position by the
window and over Trant’s shoulder was reading the testimony. His face
was gray.

“I asked Mrs. Eldredge,” the husband said, pitifully, “why, if she
suspected the woman from the first, and so much time elapsed, she did
not try to prevent the kidnaping, and—she would not answer me!”

Trant nodded, and read the final paragraph of Mrs. Eldredge’s
testimony:

  The woman who took Edward was unusually large—a very big woman, not
  stout, but tall and big. She was very dark, with black hair, and she
  wore a red dress and a hat with red flowers in it.

The psychologist laid down the papers and looked from one to the other
of his companions reflectively. “What had happened that afternoon
before Mrs. Eldredge and the boy went motoring?” he asked abruptly.

“Nothing out of the ordinary, Mr. Trant,” said Eldredge. “Why do you
ask that?”

Trant’s fingertip followed on the table the last words of the
evidence. “And what woman does Mrs. Eldredge know that answers that
description—‘unusually large, not stout, but tall and big, very dark,
with black hair?’”

“No one,” said Eldredge.

“No one except,” young Murray laughed frankly, “my mother. Trant,” he
said, contemptuously, “don’t start any false leads of that sort! My
mother was with Walter at the time the kidnaping took place!”

“Mrs. Murray was with me,” Eldredge assented, “from four till five
o’clock that afternoon. She has nothing to do with the matter. But,
Trant, if you see in this mass of accusation one ray of hope that Mrs.
Eldredge is not guilty, for God’s sake give it to me, for I need it!”

The psychologist ran his fingers through his red hair and arose,
strongly affected by the appeal of the white-lipped man who faced him.
“I can give you more than a ray of hope, Mr. Eldredge,” he said. “I am
almost certain that Mrs. Eldredge not only did not cause your son’s
disappearance, but that she knows absolutely nothing about the matter.
And I am nearly, though not quite, so sure that this is not a case of
kidnaping at all!”

“What, Trant? Man, you can’t tell me that from that evidence?”

“I do, Mr. Eldredge!” Trant returned a little defiantly. “Just from
this evidence!”

“But, Trant,” the husband cried, trying to grasp the hope this
stranger gave him against all his better reason, “if you can think
that, why did she describe everything—the time, the circumstance, the
size and appearance of the woman and even the color of her dress—so
differently from all the rest? Why did she _lie_ when she told me
this, Mr. Trant?”

“I do not think she lied, Mr. Eldredge.”

“Then the rest lied and it _is_ a conspiracy of the witnesses against
her?”

“No; no one lied, I think. And there was no conspiracy. That is my
inference from the testimony and the one other fact we have—that there
had been no demand for ransom.”

Eldredge stared at him almost wildly. His brother-in-law moved up
beside him.

“Then where is my son, and who has taken him?”

“I cannot say yet,” Trant answered. There was a knock on the door.

“You asked to have everything personal brought to you at once, Mr.
Eldredge,” said Miss Webster, holding out a note. “This just came in
the ten o’clock delivery.” Eldredge snatched it from her—a soiled,
creased envelope bearing a postmark of the Lake View substation just
west of his home. It was addressed in a scrawling, illiterate hand,
and conspicuously marked personal. He tore it open, caught the import
of it almost at a glance; then with a smothered cry threw it on the
desk in front of Murray, who read it aloud.

  Yure son E. is safe, and we have him where he is not in dangir. Your
  wife has not payed us the money she promised us for taking him away,
  and we do not consider we are bound any longer by our bargain with
  her. If you will put the money she promised (one hund. dollars) on
  the seat behind Lincoln’s statue in the Park tonight at ten thurty
  (be exact) you will get yure son E. back. Look out for trubble to
  the boy if you notify the police.

  N. B.—If you try to make any investigation about this case our above
  promiss will not be kept.

“Well, Trant, what do you say now?” asked Murray.

“That it was the only thing needed,” Trant answered, triumphantly, “to
complete my case. Now, I am sure I need only go to your house to make
a short examination of Mrs. Eldredge and the case against her!”

He swung about suddenly at a stifled exclamation behind him, and found
himself looking into the white face of the private secretary; but she
turned at once and left the office. Trant swung back to Murray. “No,
thank you,” he said, refusing the proffer of the paper. “I read from
the marks made upon minds by a crime, not from scrawls and thumbprints
upon paper. And my means of reading those marks are fortunately in my
possession this morning. No, I do not mean that I have other evidence
upon this case than that you have just given me, Mr. Eldredge,” Trant
explained. “I refer to my psychological apparatus which, the express
company notified me, arrived from New York this morning. If you will
let me have my appliance delivered direct to your house it will save
much time.”

“I will order it myself!” Eldredge took up the telephone and quickly
arranged the delivery.

“Thank you,” Trant acknowledged. “And if you will also see that I have
a photograph, a souvenir postal, or some sort of a picture of every
possible locality within a few blocks of your house you will probably
help in my examination greatly. Also,” he checked himself and stood
thoughtfully a moment, “will you have these words”—he wrote “Armenia,
invitation, inviolate, sedate” and “pioseer” upon a paper—“carefully
lettered for me and brought to your house?”

“What?” Eldredge stared at the list in astonishment. He looked up at
Trant’s direct, intelligent features and checked himself. “Is there
not some mistake in that last word, Mr. Trant? ‘Pioseer’ is not a word
at all.”

“I don’t wish it to be,” Trant replied. His glance fell suddenly on a
gaudily lithographed card—an advertisement showing the interior of a
room. He took it from the desk.

“This will be very helpful, Mr. Eldredge,” he said. “If you will have
this brought with the other cards I think that will be all. At three
o’clock, then, at your house?”

He left them, looking at each other in perplexity. He stopped a moment
at a newspaper office, and then returned to the University Club
thoughtfully. By the authority of all precedent procedure of the
world, he recognized how hopelessly the case stood against the
stepmother of the missing child. But by the authority of the new
science—the new knowledge of humanity—which he was laboring to
establish, he felt certain he could save her.

Yet he fully appreciated that he could accomplish nothing until his
experimental instruments were delivered. He must be content to wait
until he could test his belief in Mrs. Eldredge’s innocence for
himself, and at the same time convince Eldredge conclusively. So he
played billiards, and lunched, and was waiting for the hour he had set
with Eldredge, when he was summoned to the telephone. A man who said
he was Mrs. Eldredge’s chauffeur, informed him that Mrs. Eldredge was
in the motor before the club and she wished to speak with him at once.

Trant immediately went down to the motor.

The single woman in the curtained limousine had drawn back into the
farthest corner to avoid the glances of passersby. But as Trant came
toward the car she leaned forward and searched his face anxiously.

She was a wonderfully beautiful woman, though her frail face bore
evidences of long continued anxiety and of present excitement. Her
hair was unusually rich in color; the dilated, defiant eyes were deep
and flawless; the pale cheeks were clear and soft, and the trembling
lips were curved and perfect. Trant, before a word had been exchanged
between them, recognized the ineffable appeal of her personality.

“I must speak with you, Mr. Trant,” she said, as the chauffeur at her
nod, opened the door of the car. “I cannot leave the motor. You must
get in.”

Trant stepped quietly into the limousine, filled with the soft perfume
of her presence. The chauffeur closed the door behind him, and at once
started the car.

“My husband has consulted you, Mr. Trant, regarding the—the trouble
that has come upon us, the—the disappearance of his son, Edward,” she
asked.

“Why do you not say at once, Mrs. Eldredge, that you know he has
consulted me and asked me to come and examine you this afternoon? You
must have learned it through his secretary.”

The woman hesitated. “It is true,” she said nervously. “Miss Webster
telephoned me. I see that you have not forgotten that I was once my
husband’s stenographer, and—I still have friends in his office.”

“Then there is something you want to tell me that you cannot tell in
the presence of the others?”

The woman turned, her large eyes meeting his with an almost frightened
expression, but she recovered herself immediately. “No, Mr. Trant; it
is because I know that he—my husband—that no one is making any search,
or trying to recover Edward—except through watching me.”

“That is true, Mrs. Eldredge,” the psychologist helped her.

“You must not do that too, Mr. Trant!” she leaned toward him
appealingly. “You must search for the boy—my husband’s boy! You must
not waste time in questioning me, or in trying me with your new
methods! That is why I came to see you—to tell you, on my word of
honor, that I know nothing of it!”

“I should feel more certain if you would be frank with me,” Trant
returned, “and tell me what happened on that afternoon before the
child disappeared.”

“We went motoring,” the woman replied.

“Before you went motoring, Mrs. Eldredge,” the psychologist pressed,
“what happened?”

She shrank suddenly, and turned upon him eyes filled with
unconquerable terror. He waited, but she did not answer.

“Did not some one tell you,” the psychologist took a shot half in the
dark, “or accuse you that you were taking the child out in order to
get rid of him?”

The woman fell back upon the cushions, chalk-white and shuddering.

“You have answered me,” Trant said quietly. He glanced at her
pityingly, and as she shrank from him, he tingled with an unbidden
sympathy for this beautiful woman. “But in spite of the fact that you
never brought the boy back,” Trant cried impetuously, “and in spite
of—or rather because of all that is so dark against you, believe me
that I expect to clear you before them all!” He glanced at his watch.
“I am glad that you have been taking me toward your home, for it is
almost time for my appointment with your husband.”

The car was running on the street bounding the park on the west. It
stopped suddenly before a great stone house, the second from the
intersecting street.

Eldredge was running down the steps, and in a moment young Murray came
after him. The husband opened the door of the limousine and helped his
wife tenderly up the steps. Murray and Trant followed him together.
Eldredge’s second wife—though she could comprehend nothing of what lay
behind Trant’s assurance of help for her—met her husband’s look with
eyes that had suddenly grown bright. Murray stared from the woman to
Trant with disapproval. He nodded to the psychologist to follow him
into Eldredge’s study on one side; but there he waited for his
brother-in-law to return to voice his reproach.

“What have you been saying to her, Trant?” Eldredge demanded sternly
as he entered and shut the door.

“Only what I told you this morning,” the psychologist answered—“that I
believe her innocent. And after seeing what relief it brought her, I
can not be sorry!”

“You can’t?” Eldredge rebuked. “I can! When I called you in you had
the right to tell me whatever you thought, however wild and without
ground it was. It could not hurt me much. But now you have encouraged
my wife still to hold out against us—still to defy us and to deny that
she knows anything when—when, since we saw you, the case has become
only more conclusive against her. We have just discovered a most
startling confirmation of Miss Hendrick’s evidence. Raymond, show
him!” he gestured in sorry triumph.

Young Murray opened the library desk and pulled out a piece of
newspaper, which he put in Trant’s hand. He pointed to the heading.
“You see, Trant, it is the account of the kidnaping in St. Louis which
occurred just before Edward was stolen.”

  All witnesses describe the kidnaper as a short, dark woman, marked
  with smallpox. She wore a gray coat and black skirt, a hat with
  white feathers, and appeared to be an Italian.

“I knew that. It exactly corresponds with the woman described by Miss
Hendricks,” Trant rejoined. “I was aware of it this morning. But I can
only repeat that the case has turned more and more conclusively in
favor of Mrs. Eldredge.”

“Why, even before we recognized the woman described by Miss Hendricks
the evidence was conclusive against Isabel!” Murray shot back.
“Listen! She was nervously excited all that day; when the woman
snatched Edward, Isabel did nothing. She denies she signaled the
woman, but Miss Hendricks saw the signal. Isabel says the automobile
took fifteen minutes making the circuit in the park, which is
ridiculous! But she wants to give an idea in every case exactly
contrary to what really occurred, and the other witnesses are agreed
that the run was very quick. And most of all, she tried to throw us
off in her description of the woman. The other three are agreed that
she was short and slight. Isabel declares she was large and tall. The
testimony of the chauffeur and the maid agrees with Miss Hendricks’ in
every particular—except that the maid says the woman was dressed in
violet. In that one particular she is probably mistaken, for Miss
Hendricks’ description is most minute. Certainly the woman was not, as
Isabel has again and again repeated in her efforts to throw us off the
track, and in the face of all other evidence, clothed in a red dress!”

“Very well summarized!” said Trant. “Analyzed and summarized just as
evidence has been ten million times in a hundred thousand law courts
since the taking of evidence began. You could convict Mrs. Eldredge on
that evidence. Juries have convicted thousands of other innocent
people on evidence less trustworthy. The numerous convictions of
innocent persons are as black a shame to-day as burnings and
torturings were in the Middle Ages; as tests by fire and water, or as
executions for witchcraft. Courts take evidence to-day exactly as it
was taken when Joseph was a prisoner in Egypt. They hang and imprison
on grounds of ‘precedent’ and ‘common sense.’ They accept the word of
a witness where its truth seems likely, and refuse it where it seems
otherwise. And, having determined the preponderance of evidence, they
sometimes say, as you have just said of Lucy Carew, ‘though correct in
everything else, in this one particular fact our truthful witness is
mistaken.’ There is no room for mistakes, Mr. Eldredge, in scientific
psychology. Instead of analyzing evidence by the haphazard methods of
the courts, we can analyze it scientifically, exactly,
incontrovertibly—we can select infallibly the true from the false. And
that is what I mean to do now,” he added, “if my apparatus, for which
you telephoned this morning, has come.”

“The boxes are in the rear hall,” Eldredge replied. “I have obtained
over a hundred views of the locality, and the cards you requested me
to secure are here too.”

“Good! Then you will get together the witnesses? The maid and the
chauffeur I need to see only for a moment. I will question them while
you are sending for Miss Hendricks.”

Eldredge rang for the butler. “Bring in those boxes which have just
come for Mr. Trant,” he commanded. “Send this note to Miss
Hendricks”—he wrote a few lines swiftly—“and tell Lucy and Morris to
come here at once.”

He watched Trant curiously while he bent to his boxes and began taking
out his apparatus. Trant first unpacked a varnished wooden box with a
small drop window in one end. Opposite the window was a rack upon
which cards or pictures could be placed. They could then be seen only
through the drop-window. This window worked like the shutter of a
camera, and was so controlled that it could be set to remain open for
a fixed time, in seconds or parts of a second, after which it closed
automatically. As Trant set this up and tested the shutter, the maid
and chauffeur came to the door of the library. Trant admitted the girl
and shut the door.

“On Tuesday afternoon,” he said to her, kindly, “was Mrs. Eldredge
excited—very much excited—_before_ you came to the place where the
machine broke down, and before she saw the woman who took Edward
away?”

“Yes, sir,” the girl answered. “She was more excited than I’d seen her
ever before, all the afternoon, from the time we started.”

The young psychologist then admitted the chauffeur, and repeated his
question.

“She was most nervous, yes, sir; and excited, sir, from the very
first,” the chauffeur answered.

“That is all,” said Trant, suddenly dismissing both, then turning
without expression to Eldredge. “If Miss Hendricks is here I will
examine her at once.”

Eldredge went out, and returned with the little old maid. Miss
Hendricks had a high-bred, refined and delicate face; and a sweet,
though rather loquacious, manner. She acknowledged the introduction to
Trant with old-fashioned formality.

“Please sit down, Miss Hendricks,” said Trant, motioning her to a
chair facing the drop-window of the exposure box. “This little window
will open and stand open an instant. I want you to look in and read
the word that you will see.” He dropped a card quickly into the rack.

“Do not be surprised,” he begged, as she looked at the drop-window
curiously, “if this examination seems puerile to you. It is not really
so; but only unfamiliar in this country, yet. The Germans have carried
psychological work further than any one in this nation, though the
United States is now awakening to its importance.” While speaking, he
had lifted the shutter and kept it raised a moment.

“It must be very interesting,” Miss Hendricks commented. “That word
was ‘America,’ Mr. Trant.”

Trant changed the card quickly. “And I’m glad to say, Miss Hendricks,”
he continued, while the maiden lady watched for the next word,
interested, “that Americans are taking it up intelligently, not
servilely copying the Germans!”

“That word was ‘imitation,’ Mr. Trant!” said Miss Hendricks.

“So now much is being done,” Trant continued, again shifting the card,
“in the fifty psychological laboratories of this country through
painstaking experiments and researches.”

“And that word was ‘investigate!’” said Miss Hendricks, as the shutter
lifted and dropped again.

“That was quite satisfactory, Miss Hendricks,” Trant acknowledged.
“Now look at this please.” Trant swiftly substituted the lithograph he
had picked up at Eldredge’s office. “What was that, Miss Hendricks?”

“It was a colored picture of a room with several people in it.”

“Did you see the boy in the picture, Miss Hendricks?”

“Why—yes, of course, Mr. Trant,” the woman answered, after a little
hesitation.

“Good. Did you also see his book?”

“Yes; I saw that he was reading.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Yes; he was about fifteen years old, in a dark suit with a brown tie,
black-haired, slender, and he sat in a corner with a book on his
knee.”

“That was indeed most satisfactory! Thank you, Miss Hendricks.” Trant
congratulated and dismissed her. “Now your wife, if you please, Mr.
Eldredge.”

Eldredge was curiously turning over the cards which Trant had been
exhibiting, and stared at the young psychologist in bewilderment. But
at Trant’s words he went for his wife. She came down at once with Mrs.
Murray. Though she had been described to him, it was the first time
Trant had seen the grandmother of the missing boy; and, as she
entered, a movement of admiration escaped him. She was taller even
than her son—who was the tallest man in the room—and she had retained
surprisingly much of the grace and beauty of youth. She was a majestic
and commanding figure. After settling her charge in a chair, she
turned solicitously to Trant.

“Mr. Eldredge tells me that you consider it necessary to question poor
Isabel again,” she said. “But, Mr. Trant, you must be careful not to
subject her to any greater strain than is necessary. We all have told
her that if she would be entirely frank with us we would make
allowance for one whose girlhood has been passed in poverty which
obliged her to work for a living.”

Mrs. Eldredge shrank nervously and Trant turned to Murray. “Mr.
Murray,” he said, “I want as little distraction as possible during my
examination of Mrs. Eldredge, so if you will be good enough to bring
in to me from the study the automatograph—the other apparatus which I
took from the box—and then wait outside till I have completed the
test, it will assist me greatly. Mrs. Murray, you can help me if you
remain.”

Young Murray glanced at his mother and complied. The automatograph,
which Trant set upon another table, was that designed by Prof.
Jastrow, of the University of Wisconsin, for the study of involuntary
movements. It consisted of a plate of glass in a light frame mounted
on adjustable brass legs, so that it could be set exactly level. Three
polished glass balls, three-quarters of an inch in diameter, rested on
this plate; and on these again there rested a very light plate of
glass. To the upper plate was connected a simple system of levers,
which carried a needle point at their end, so holding the needle as to
travel over a sheet of smoked paper.

While Trant was setting up this instrument Mrs. Eldredge’s nervousness
had greatly increased. And the few words which she spoke to her
husband and Mrs. Murray—who alone remained in the room—showed that her
mind was filled with thoughts of the missing child. Trant, observing
her, seemed to change his plan suddenly and, instead of taking Mrs.
Eldredge to the new instrument, he seated her in the chair in front of
the drop-window. He explained gently to the trembling woman that he
wanted her to read to him the words he exposed; and, as in the case of
Miss Hendricks, he tried to put her at ease by speaking of the test
itself.

“These word tests, Mrs. Eldredge, will probably seem rather pointless.
For that matter all proceedings with which one is not familiar must
seem pointless; even the proceedings of the national legislature in
Washington seem pointless to the spectators in the gallery.” At this
point the shutter lifted and exposed a word. “What was the word,
please, Mrs. Eldredge?”

“‘Sedate,’” the woman faltered.

“But though the tests seem pointless, Mrs. Eldredge, they are not
really so. To the trained investigator each test word is as full of
meaning as each mark upon the trail is to the backwoodsman on the edge
of civilization. Now what word was that?” he questioned quickly, as
the shutter raised and lowered again.

The woman turned her dilated eyes on Trant. “That—that,” she
hesitated—“I could make it out only as ‘p-i-o-s-e-e-r,’” she spelled,
uneasily. “I do not know any such word.”

“I shall not try you on words any longer, Mrs. Eldredge,” Trant
decided. He took his stop-watch in his hand. “But I shall ask you to
tell me how much time elapses between two taps with my lead pencil on
the table. Now!”

“Two minutes,” the woman stammered.

Eldredge, who, observing what Trant was doing, had taken his own watch
from his pocket and timed the brief interval, stared at Trant in
astonishment. But without giving the wife time to compose herself,
Trant went on quickly:

“Look again at the little window, Mrs. Eldredge. I shall expose to you
a photograph; and if you are to help me recover your husband’s son, I
hope you can recognize it. Who was it?” the psychologist demanded as
the shutter dropped.

“That was a photograph of Edward!” the woman cried. “But I never saw
that picture before!” She sat back, palpitating with uneasiness.

Mrs. Murray quickly took up the picture which had just been recognized
as her grandson. “That is not Edward, Mr. Trant,” she said.

Trant laid a finger on his lips to silence her.

“Mrs. Murray,” he said in quick appeal, “I wished, as you probably
noted, to use this instrument, the automatograph, a moment ago: I will
try it now. Will you be good enough to test it for me? Merely rest
your fingers lightly—as lightly as you please—upon this upper glass
plate.” Mrs. Murray complied, willingly. “Now please hold your hand
there while I lay out these about you.” He swiftly distributed the
photographic views of the surrounding blocks which Eldredge had
collected for him.

Mrs. Murray watched him curiously as he placed about a dozen in a
circle upon the table; and, almost as swiftly, swept them away and
distributed others in their place. Again, after glancing at her hand
to see that it was held in position, he set out a third lot, his eyes
fixed, as before, on the smoked paper under the needle at the end of
the levers. Suddenly he halted, looked keenly at the third set of
cards and, without a word, left the room. In an instant he returned
and after a quick, sympathetic glance at Mrs. Eldredge, turned to her
husband.

  [Illustration: A table with four people around it. A younger woman
  sits and watches the others. A gentleman stands slightly behind the
  others. An older woman stands with one hand resting on a flat
  instrument, and gazes at the cards which a younger man is placing
  about her on the table.]

  Caption: After glancing at her hand to see that it was held in
  position, he set out a third lot

“I need not examine Mrs. Eldredge further,” he said. “You had better
take her to her room. But before you go,” he grasped the woman’s cold
hand encouragingly, “I want to tell you, Mrs. Eldredge, that I have
every assurance of having the boy back within a very few minutes, and
I have proof of your complete innocence. No, Mrs. Murray,” he forbade,
as the older woman started to follow the others. “Remain here.” He
closed the door after the other and faced her. “I have just sent your
son to get Edward Eldredge from the place on Clark Street just south
of Webster Avenue where you have been keeping him these three days.”

“Are you a madman?” the powerful woman cried, as she tried to push by
him, staring at him stonily.

“Really it is no use, madam.” Trant prevented her. “Your son has been
a most unworthy confederate from the first; and when I had excluded
him from the room for a few moments and spoke to him of the place
which you pointed out to me so definitely, it frightened him into
acquiescence. I expect him back with the boy within a few minutes: and
meanwhile—”

“What is that?” Eldredge had stepped inside the door.

“I was just telling Mrs. Murray,” said Trant, “that I had sent Raymond
Murray after your son in the place where she has had him concealed.”

“What—what?” the father cried, incredulously, staring into the woman’s
cold face.

“Oh, she has most enviable control of herself,” Trant commented. “She
will not believe that her son has gone for Edward until he brings him
back. And I might say that Mrs. Murray probably did not make away with
the boy, but merely had him kept away, after he had been taken.”

Mrs. Murray had reseated herself, after her short struggle with Trant;
and her face was absolutely devoid of expression. “He is a madman!”
she said, calmly.

“Perhaps it will hasten matters,” suggested Trant, “if I explain to
you the road by which I reached this conclusion. As a number of
startling cases of kidnaping have occurred recently, the very
prevalent fear they have aroused has made it likely that kidnaping
will be the first theory in any case even remotely resembling it. In
view of this I could accept your statement of kidnaping only if the
circumstances made it conclusive, which they did not. With the absence
of any demand for a real ransom they made it impossible even for you
to hold the idea of kidnaping, except by presuming it a plot of Mrs.
Eldredge’s.

“But when I began considering whether this could be her plan, as
charged, I noted a singular inconsistency in the attitude of Raymond
Murray. He showed obvious eagerness to disgrace Mrs. Eldredge, but for
some reason—not on the surface—was most actively opposed to police
interference and the publicity which would most thoroughly carry out
his object. So I felt from the first that he, and perhaps his
mother—who was established over Mrs. Eldredge in her own home, but, by
your statement, was to leave if Mrs. Eldredge came into charge of
things—knew something which they were concealing. This much I saw
before I read a word of the evidence.

“The evidence of the maid and the chauffeur told only two things—that
a small woman rushed into the park and ran off with your son; and that
your wife was in an extremely agitated condition. The maid said that
the woman was blond and dressed in violet; and I knew, when I had read
the evidence of other witnesses, that that was undoubtedly the truth.”

Eldredge, pacing the rug, stopped short and opened his lips; but
checked himself.

“Without Miss Hendricks’ testimony there was positively nothing
against your wife in the evidence of the chauffeur and the maid. I
then took up Miss Hendricks’ evidence and had not read two lines
before I saw that—as an accusation against your wife, Mr. Eldredge—it
was worthless. Miss Hendricks is one of those most dangerous persons,
absolutely truthful, and—absolutely unable to tell the truth! She
showed a common, but hopeless, state of suggestibility. Her first
sentence, in which she said she did not often look out of the window
for fear people would think she was watching them, showed her habit of
confusing what she saw with ideas that existed only in her own mind.
Her testimony was a mass of unwarranted inferences. She saw a woman
coming from the direction of the car line, so to Miss Hendricks ‘it
was evident that she had just descended from a car.’ The woman was
hurrying, so ‘she was late for an appointment.’ ‘As soon as she caught
sight of the woman’ Mrs. Eldredge lifted Edward to the ground. And so
on through a dozen things which showed the highest susceptibility to
suggestion. You told me that before telling her story to you she had
told it to Mrs. Murray. Miss Hendricks had rushed to her at once; the
bias and suggestions which made her testimony apparently so damning
against your wife could only have come from Mrs. Murray.”

Eldredge’s glance shot to his mother-in-law. But Trant ran on rapidly.
“I took up your wife’s evidence; and though apparently entirely at
variance with the others, I saw at once that it really corroborated
the testimony of the nurse and the chauffeur.”

“Her evidence confirmed?” Eldredge demanded, brusquely.

“Yes,” Trant replied; “to the psychologist, who understood Mrs.
Eldredge’s mental condition, her evidence was the same as theirs. I
had already seen for myself, by the aid of what you had told me, Mrs.
Eldredge’s position in this household, after leaving your office to
become your wife. On entering your house, she was brought face to face
with a woman already in control here—a strong and dominant woman, who
had immense influence over you. Everything told of a struggle between
these women—slights, obstructions, merciless criticisms, of which your
wife could not complain, which had brought her close to nervous
prostration. You remember that immediately after reading her statement
I asked you what particular thing had occurred just before she went
motoring to throw her into that noticeably excitable condition
described by the maid and the chauffeur. You said nothing had
happened. But I was certain even then that there had been something—I
know now that Mrs. Murray had put a climax to her persecution of your
wife by charging that Mrs. Eldredge was taking the boy out to get rid
of him—and my knowledge of psychology told me that, allowing for Mrs.
Eldredge’s hysterical condition, she had stated in her evidence the
same things that the maid and the chauffeur had stated. It is a fact
that in her condition of hyperæsthesia—a condition readily brought on
not only in weak women, but sometimes in strong men, by excitement and
excessive nervous strain—her senses would be highly overstimulated.
Barely hearing the sound of the woman’s voice, she would honestly
describe her as speaking in a loud tone.

“All time intervals would also be greatly prolonged. It truly seemed
to her that the child took a long time to cross the grass and that the
woman talked with him several minutes, instead of seconds. The
sensation of a similarly long time elapsing after the woman took the
boy’s hand gave her the impression of a long struggle. She would
honestly believe that it took the automobile fifteen minutes to make
the circuit of the park. When you asked your wife why, if so much time
elapsed, she tried to do nothing, she was unable to answer; for no
time was wasted at all.

“But most vital of all, I recognized her description of the woman as
wearing a red dress as most conclusive confirmation of the maid’s
testimony and a final proof, not that Mrs. Eldredge was trying to
mislead you, but that she was telling the truth as well as she could.
For it is a common psychological fact that in a hysterical condition
red is the color most commonly seen subjectively; the sensation of red
not only persists in hysteria, when other color sensations disappear,
but it is common to have it take the place of another color,
especially violet. It was discovered and recorded over thirty years
ago that, in excessive excitability known psychologically as
hyperæsthesia, all colors are lifted in the spectrum scale and, to the
overexcited retina, the shorter waves of violet may give the sensation
of the longer ones producing red. So what to you seemed an intentional
contradiction was to me the most positive and complete assurance of
your wife’s honesty.

“And finally, to be consistent with this condition, I knew that if her
state was due to expectation of harm to herself or the child from any
unusually large, dark woman, she would see the woman in her
excitement, as large and dark. For it is one of the commonest facts
known to the psychologist that our senses in excitement can be so
influenced by our expectation of any event that we actually see
things, not as they are, but as we expect them to be. So when you told
me that Mrs. Murray answered the description given by Mrs. Eldredge,
all threads of the skein had led to Mrs. Murray.

“Now, as it was clear to me that Mrs. Murray herself had used Miss
Hendricks’ easy suggestibility to prejudice her evidence against Mrs.
Eldredge, Mrs. Murray could not herself have believed that Mrs.
Eldredge had taken the boy away. So, since the Murrays were making no
search, they must have soon found out where the boy was and were
satisfied that he was safe and that they could produce him, after they
had finished ruining Mrs. Eldredge.

“Therefore I was in a position to appreciate Mrs. Murray’s ridiculous
letter when it came, with its painfully misspelled demand for an
absurdly small ransom that would not be refused for a moment, as the
object of the letter was only to make the final move in the case
against Mrs. Eldredge and enable them to return the boy. So far, it is
clear?” Trant checked his rapid explanation.

Still Eldredge stared at the set, defiant features of his
mother-in-law; and made no reply.

“I appreciated thoroughly that I must prove all this,” Trant then shot
on rapidly. “You, Mr. Eldredge, discovered that Miss Hendricks’
description of the woman tallied precisely with the published
description of the St. Louis kidnaper, without appreciating that the
description was in her mind. With her high suggestibility she
substituted it for the woman she actually saw as unconsciously—and as
honestly—as she substituted Mrs. Murray’s suggestions for her own
observations.

“But perhaps you can appreciate it now. You saw how I showed her the
word ‘Armenia’ and spoke of the United States to lead her mind to
substitute ‘America’ to prove how easily her mind substituted acts,
motions and everything at Mrs. Murray’s suggestion. I had only to
speak of ‘servilely copying’ to have her change ‘invitation’ into
‘imitation.’ A mere mention of researches made her think she saw
‘investigate,’ when the word was ‘inviolate.’ Finally, after showing
her a picture in which there were two women and a man, but no boy, she
stated, at my slight suggestion, that she saw a boy, and even
described him for me and told me what he was doing. I had proved
beyond cavil the utter worthlessness of evidence given by this woman,
and dismissed her.”

“I followed that!” Eldredge granted.

Trant continued: “So I tested your wife to show that she had not
suggestibility, like Miss Hendricks—that is, she could not be made to
say that she saw ‘senate’ instead of ‘sedate’ by a mere mention of the
national legislature at the time the word was shown; nor would she
make over ‘pioseer’ into ‘pioneer,’ under the suggestion of
backwoodsman. But by getting her into an excitable condition with her
mind emotionally set to expect a picture of the missing boy, her
excited mind at the moment of perception altered the picture of the
totally different six-year-old boy I showed her into the picture of
Edward, as readily as her highly excited senses—fearing for herself
and for the boy through Mrs. Murray—altered the woman she saw taking
Edward into an emotional semblance of Mrs. Murray.

“I had understood it as essential to clear your wife as to find the
boy—whom I appreciated could be in no danger. So I made the next test
with Mrs. Murray. This, I admit, depended largely upon chance. I knew,
of course, that she must know where the boy was and that probably her
son did too. The place was also probably in the vicinity. The
automatograph is a device to register the slightest and most
involuntary motions. It is a basic psychological fact that there is an
inevitable muscular impulse toward any object which arouses emotion.
If one spreads a score of playing cards about a table and the subject
has a special one in mind, his hand on the automatograph will quickly
show a faint impulse toward the card, although the subject is entirely
unaware of it. So I knew that if the place where the boy was kept was
shown in any of the pictures, I would get a reaction from Mrs. Murray;
which I did—with the result, Mr. Eldredge,” Trant went to the window
and watched the street, expectantly, “that Mr. Raymond Murray is now
bringing your son around the corner and—”

But the father had burst from the room and toward the door. Trant
heard a cry of joy and the stumble of an almost hysterical woman as
Mrs. Eldredge rushed down the stairs after her husband. He turned as
Mrs. Murray, taking advantage of the excitement, endeavored to push
past him.

“You are leaving the house?” he asked. “But tell me first,” he
demanded, “how did the boy come to be taken out of the park? Had the
boys whom the chauffeur said stopped around his car anything to do
with it?”

“They were a class which a kindergarten teacher—a new teacher—had
taken to see the animals,” the woman answered, coldly.

“Ah! So one of them was left behind—the one whom they saw running and
mistook for Edward—and the teacher, running back, took Edward by
mistake. But she must have discovered her mistake when she rejoined
the others.”

“Only after she got on the car. There one of my former servants
recognized him and took him to her home.”

“And when the servant came to tell you, and you understood how Miss
Hendricks’ suggestibility had played into your hands, the temptation
was too much for you, and you made this last desperate attempt to
discredit Mrs. Eldredge. I see!” He stood back and let her by.

Raymond Murray, after bringing back the boy, had disappeared. In the
hall Eldredge and his wife bent over the boy, the woman completely
hysterical in the joy of the recovery, laughing and crying
alternately. She caught the boy to her frantically as she stared
wildly at a woman ascending the steps.

“The woman in red—the woman in red!” she cried suddenly.

Trant stepped to her side quickly. “But she doesn’t look big and dark
to you now, does she?” he asked. “And see, now,” he said, trying to
calm her, “the dress is violet again. Yes, Mr. Eldredge, this, I
believe, is the woman in violet—the small blond woman who took your
boy from the park by mistake—as I will explain to you. She is coming,
undoubtedly, in response to an advertisement that I put in _The
Journal_ this noon. But we do not require her help now, for Mrs.
Murray has told me all.”

The maid, Lucy Carew, ran suddenly up the hall.

“Mrs. Murray and Mr. Murray are leaving the house, Mr. Eldredge!” she
cried, bewilderedly.

“Are they?” the master of the house returned. He put his arm about its
mistress and together they took the boy to his room.



CHAPTER IV

The Private Bank Puzzle

“Planning to rob us?”

“I am sure of it!”

“But I don’t understand, Gordon! Who? How? What are they planning to
rob?” the young acting-president of the bank demanded, sharply.

“The safe, Mr. Howell—the safe!” the old cashier repeated. “Some one
inside the bank is planning to rob it!”

“How do you know?”

“I feel it; I know it. I am as certain of it as though I had overheard
the plot being made! But I cannot tell you how I know. Put an extra
man on guard here to-night,” the old man appealed, anxiously, “for I
am certain that some one in this office means to enter the safe!”

The acting-president swung his chair away from the anxious little man
before him, and glanced quickly through the glass door of his private
office at the dozen clerks and tellers busy in the big room who
sufficed to carry on the affairs of the little bank.

It was just before noon on the last Wednesday in November, in the
old-established private banking house of Henry Howell & Son, on La
Salle Street; and it was the beginning of the sixth week that young
Howell had been running the bank by himself. For the first two or
three weeks, since his father’s rheumatism suddenly sent him to
Carlsbad, the business of the bank had seemed to go on as smoothly as
usual. But for the last month, as young Howell himself could not deny,
there had been a difference.

“A premonition, Gordon?” Howell’s brown eyes scrutinized the cashier
curiously. “I did not know your nerve had been so shaken!”

“Call it premonition if you wish,” the old cashier answered, almost
wildly. “But I have warned you! If anything happens now you cannot
hold me to blame for it. I know the safe is going to be entered! Why
else should they search my waste-basket? Why was my coat taken? Who
took my pocketbook? Who just to-day tried to break into my old
typewriter desk?”

“Gordon! Gordon!” The young man jumped to his feet with an expression
of relief. “You need a vacation! I know better than anybody how much
has happened in the last two months to shake and disturb you; but if
you attach any meaning to those insignificant incidents you must be
going crazy!”

The cashier tore himself from the other’s grasp and left the office.
Young Howell stood looking after him in perplexity an instant, then
glanced at his watch and, taking up his overcoat, hastened out. He had
a firm, well-built figure, a trifle stout; his expression, step, and
all his bearing was usually quick, decisive, cheerful. But now as he
passed into the street his step slowed and his head bent before the
puzzle which his old cashier had just presented to him.

After walking a block his pace quickened, however, and he turned
abruptly into a great office building towering sixteen stories from
the street. Halting for an instant before the building directory, he
took the express elevator to the twelfth floor and, at the end of the
hall, halted again before an office door upon which was stenciled in
clear letters:

        “Luther Trant, Practical Psychologist.”

At the call to come in, he opened the door and found himself facing a
red-haired, broad-shouldered young man with blue-gray eyes, who had
looked up from a delicate instrument which he was adjusting upon his
desk. The young banker noted, half unconsciously, the apparatus of
various kinds—dials, measuring machines and clocks, electrical
batteries with strange meters wired to them, and the dozen delicate
machines that stood on two sides of the room, for his conscious
interest was centered in the quiet but alert young man that rose to
meet him.

“Mr. Luther Trant?” he questioned.

“Yes.”

“I am Harry Howell, the ‘son’ of Howell & Son,” the banker introduced
himself. “I heard of you, Mr. Trant, in connection with the Bronson
murder; but more recently Walter Eldredge told me something of the
remarkable way in which you apply scientific psychology, which has so
far been recognized only in the universities, to practical problems.
He made no secret to me that you saved him from wrecking the whole
happiness of his home. I have come to ask you to do, perhaps, as much
for me.”

The psychologist nodded.

“I do not mean, Mr. Trant,” said the banker, dropping into the chair
toward which Trant directed him, “that our home is in danger, as
Eldredge’s was. But our cashier—” The banker broke off. “Two months
ago, Mr. Trant, our bank suffered its first default, under
circumstances which affected the cashier very strongly. A few weeks
later father had to go to Europe for his health, leaving me with old
Gordon, the cashier, in charge of things. Almost immediately a series
of disorders commenced, little annoyances and persecutions against the
cashier. They have continued almost daily. They are so senseless,
contemptible, and trivial that I have disregarded them, but they have
shaken Gordon’s nerve. Twenty minutes ago he came to me, trembling
with anxiety, to tell me that they mean that one of the men in the
office is trying to rob the safe. I feel confident that it is only
Gordon’s nervousness; but in the absence of my father I feel that I
cannot let the matter go longer unexplained.”

“What are these apparently trivial things which have been going on for
the last month, Mr. Howell?” Trant asked.

“They are so insignificant that I am almost ashamed to tell you. The
papers in Gordon’s waste-basket have been disturbed. Some one takes
his pads and blotters. His coat, which hangs on a hook in his office,
disappeared and was brought back again. An old pocketbook that he
keeps in his desk, which never contains anything of importance, has
been taken away and brought back in the same manner. Everything
disturbed has been completely valueless, the sole object being
apparently to plague the man. But it has shaken Gordon amazingly,
incomprehensibly. And this morning, when he found some one had been
trying to break into an old typewriter desk in his office—though it
was entirely empty, even the typewriter having been taken out of it
two days ago—he went absolutely to pieces, and made the statement
about robbing the safe which I have just repeated to you.”

“That is very strange,” said Trant, thoughtfully. “So these apparently
senseless tricks terrorize your cashier! He was not keeping anything
in the typewriter desk, was he?”

“He told me not,” Howell answered. “Gordon might conceal something
from me; but he would not lie.”

“Tell me,” Trant demanded, suddenly, “what was the defalcation in the
bank, which, as you just mentioned, so greatly affected your cashier
just before your father left for Europe?”

“Ten thousand dollars was taken; in plain words stolen outright by
young Robert Gordon, the cashier’s—William Gordon’s—son.”

“The cashier’s son!” Trant replied with interest.

“His only son,” Howell confirmed. “A boy about twenty. Gordon has a
daughter older. The boy seemed a clean, straightforward fellow like
his father, who has been with us forty years, twenty years our
cashier; but something was different in him underneath, for the first
time he had the chance he stole from the bank.”

“And the particulars?” Trant requested quickly.

“There are no especial particulars; it was a perfectly clear case
against Robert,” the banker replied, reluctantly. “Our bank has a
South Side branch on Cottage Grove Avenue, near Fifty-first Street,
for the use of storekeepers and merchants in the neighborhood. On the
29th of September they telephoned us that there was a sudden demand
for currency resembling a run on the bank. Our regular messenger, with
the officer who accompanies him, was out; so Gordon called his son to
carry the money alone. It never occurred to either father or myself,
or, of course, to Gordon, not to trust to the boy. Gordon himself got
the money from the safe—twenty-four thousand dollars, fourteen
thousand in small bills and ten thousand in two small packets of ten
five-hundred-dollar bills apiece. He himself counted it into the bag,
locked it, and sealed it in. We all told the boy that we were sending
him on an emergency call and to rush above all things. Now, it takes
about thirty-five minutes to reach our branch on the car; but in spite
of being told to hurry, young Gordon was over an hour getting there;
and when the officers of the branch opened his bag they found that
both packets of five-hundred-dollar bills—ten thousand dollars—had
been taken out—stolen! He had fixed up the lock, the seal of the bag,
somehow, after taking the money.”

“What explanation did the boy make?” Trant pressed, quickly.

“None. He evidently depended entirely upon the way he fixed up the
lock and seal.”

“The delay?”

“The cars, he said.”

“You said a moment ago that it was impossible that your cashier would
lie to you. Is it absolutely out of the question that he held back the
missing bills?”

“And ruined his own son, Mr. Trant? Impossible! But you do not have to
take my opinion for that. The older Gordon returned the money—all of
it—though he had to mortgage his home, which was all he had, to make
up the amount. Out of regard for the father, who was heartbroken, we
did not prosecute the boy. It was kept secret, even from the employees
of the bank, why he was dismissed, and only the officers yet know that
the money was stolen. But you can see how deeply all this must have
affected Gordon, and it may be enough to account fully for his
nervousness under the petty annoyances which have been going on ever
since.”

“Annoyances,” cried Trant, “which began almost immediately after this
first defalcation in forty years! That may, or may not, be
coincidence. But, if it is convenient, I would like to go with you to
the bank, Mr. Howell, at once!” The young psychologist leaped to his
feet; the banker rose more slowly.

It was not quite one o’clock when the two young men entered the old
building where Howell & Son had had their offices for thirty-six
years. Trant hurried on directly up to the big banking room on the
second floor. Inside the offices the psychologist’s quick eyes, before
they sought individuals, seemed to take stock of the furnishings and
equipment of the place. The arrangement of all was staid, solid,
old-fashioned. Many of the desks and chairs, and most of the other
equipment, seemed to date back as far as the founding of the bank by
the senior Howell three years after the great Chicago fire. The
clerks’ and tellers’ cages were of the heavy, overelaborate brass
scroll work of the generation before; the counters of thick, almost
ponderous, mahogany, now deeply scored, but not discolored. And the
massive safe, set into a rear wall, especially attracted Trant’s
attention. He paused before its open door and curiously inspected the
complicated mechanism of revolving dials, lettered on their rims,
which required to be set to a certain combination of letters in order
to open it.

“This is still good enough under ordinary conditions, I dare say,” he
commented, as he turned the barrels experimentally; “but it is rather
old, is it not?”

“It is as old as the bank and the building,” Howell answered. “It is
one of the Rittenhouse six-letter combination locks; and was built in,
as you see, in ’74 when they put up this building for us. Just about
that time, I believe, the Sargent time lock was invented; but this was
still new, and besides, father has always been very conservative. He
lets things go on until a real need arises to change them; and in
thirty-six years, as I told you at your office, nothing has happened
to worry him particularly about this safe.”

“I see. The combination, I suppose, is a word?”

“Yes; a word of six letters, changed every Monday.”

“And given to—”

“Only to the cashier.”

“Gordon, that is,” Trant acknowledged, as he turned away and appeared
to take his first interest in any of the employees of the bank, “the
man alone in the cashier’s room over there?” The psychologist pointed
through the open door of the room at his right to the thin, strained
figure bent far over his desk. He was the only one of all the men
about the bank who seemed not to have noticed the stranger whom the
acting-president had brought with him to inspect the safe.

“Yes; that is Gordon!” the president answered, caught forward quickly
by something in the manner, or the posture, of the cashier. “But what
is he doing? What is the matter with him now?” He hurried toward the
old man through the open door.

Trant followed him, and they could see over the cashier’s shoulder,
before he was conscious of their presence, that he was arranging and
fitting together small scraps of paper. Then he jerked himself up in
his chair, trembling, arose, and faced them with bloodless lips and
cheeks, one tremulous hand pressed guiltily upon the papers, hiding
them.

“What is the matter? What are you doing, Gordon?” Howell said in
surprise.

Trant reached forward swiftly, seized the cashier’s thin wrist and
lifted his hand forcibly from the desk. The scraps were five in number
and upon them, as Gordon had arranged them, were printed in pencil
merely meaningless equations. The first, which was written on two of
the scraps, read:

        43$=80.

The second, torn into three pieces, was even more enigmatical,
reading:

        35=8?$

But the pieces appeared to be properly put together; and Trant noted
that, besides the two and three pieces fitting, all the scraps
evidently belonged together, and had originally formed a part of a
large sheet of paper which had been torn and thrown away.

“They are nothing—nothing, Mr. Howell!” The old man tried to wrench
his hand away, staring in terror at the banker. “They are only scraps
of paper which I found. Oh, Mr. Howell, I warned you this morning that
the bank is in danger. I know that now better than ever! But these,”
he grew still whiter, “are nothing!”

Trant had to catch the cashier’s hand again, as he tried to snatch up
the scraps. “Who is this man, Mr. Howell?” Gordon turned indignantly
to the young banker.

“My name is Trant. Mr. Howell came to me this morning to advise him as
to the things which have been terrifying you here in this office. And,
Mr. Gordon,” said Trant, sternly, “it is perfectly useless for you to
tell us that these bits of paper have no meaning, or that their
meaning is unknown to you. But since you will not explain the mystery
to us, I must go about the matter in some other way.”

“You do not imagine, Mr. Trant,” the cashier fell back into his chair
as though the psychologist had struck him, “that I have any connection
with the plot against the bank of which I warned Mr. Howell!”

“I am quite certain,” Trant answered, firmly, “that if a plot exists,
you have some connection with it. Whether your connection is innocent
or guilty I can determine at once by a short test, if you will submit
to it.”

Gordon’s eyes met those of the acting-president in startled terror,
but he gathered himself together and arose.

“Mr. Howell knows,” he said, hollowly, “how mad an accusation you are
making. But I will submit to your test, of course.”

Trant took up a blank sheet of paper from the desk and drew on it two
rows of geometric figures in rapid succession, like these:

  [Illustration: A set of six arbitrary shapes, each comprised of
  three straight and diagonal lines.]

He handed the sheet to the cashier, who stared at it in wondering
astonishment.

“Look at these carefully, Mr. Gordon,” Trant took out his watch, “and
study them till I tell you to stop. Stop now!” he commanded, “and draw
upon the pad on your desk as many of the figures as you can.”

The cashier and the acting-president stared into Trant’s face with
increasing amazement; then the cashier asked to see Trant’s sheets
again and drew from memory, after a few seconds, two figures, thus:

  [Illustration: Two shapes. Although similar in style, neither one
  matches any of the six shapes from the original set.]

“Thank you,” said Trant, tearing the sheet from the pad without giving
either time to question him. He closed the office door carefully and
returned with his watch in his hand.

“You can hear this tick?” He held it about eighteen inches from
Gordon’s ear.

“Of course,” the cashier answered.

“Then move your finger, please, as long as you hear it.”

The cashier began moving his finger. Trant put the watch on the desk
and stepped away. For a moment the finger stopped; but when Trant
spoke again the cashier nodded and moved his finger at the ticks.
Almost immediately it stopped again, however; and Trant returned and
took up his watch.

“I want to ask you one thing more,” he said to the weary old man. “I
want you to take a pencil and write upon this pad a series of numbers
from one up as fast as you care to, no matter how much more rapidly I
count. You are ready? Then one, two, three—” Trant counted rapidly in
a clear voice up to thirty.

“1-2-3-4-10-11-12-19-20-27-28—” the cashier wrote, and handed the pad
to Trant.

“Thank you. This will be all I need, except these pieces,” said Trant,
as he swept up the scraps which the cashier had been piecing together.

Gordon started, but said nothing. His gray, anxious eyes followed
them, as the banker preceded Trant from the cashier’s room into his
private office.

“What is the meaning of all this, Mr. Trant?” Howell closed the door
and swung round, excitedly. “If Gordon is connected with a plot
against the bank, and that in itself is unbelievable, why did he warn
me the bank was in danger?”

“Mr. Gordon’s connection with what is going on is perfectly innocent,”
Trant answered. “I have just made certain of that!” He had seated
himself before Howell’s desk and was spreading out the scraps of paper
which he had taken from Gordon. “But tell me. Was not Gordon once a
stenographer, or did he not use a typewriter at least?”

“Well, yes,” Howell replied, impatiently. “Gordon was private
secretary to my father twenty years ago; and, of course, used a
typewriter. It was his old machine, which he always kept and still
used occasionally, that was in his desk which, as I told you, was
broken into this morning.”

“But the desk was empty—even the machine had been taken from it!”

“Gordon took it home only a day or so ago. His daughter is taking up
typewriting and wanted it to practice upon.”

“In spite of the fact that it must be entirely out of date?” Trant
pressed. “Probably it was the last of that pattern in this office?”

“Of course,” Howell rejoined, still more impatiently. “The others were
changed long ago. But what in the world has all this to do with the
question whether some one is planning to rob us?”

“It has everything to do, Mr. Howell!” Trant leaped to his feet, his
eyes flashing with sudden comprehension. “For what you have just told
me makes it certain that, as Gordon warned you, one of your clerks is
planning to enter your safe at the first opportunity! Gordon knows as
little as you or I, at this moment, which of your men it is; but he is
as sure of the fact itself as I am, and he has every reason to know
that there is no time to lose in detecting the plotter.”

“What is that? What is that? Gordon is right?” The banker stared at
Trant in confusion, then asserted, skeptically: “You cannot tell that
from those papers, Mr. Trant!”

“I feel very certain of it indeed, and—just from these papers. And
more than that, Mr. Howell, though I shall ask to postpone explaining
this until later, I may say from this second paper here,” Trant held
up the series of numbers which the cashier had written, “that this
indicates to me that it is entirely possible, if not actually
probable, that Gordon’s son did not steal the money for the loss of
which he was disgraced!”

The banker strode up and down the room, excitedly. “Robert Gordon not
guilty! I understood, Trant, that your methods were surprising. They
are more than that; they are incomprehensible. I cannot imagine how
you reach these conclusions. But,” he looked into the psychologist’s
eyes, “I see no alternative but to put the matter completely in your
hands, and for the present to do whatever you say.”

“There is nothing more to be done here now,” said Trant, gathering up
the papers, “except to give me Gordon’s home address.”

“Five hundred and thirty-seven Leavenworth Street, on the South Side.”

“I will come back to-morrow after banking hours. Meanwhile, as Gordon
warned you, put an extra guard over the bank to-night. I hope to be
able to tell you all that underlies this case when I have been to
Gordon’s home this evening, and seen his son, and”—Trant turned
away—“that old typewriting machine of his.”

He went out, the banker staring after him, perplexed.


Trant knew already that forty years of service for the little bank of
Howell & Son had left Gordon still a poor man; and he was not
surprised when, at seven o’clock that night, he turned into
Leavenworth Street, to find Number 537 a typical “small, comfortable
home,” put up twenty years before in what had then been a new real
estate subdivision and probably purchased by Gordon upon the
instalment plan. Gordon’s daughter, who opened the door, was a
black-haired, gray-eyed girl of slender figure. She had the air of the
housekeeper, careful and economical in the administration of her
father’s moderate and unincreasing means. But a look of more direct
responsibility upon her face made Trant recollect, as he gave his name
and stepped inside, that since her brother’s default and her father’s
sacrifice to make it up, this girl herself was going out to help
regain the ownership of the little home.

“Father is upstairs lying down,” she explained, solicitously, as she
showed Trant into the living room. “But I can call him,” she offered,
reluctantly, “if it is on business of the bank.”

“It is on business of the bank,” Trant replied. “But there is no need
to disturb your father. It was your brother I came to see.”

The girl’s face went crimson. “My brother is no longer connected with
the bank,” she managed to answer, miserably. “I do not think he would
be willing—I think I could not prevail upon him to talk to anyone sent
by the bank.”

“That is unfortunate,” said Trant, frankly, “for in that case my
journey out here goes half for nothing. I was very anxious to see him.
By the way, Miss Gordon, what luck are you having with your
typewriting?”

The girl drew back surprised.

“Mr. Howell told me about you,” Trant explained, “when he mentioned
that your father had taken his old typewriter home for you to practice
upon.”

“Oh, yes; dear father!” exclaimed the girl. “He brought it home with
him one night this week. But it is quite out of date—quite useless.
Besides, I had hired a modern one last week.”

“Mr. Howell interested me in that old machine. You have no objection
to my seeing it?”

“Of course not.” The girl looked at the young psychologist with
growing astonishment. “It is right here.” She led the way through the
hall, and opened the door to a rear room. Through the doorway Trant
could see in the little room two typewriting machines, one new and
shiny, the other, under a cover, old and battered.

“Say! what do you want?” A challenging voice brought Trant around
swiftly to face a scowling boy clattering down stairs.

“He wants to look at the typewriter, Robert,” the girl explained.

Trant looked the boy over quietly. He was a clean-looking chap,
quietly dressed and resembling his father, but was of more powerful
physique. His face was marred by sullen brooding, and in his eyes
there was a settled flame of defiance. The psychologist turned away,
as though determined to finish first his inspection of the typewriter,
and entered the room. The boy and the girl followed.

“Here, you!” said Robert Gordon, harshly, as Trant laid his hand on
the cover of the old machine, “that’s not the typewriter you want to
look at. This is the one.” And he pointed to the newer of the two.

“It’s the old one I want to see,” answered Trant.

The boy paled suddenly, leaped forward and seized Trant by the wrist.
“Say! Who are you, anyway? What do you want to see that machine for?”
he demanded, hotly. “You shall not see it, if I can help it!”

  [Illustration: Two young men are in a small room, standing before
  two typewriters, one uncovered. The young man on the right angrily
  grabs the other’s arm to pull him away. Behind them a young woman
  watches nervously. An older man is at the door, leaning on the door
  frame and looking upset.]

  Caption: “What do you want to see that machine for? You shall not
  see it, if I can help it!”

“What!” Trant faced him in obvious astonishment. “You! You in that!
That alters matters!”

William Gordon had appeared suddenly in the doorway, his face as white
as his son’s. Robert’s hand fell from Trant’s wrist. The dazed old man
stood watching Trant, who slowly uncovered and studied the keyboard of
the old writing machine.

“What does this mean, Mr. Trant?” Gordon faltered, holding to the door
frame for support.

“It means, Mr. Gordon”—Trant straightened, his eyes flashing in full
comprehension and triumph—“that you must keep your son in to-night, at
whatever cost, Mr. Gordon! And bring him with you to-morrow morning
when you come to the bank. Do not misunderstand me.” He caught the old
man as he tottered. “We are in time to prevent the robbery you feared
at the bank. And I hope—I still hope—to be able to prove that your son
had nothing to do with the loss of the money for which he was
dismissed.” With that he left the house.


Half an hour before the bank of Howell & Son opened the next morning,
Trant and the acting-president stepped from the president’s private
office into the main banking room.

“You have not asked me,” said Howell, “whether there was any attempt
on the bank last night. I had a special man on watch, as you advised,
but no attempt was made.”

“After seeing young Gordon last night,” Trant answered, “I expected
none.”

The banker looked perplexed; then he glanced quickly about and saw his
dozen clerks and tellers in their places, dispatching preliminary
business and preparing their accounts. The cashier alone had not yet
arrived. The acting-president called them all to places at the desks.

“This gentleman,” he explained, “is Mr. Trant, a psychologist. He has
just asked me, and I am going to ask you, to cooperate with him in
carrying out a very interesting psychological test which he wants to
make on you as men working in the bank.”

“As you all probably have seen in newspapers and magazine articles,”
Trant himself took up the explanation, as the banker hesitated,
“psychologists, and many other investigators, are much interested just
now in following the influences which employments, or business of
various kinds, have upon mental characteristics. I want to test this
morning the normal ‘first things’ which you think of as a class
constantly associated with money and banking operations during most of
your conscious hours. To establish your way of thinking as a class, I
have asked Mr. Howell’s permission to read you a short list of words;
and I ask you to write down, on hearing each of these words, the first
thing that connects itself with that word in your minds. Each of you
please take a piece of paper, sign it, and number it along one edge to
correspond with the numbers of the words on my list.”

There was a rustling of paper as the men, nodding, prepared for the
test. Trant took his list from his pocket.

“I am interested chiefly, of course,” he continued, “in following
psychologically the influence of your constant association with money.
For you work surrounded by money. Every click of the _Remington
typewriters_ about you refers to money, and their _shift keys_ are
pushed most often to make the _dollar mark_. The bundles of money
around you are not marked in _secret writing or symbols_, but plainly
with the amount, _five hundred dollars_ or _ten thousand dollars_
written on the wrapper. Behind the _combination_ of the _safe_ lies a
fortune always. Yet money must of necessity become to
you—psychologically—a mere commodity; and the majority of the acts
which its transfer and safekeeping demand must grow to be almost
mechanical with you; for the mechanical serves you in two ways: First,
in the routine of your business, as, for instance, with a _promissory
note_, which to you means a definite interval—perhaps _sixty days_—so
that you know automatically without looking at your calendars that
such a _note_ drawn on _September 29th_ would be due to-day. And
second, by enabling you to run through these piles of bills with no
more emotion than if you were looking for _scraps_ in a
_waste-basket_, it protects you from temptation, and is the reason why
an institution such as this can run for forty years without ever
finding it necessary to _arrest a thief_. I need not tell you that
both these mental attitudes are of keen interest to psychologists.
Now, if you will write—”

Watch in hand, Trant read slowly, at regular intervals, the words on
his list:

      1—reship
      2—ethics
      3—Remington

A stifled exclamation made him lift his eyes, and he saw Howell, who
before had appeared merely curious about the test, looking at him in
astonishment. Trant smiled, and continued:

      4—shift key
      5—secret writing
      6—combination
      7—waste-basket
      8—ten thousand
      9—five hundred
     10—September 29th
     11—promissory note
     12—arrest

“That finishes it! Thank you all!” Trant looked at Howell, who nodded
to one of the clerks to take up the papers. The banker swiftly
preceded Trant back to his private office, and when the door was
closed turned on him abruptly.

“Who told you the combination of the safe?” he demanded. “You had our
word for this week and the word for the week before. That couldn’t be
chance. Did Gordon tell you last night?”

“You mean the words ‘reship’ and ‘ethics’?” Trant replied. “No; he
didn’t tell me. And it was not chance, Mr. Howell.” He sat down and
spread out rapidly his dozen papers. “What—‘rifles’!” he exclaimed at
the third word in one of the first papers he picked up. “And way off
on ‘waste-basket’ and ‘shift key,’ too!” He glanced over all the list
rapidly and laid it aside. “What’s this?” Something caught him quickly
again after he had sifted the next half dozen sheets. “‘Waste-basket’
gave _him_ trouble, too?” Trant stared, thoughtfully. “And think of
ten thousand ‘windows’ and five hundred ‘doors’!” He put that paper
aside also, glanced through the rest and arose.

“I asked Mr. Gordon to bring his son to the bank with him this
morning, Mr. Howell,” he said to his client, seriously. “If he is
there now please have him come in. And, also, please send for,” he
glanced again at the name on the first paper he had put aside, “Byron
Ford!”

Gordon had not yet come; but the door opened a moment later and a
young man of about twenty-five, dapper and prematurely slightly bald,
stood on the threshold. “Ah, Ford!” said Howell, “Mr. Trant asked to
see you.”

“Shut the door, please, Mr. Ford,” Trant commanded, “and then come
here; for I want to ask you,” he continued without warning as Ford
complied, “how you came to be preparing to enter Mr. Howell’s safe?”

“What does he mean, Mr. Howell?” the clerk appealed to his employer,
with admirable surprise.

“For the past month, Ford,” Trant replied, directly, “you have been
trying to get the combination of the safe. Several times you probably
actually got it, but couldn’t make it out, till you got it again this
week and at last you guessed the key to the cipher and young Gordon
gave you the means of reading it! Why were you going to that trouble
to get the combination if you were not going to rob the bank?”

“Rob the bank! I was not going to rob the bank!” the clerk cried,
hotly.

“Isn’t young Gordon out there now, Mr. Howell?” Trant turned to the
wondering banker quickly. “Thank you! Gordon,” he said to the
cashier’s son who came in, reluctantly, “I have just been questioning
Ford, as perhaps you may guess, as to why you and he have gone to so
much trouble to learn the combination of the safe. He declares that it
was not with an intention to rob. However, I think, Mr. Howell,” Trant
swung away from the boy to the young banker, suggestively, “that if we
turn Ford over to the police—”

“No, you shan’t!” the boy burst in. “He wasn’t going to rob the safe!
And you shan’t arrest him or disgrace him as you disgraced me! For he
was only—only—”

“Only getting the combination for you?” Trant put in quickly, “so you
could rob the bank yourself!”

“Rob the bank?” the boy shouted, less in control of himself than
before as he faced Howell with clenched fists and flushed face. “Rob
nothing! He was only helping me so I could take back from this — —
bank what it stole from my father—the ten thousand dollars it stole
from him, for the money I never lost. I was going to take ten thousand
dollars—not a cent more or less! And Ford knew it, and thought I was
right!”

Trant interrupted, quietly: “I am sure you are telling the truth,
Gordon!”

“You mean you are sure they meant only to take the ten thousand?” the
banker asked, dazed.

“Yes; and also that young Gordon did not steal the ten thousand
dollars which was made up by his father,” Trant assured.

“How can you be sure of that?” Howell charged.

“Send for Carl Shaffer, please!” Trant requested, glancing quickly at
the second sheet he had put aside.

“What! Shaffer?” Howell questioned, as he complied.

“Yes; for he can tell us, I think—you can tell, can’t you, Shaffer,”
Trant corrected, as, at Howell’s order, a short, stout, and
overdressed clerk came in and the door shut behind him, “what really
happened to the twenty five-hundred-dollar bills which disappeared
from the bank on September 29th? You did not know, when you found them
in Gordon’s waste-basket, that they were missed or—if they were—that
they had brought anyone into trouble. You have never known, have you,”
Trant went on, mercilessly, watching the eyes which could no longer
meet his, “that old Gordon, the cashier, thought he had surely locked
them into the dispatch bag for his son, and that when the boy was
dismissed a little later he was in disgrace and charged as a thief for
stealing those bills? You have not known, have you, that a black,
bitter shadow has come over the old cashier since then from that
disgrace, and that he has had to mortgage his home and give all his
savings to make up those twenty little slips of green paper you
‘found’ in his room that morning! But you’ve counted the days, almost
the hours, since then, haven’t you? You’ve counted the days till you
could feel yourself safe and be sure that no one would call for them?
Well, we call for them now! Where are they, Shaffer? You haven’t spent
or lost them?”

The clerk stood with eyes fixed on Trant, as if fascinated, and could
make no reply. Twice, and then again as Trant waited, he wet his lips
and opened them.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he faltered at last.

“Yes you do, Shaffer,” Trant rejoined quickly. “For I’m talking of
those twenty five-hundred-dollar bills which you ‘found’ in Gordon’s
waste-basket on September 29th—sixty days ago, Shaffer! And, through
me, Mr. Howell is giving you a chance to return the money and have the
bank present at your trial the extenuating circumstances,” he glanced
at Howell, who nodded, “or to refuse and have the bank prosecute you,
to the extent of its ability, as a thief!”

“I am not a thief!” the clerk cried, bitterly. “I found the money! If
you saw me take it, if you have known all these sixty days that I had
it,” he swung in his desperation toward the banker, “you are worse
than I am! Why did you let me keep it? Why didn’t you ask me for it?”

“We are asking you for it now, Shaffer,” said Trant, catching the
clerk by the arm, “if you still have it.”

The clerk looked at his employer, standing speechless before him, and
his head sank suddenly.

“Of course I have it,” he said, sullenly. “You know I have it!”

Howell stepped to the door and called in the bank’s special police
officer.

“You will go with Mr. Shaffer,” he said to the burly man, “who will
bring back to me here ten thousand dollars in bills. You must be sure
that he does not get away from you, and—say nothing about it.”

When the door had closed upon them he turned to the others. “As to
you, Ford—”

“Ford has not yet told us,” Trant interrupted, “how he came to be in
the game with Gordon.”

“I got him in!” young Gordon answered, boldly. “He—he comes to see—he
wants to marry my sister. I told him how they had taken our house from
us and were sending my sister to work and—and I got him to help me.”

“But your sister knew nothing of this?” Trant asked.

It brought a flush to both their cheeks. “No; of course not!” the boy
answered.

Howell opened the door to the next office. “Go in there, and wait for
me,” he commanded. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the
perspiration from his hands as he faced Trant alone. “So that was what
happened to the money! And what Gordon knew, and was hiding from me,
was that his son meant to rob the bank!”

“No, Howell,” Trant denied. “Gordon did not know that.”

“Then what was he trying to hide? Is there another secret in this
amazing affair?”

“Yes; William Gordon’s secret; the fact that your cashier is no longer
efficient; that he is getting old, and his memory has left him so that
he cannot remember during the week, even for a day, the single
combination word to open the safe.”

“What do you mean?” Howell demanded.

“I will tell you all. It seemed to me,” Trant explained, “when first
you told me of the case, that the cause of the troubles to the cashier
was the effort of some one to get at some secret personal paper which
the cashier carried, but the existence of which, for some reason,
Gordon could not confess to you. It was clear, of course, from the
consistent search made of the cashier’s coat, pocketbook, and private
papers that the person who was trying to get it believed that Gordon
carried it about with him. It was clear, too, from his taking the
blotters and pads, that the paper—probably a memorandum of some
sort—was often made out by Gordon at the office; for if Gordon wrote
in pencil upon a pad and tore off the first sheet, the other man could
hope to get an impression from the next in the pad, and if Gordon
wrote in ink, he might get an obverse from the blotters. But besides
this, from the fact that the waste-baskets were searched, it was clear
that the fellow believed that the paper would become valueless to
Gordon after a time and he would throw it away.

“So much I could make out when you told me the outlines of the case at
my office. But I could make absolutely nothing, then, of the reason
for the attempt to get into the typewriter desk. You also told me then
of young Gordon’s trouble; and I commented at once upon the
coincidence of one trouble coming so soon after the other, though I
was obviously unable to even guess at the connection. But even then I
was not convinced at all that the mere fact that Gordon and you all
thought he had locked twenty-four thousand dollars into the bag he
gave his son made it certain—in view of the fact that the seal was
unbroken when it was opened with but fourteen thousand dollars in it
at the branch bank. When I asked you about that, you replied that old
Gordon was unquestionably honest and that he put all the money into
the satchel; that is, he _thought_ he did or _intended_ to, but you
never questioned at all whether he was _able_ to.”

“Able to, Trant?” Howell repeated.

“Yes; able to,” Trant reaffirmed. “I mean in the sense of whether his
condition made it a certainty that he did what _he_ was sure he was
doing. I saw, of course, that you, as a banker, could recognize but
two conditions in your employee; either he was honest and the money
was put in, or he was dishonest and the money was withheld. But, as a
psychologist, I could appreciate that a man might very well be honest
and yet not put in the money, though he was _sure_ he did.

“I went to your office then, already fairly sure that Gordon was
making some sort of a memorandum there which he carried about for a
while and then threw away; that, for some reason, he could not tell
you of this; but that some one else was extremely anxious to possess
it. I also wished to investigate what I may call the psychological
possibility of Gordon’s not having put in the ten thousand dollars as
he thought he did; and with this was the typewriter-desk episode, of
which I could make nothing at all.

“You told me that Gordon had warned you that trouble threatened the
safe; and when I saw that it was a simple combination safe with a
six-letter word combination intrusted to the cashier, it came to me
convincingly at once that Gordon’s memorandum might well be the
combination of the safe. If he had been carrying the weekly word in
his head for twenty years, and now, mentally weakened by the disgrace
of his son, found himself unable to remember it, I could appreciate
how, with his savings gone, his home mortgaged, untrained in any
business but banking, he would desperately conceal his condition from
you for fear of losing his position.

“Obviously he would make a memorandum of the combination each week at
the office and throw away the old one. This explained clearly why some
one was after it; but why that one should be after the old memorandum,
and what the breaking open of the typewriter desk could have had to do
with it, I could not see at first, even after we surprised him with
his scraps of paper. But I made three short tests of him. The first, a
simple test of the psychologists for memory, made by exhibiting to him
a half dozen figures formed by different combinations of the same
three lines, proved to me, as he could not reproduce one of these
figures correctly, that he had need of a memorandum of the combination
of the safe. The other two tests—which are tests for attention—showed
that, besides having a failing memory, his condition as regards
attention was even worse. Gordon lost the watch ticks, which I asked
him to mark with his finger, twice within forty-five seconds. And,
whereas any person with normal ‘attention’ can write correctly from
one to thirty while counting aloud from one to fifty, Gordon was
incapable of keeping correctly to his set of figures under my very
slight distraction.

“I assured myself thus that he was incapable of correctly counting
money under the distraction and excitement such as was about him the
morning of the ‘run’; and I felt it probable that the missing money
was never put into the bag, and must either have been lost in the bank
or taken by some one else. As I set myself, then, to puzzling out the
mystery of the scraps which I took from Gordon, I soon saw that the
writing ‘43$=80’ and ‘35=8?$,’ which seemed perfectly senseless
equations, might not be equations at all, but secret writing instead,
made up of six symbols each, the number of letters in your
combination. Besides the numbers, the other three symbols were common
ones in commercial correspondence. Then, the attack on old Gordon’s
typewriter desk. You told me he had been a stenographer; and—it
flashed to me.

“He had not dared to write the combination in plain letters; so he had
hit on a very simple, but also very ingenious, cipher. He wrote the
word, not in letters, but in the figures and symbols which accompanied
each letter on the keyboard of his old typewriting machine. The cipher
explained why the other man was after the old combination in the
waste-basket, hoping to get enough words together so he could figure
them out, as he had been doing on the scraps of paper which Gordon
found. Till then Gordon might have been in doubt as to the meaning of
the annoyances; but, finding those scraps, after the breaking open of
his old desk, left him in no doubt, as he warned you.”

“I see! I see!” Howell nodded, intently.

“The symbols made no word upon the typewriters here in your office.
Before I could be sure, I had to see the cashier’s old machine, which
Gordon—beginning to fear his secret was discovered—had taken home.
When I saw that machine, ‘43$=80,’ by the mere change of the shift
key, gave me ‘reship,’ and ‘35=8?$’ gave me ‘ethics,’ two words of six
letters, as I had expected; but, to my surprise, I found that young
Gordon, as well as the fellow still in the bank, was concerning
himself strangely with his father’s cipher, and I had him here this
morning when I made my test to find out, first, who it was here in the
bank that was after the combination; and, second, who, if anyone, had
taken the missing bills on September 29th.

“Modern psychology gave me an easy method of detecting these two
persons. Before coming here this morning I made up a list of words
which must necessarily connect themselves with their crimes in the
minds of the man who had plotted against the safe and the one who had
taken the bills. ‘Reship’ and ‘ethics’ were the combination words of
the safe for the last two weeks. ‘Remington’ suggested ‘typewriter’;
‘shift key,’ ‘combination,’ ‘secret writing,’ and ‘waste-basket’ all
were words which would directly connect themselves with the attempt
upon the safe. ‘Ten thousand,’ ‘five hundred,’ ‘September 29th’
referred to the stealing of the bills. ‘Arrest,’ with its association
of ‘theft,’ would trouble both men.

“You must have seen, I think, that the little speech I made before
giving the test was not merely what it pretended to be. That speech
was an excuse for me to couple together and lay particular emphasis
upon the natural associations of certain words. So I coupled and
emphasized the natural association of ‘safe’ with ‘combination,’
‘scraps’ with ‘waste-basket,’ ‘dollars’ with ‘ten thousand,’ and so
on. In no case did I attempt by my speech to supplant in anyone’s mind
his normal association with any one of these words. Obviously, to all
your clerks the associations I suggested must be the most common, the
most impressive; and I took care thus to make them, finally, the most
recent. Then I could be sure that if any one of them refused those
normal associations upon any considerable number of the words, that
person must have ‘suspicious’ connection with the crime as the reason
for changing his associations. I did not care even whether he
suspected the purpose of my test. To refuse to write it would be a
confession of his guilt. And I was confident that if he did write it
he could not refrain from changing enough of these associations to
betray himself.

“Now, the first thing which struck me with Ford’s paper was that he
had obviously erased his first words for ‘reship’ and ‘ethics’ and
substituted others. Everyone else treated them easily, not knowing
them to be the combination words. Ford, however, wrote something which
didn’t satisfy him as being ‘innocent’ enough, and wrote again. There
were no ‘normal’ associations for these words, and I had suggested
none. But note the next.

“Typewriter was the common, the most insistent and recent association
for ‘Remington’ for all—except Ford. It was for him, too, but any
typewriter had gained a guilty association in his mind. He was afraid
to put it down, so wrote ‘rifles.’ ‘Shift key,’ the next word, of
course intensified his connection with the crime; so he refused to
write naturally, as the others did, either ‘typewriter’ or ‘dollar
mark,’ and wrote ‘trigger’ to give an unsuspicious appearance. ‘Secret
writing’ recalled at once the ‘symbols’ which I had suggested to him,
and which, of course, were in his mind anyway; but he wrote ‘cable
code’—not in itself entirely unnatural for one in a bank. The next
word, ‘combination,’ to everyone in a bank, at all times—particularly
if just emphasized—suggests its association, ‘safe’; and every single
one of the others, who had no guilty connection to conceal, so
associated it. Ford went out of his way to write ‘monopoly.’ And his
next association of ‘rifle,’ again, with ‘waste-basket’ is perhaps the
most interesting of all. As he had been searching the waste-basket for
‘scraps’ he thought it suspicious to put down that entirely natural
association; but scraps recalled to him those scraps bearing
‘typewriter’ symbols, and, avoiding the word typewriter, he
substituted for it his innocent association, ‘rifle.’

“The next words on my list were those put in to betray the man who had
taken the money—Shaffer. ‘Ten thousand,’ the amount he had taken,
suggested dollars to him, of course; but he was afraid to write
dollars. He wanted to appear entirely unconnected with any ‘ten
thousand dollars’; so he wrote ‘doors.’ At ‘five hundred’ Shaffer,
with twenty stolen five-hundred dollar bills in his possession,
preferred to appear to be thinking of five hundred ‘windows.’
‘September 29th,’ the day of the theft, was burned into Shaffer’s
brain, so, avoiding it, he wrote ‘last year.’ ‘Promissory note’ in the
replies of most of your clerks brought out the natural connection of
‘sixty days’ suggested in my speech, but Shaffer—since it was just
sixty days since he stole—avoided it, precisely as both he and Ford,
fearing arrest as thieves, avoided—and were the only ones who
avoided—the line of least resistance in my last word. And the evidence
was complete against them!”

Howell was staring at the lists, amazed. “I see! I see!” he cried, in
awe. “There is only one thing.” He raised his head. “It is clear here,
of course, now that you have explained it, how you knew Shaffer was
the one who took the money; but, was it a guess that he found it in
the waste-basket?”

“No; rather a chance that I was able to determine it,” Trant replied.
“All his associations for the early words, except one, are as natural
and easy as anyone else’s, for these were the words put in to detect
Ford. But for some reason, ‘waste-basket’ troubled Shaffer, too.
Supposing the money was lost by old Gordon in putting it into the bag,
it seemed more than probable that Shaffer’s disturbance over this word
came from the fact that Gordon had tossed the missing bills into the
waste-basket.”

There was a knock on the door. The special police officer of the bank
entered with Shaffer, who laid a package on the desk.

“This is correct, Shaffer,” Howell acknowledged as he ran quickly
through the bills. He stepped to the door. “Send Mr. Gordon here,” he
commanded.

“You were in time to save Gordon and Ford, Trant,” the banker
continued. “I shall merely dismiss Ford. Shaffer is a thief and must
be punished. Old Gordon—”

He stopped and turned quickly as the old cashier entered without
knocking.

“Gordon,” said the acting-president, pointing to the packet of money
on the desk, “I have sent for you to return to you this money—the ten
thousand dollars which you gave to the bank—and to tell you that your
son was not a thief, though this gentleman has just saved us, I am
afraid, from making him one. In saving the boy, Gordon, he had to
discover and reveal to me that you have worn yourself out in our
service. But, I shall see that you can retire when father returns,
with a proper pension.”

The old cashier stared at his young employer dully for a moment; his
dim eyes dropped, uncomprehending, to the packet of money on the desk.
Then he came forward slowly, with bowed head, and took it.



CHAPTER V

The Man Higher Up

The first real blizzard of the winter had burst upon New York from the
Atlantic. For seventy-two hours—as Rentland, file clerk in the
Broadway offices of the American Commodities Company, saw from the
record he was making for President Welter—no ship of any of the dozen
expected from foreign ports had been able to make the Company’s docks
in Brooklyn, or, indeed, had been reported at Sandy Hook. And for the
last five days, during which the weather bureau’s storm signals had
stayed steadily set, no steamer of the six which had finished
unloading at the docks the week before had dared to try for the open
sea except one, the _Elizabethan Age_, which had cleared the Narrows
on Monday night.

On land the storm was scarcely less disastrous to the business of the
great importing company. Since Tuesday morning Rentland’s reports of
the car and train-load consignments which had left the warehouses
daily had been a monotonous page of trains stalled. But until that
Friday morning, Welter—the big, bull-necked, thick-lipped master of
men and money—had borne all the accumulated trouble of the week with
serenity, almost with contempt. Only when the file clerk added to his
report the minor item that the 3,000-ton steamer, _Elizabethan Age_,
which had cleared on Monday night, had been driven into Boston,
something suddenly seemed to “break” in the inner office. Rentland
heard the president’s secretary telephone to Brooklyn for Rowan, the
dock superintendent; he heard Welter’s heavy steps going to and fro in
the private office, his hoarse voice raised angrily; and soon
afterwards Rowan blustered in. Rentland could no longer overhear the
voices. He went back to his own private office and called the station
master at the Grand Central Station on the telephone.

“The seven o’clock train from Chicago?” the clerk asked in a guarded
voice. “It came in at 10.30, as expected? Oh, at 10.10! Thank you.” He
hung up the receiver and opened the door to pass a word with Rowan as
he came out of the president’s office.

“They’ve wired that the _Elizabethan Age_ couldn’t get beyond Boston,
Rowan,” he cried curiously.

“The — — — hooker!” The dock superintendent had gone strangely white;
for the imperceptible fraction of an instant his eyes dimmed with
fear, as he stared into the wondering face of the clerk, but he
recovered himself quickly, spat offensively, and slammed the door as
he went out. Rentland stood with clenching hands for a moment; then he
glanced at the clock and hurried to the entrance of the outer office.
The elevator was just bringing up from the street a red-haired,
blue-gray-eyed young man of medium height, who, noting with a quick,
intelligent glance the arrangement of the offices, advanced directly
toward President Welter’s door. The chief clerk stepped forward
quickly.

“You are Mr. Trant?”

“Yes.”

“I am Rentland. This way, please.” He led the psychologist to the
little room behind the files, where he had telephoned the moment
before.

“Your wire to me in Chicago, which brought me here,” said Trant,
turning from the inscription “File Clerk” on the door to the dogged,
decisive features and wiry form of his client, “gave me to understand
that you wished to have me investigate the disappearance, or death, of
two of your dock scalecheckers. I suppose you were acting for
President Welter—of whom I have heard—in sending for me?”

“No,” said Rentland, as he waved Trant to a seat. “President Welter is
certainly not troubling himself to that extent over an investigation.”

“Then the company, or some other officer?” Trant questioned, with
increasing curiosity.

“No; nor the company, nor any other officer in it, Mr. Trant.”
Rentland smiled. “Nor even am I, as file clerk of the American
Commodities Company, overtroubling myself about those checkers,” he
leaned nearer to Trant, confidentially, “but as a special agent for
the United States Treasury Department I am extremely interested in the
death of one of these men, and in the disappearance of the other. And
for that I called you to help me.”

“As a secret agent for the Government?” Trant repeated, with rapidly
rising interest.

“Yes; a spy, if you wish to call me, but as truly in the ranks of the
enemies to my country as any Nathan Hale, who has a statue in this
city. To-day the enemies are the big, corrupting, thieving
corporations like this company; and appreciating that, I am not
ashamed to be a spy in their ranks, commissioned by the Government to
catch and condemn President Welter, and any other officers involved
with him, for systematically stealing from the Government for the past
ten years, and for probable connivance in the murder of at least one
of those two checkers so that the company might continue to steal.”

“To steal? How?”

“Customs frauds, thefts, smuggling—anything you wish to call it.
Exactly what or how, I can’t tell; for that is part of what I sent for
you to find out. For a number of years the Customs Department has
suspected, upon circumstantial evidence, that the enormous profits of
this company upon the thousand and one things which it is importing
and distributing must come in part from goods they have got through
without paying the proper duty. So at my own suggestion I entered the
employ of the company a year ago to get track of the method. But after
a year here I was almost ready to give up the investigation in
despair, when Ed Landers, the company’s checker on the docks in scale
house No. 3, was killed—accidentally, the coroner’s jury said. To me
it looked suspiciously like murder. Within two weeks Morse, who was
appointed as checker in his place, suddenly disappeared. The company’s
officials showed no concern as to the fate of these two men; and my
suspicions that something crooked might be going on at scale house No.
3 were strengthened; and I sent for you to help me to get at the
bottom of things.”

“Is it not best then to begin by giving me as fully as possible the
details of the employment of Morse and Landers, and also of their
disappearance?” the young psychologist suggested.

“I have told you these things here, Trant, rather than take you to
some safer place,” the secret agent replied, “because I have been
waiting for some one who can tell you what you need to know better
than I can. Edith Rowan, the stepdaughter of the dock superintendent,
knew Landers well, for he boarded at Rowan’s house. She was—or is, if
he still lives—engaged to Morse. It is an unusual thing for Rowan
himself to come here to see President Welter, as he did just before
you came; but every morning since Morse disappeared his daughter has
come to see Welter personally. She is already waiting in the outer
office.” Opening the door, he indicated to Trant a light-haired,
overdressed, nervous girl twisting about uneasily on the seat outside
the president’s private office.

“Welter thinks it policy, for some reason, to see her a moment every
morning. But she always comes out almost at once—crying.”

“This is interesting,” Trant commented, as he watched the girl go into
the president’s office. After only a moment she came out, crying.
Rentland had already left his room, so it seemed by chance that he and
Trant met and supported her to the elevator, and over the slippery
pavement to the neat electric coupé which was standing at the curb.

“It’s hers,” said Rentland, as Trant hesitated before helping the girl
into it. “It’s one of the things I wanted you to see. Broadway is very
slippery, Miss Rowan. You will let me see you home again this morning?
This gentleman is Mr. Trant, a private detective. I want him to come
along with us.”

The girl acquiesced, and Trant crowded into the little automobile.
Rentland turned the coupé skillfully out into the swept path of the
street, ran swiftly down Fifth Avenue to Fourteenth Street, and
stopped three streets to the east before a house in the middle of the
block. The house was as narrow and cramped and as cheaply constructed
as its neighbors on both sides. It had lace curtains conspicuous in
every window, and impressive statuettes, vases, and gaudy bits of
bric-à-brac in the front rooms.

“He told me again that Will must still be off drunk; and Will never
takes a drink,” she spoke to them for the first time, as they entered
the little sitting room.

“‘He’ is Welter,” Rentland explained to Trant. “‘Will’ is Morse, the
missing man. Now, Miss Rowan, I have brought Mr. Trant with me because
I have asked him to help me find Morse for you, as I promised; and I
want you to tell him everything you can about how Landers was killed
and how Morse disappeared.”

“And remember,” Trant interposed, “that I know very little about the
American Commodities Company.”

“Why, Mr. Trant,” the girl gathered herself together, “you cannot
help knowing something about the company! It imports almost
everything—tobacco, sugar, coffee, wines, olives, and preserved
fruits, oils, and all sorts of table delicacies, from all over the
world, even from Borneo, Mr. Trant, and from Madagascar and New
Zealand. It has big warehouses at the docks with millions of dollars’
worth of goods stored in them. My stepfather has been with the company
for years, and has charge of all that goes on at the docks.”

“Including the weighing?”

“Yes; everything on which there is a duty when it is taken off the
boats has to be weighed, and to do this there are big scales, and for
each one a scale house. When a scale is being used there are two men
in the scale house. One of these is the Government weigher, who sets
the scale to a balance and notes down the weight in a book. The other
man, who is an employee of the company, writes the weight also in a
book of his own; and he is called the company’s checker. But though
there are half a dozen scales, almost everything, when it is possible,
is unloaded in front of scale No. 3, for that is the best berth for
ships.”

“And Landers?”

“Landers was the company’s checker on scale No. 3. Well, about five
weeks ago I began to see that Mr. Landers was troubled about
something. Twice a queer, quiet little man with a scar on his cheek
came to see him, and each time they went up to Mr. Landers’s room and
talked a long while. Ed’s room was over the sitting room, and after
the man had gone I could hear him walking back and forth—walking and
walking until it seemed as though he would never stop. I told father
about this man who troubled Mr. Landers, and he asked him about it,
but Mr. Landers flew into a rage and said it was nothing of
importance. Then one night—it was a Wednesday—everybody stayed late at
the docks to finish unloading the steamer _Covallo_. About two o’clock
father got home, but Mr. Landers had not been ready to come with him.
He did not come all that night, and the next day he did not come home.

“Now, Mr. Trant, they are very careful at the warehouses about who
goes in and out, because so many valuable things are stored there. On
one side the warehouses open onto the docks, and at each end they are
fenced off so that you cannot go along the docks and get away from
them that way; and on the other side they open onto the street through
great driveway doors, and at every door, as long as it is open, there
stands a watchman, who sees everybody that goes in and out. Only one
door was open that Wednesday night, and the watchman there had not
seen Mr. Landers go out. And the second night passed, and he did not
come home. But the next morning, Friday morning,” the girl caught her
breath hysterically, “Mr. Landers’s body was found in the engine room
back of scale house No. 3, with the face crushed in horribly!”

“Was the engine room occupied?” said Trant, quickly. “It must have
been occupied in the daytime, and probably on the night when Landers
disappeared, as they were unloading the _Covallo_. But on the night
after which the body was found—was it occupied that night?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Trant. I think it could not have been, for after
the verdict of the coroner’s jury, which was that Mr. Landers had been
killed by some part of the machinery, it was said that the accident
must have happened either the evening before, just before the engineer
shut off his engines, or the first thing that morning, just after he
had started them; for otherwise somebody in the engine room would have
seen it.”

“But where had Landers been all day Thursday, Miss Rowan, from two
o’clock on the second night before, when your father last saw him,
until the accident in the engine room?”

“It was supposed he had been drunk. When his body was found, his
clothes were covered with fibers from the coffee-sacking, and the jury
supposed he had been sleeping off his liquor in the coffee warehouse
during Thursday. But I had known Ed Landers for almost three years,
and in all that time I never knew him to take even one drink.”

“Then it was a very unlikely supposition. You do not believe in that
accident, Miss Rowan?” Trant said, brusquely.

The girl grew white as paper. “Oh, Mr. Trant, I don’t know! I did
believe in it. But since Will—Mr. Morse—has disappeared in exactly the
same way, under exactly the same circumstances, and everyone acts
about it exactly the same way—”

“You say the circumstances of Morse’s disappearance were the same?”
Trant pressed quietly when she was able to proceed.

“After Mr. Landers had been found dead,” said the girl, pulling
herself together again, “Mr. Morse, who had been checker in one of the
other scale houses, was made checker on scale No. 3. We were surprised
at that, for it was a sort of promotion, and father did not like Will;
he had been greatly displeased at our engagement. Will’s promotion
made us very happy, for it seemed as though father must be changing
his opinion. But after Will had been checker on scale No. 3 only a few
days, the same queer, quiet little man with the scar on his cheek who
had begun coming to see Mr. Landers before he was killed began coming
to see Will, too! And after he began coming, Will was troubled,
terribly troubled, I could see; but he would not tell me the reason.
And he expected, after that man began coming, that something would
happen to him. And I know, from the way he acted and spoke about Mr.
Landers, that he thought he had not been accidentally killed. One
evening, when I could see he had been more troubled than ever before,
he said that if anything happened to him I was to go at once to his
boarding house and take charge of everything in his room, and not to
let anyone into the room to search it until I had removed everything
in the bureau drawers; everything, no matter how useless anything
seemed. Then, the very next night, five days ago, just as while Mr.
Landers was checker, everybody stayed overtime at the docks to finish
unloading a vessel, the _Elizabethan Age_. And in the morning Will’s
landlady called me on the phone to tell me that he had not come home.
Five days ago, Mr. Trant! And since then no one has seen or heard from
him; and the watchman did not see him come out of the warehouse that
night just as he did not see Ed Landers.”

“What did you find in Morse’s bureau?” asked Trant.

“I found nothing.”

“Nothing?” Trant repeated. “That is impossible, Miss Rowan! Think
again! Remember he warned you that what you found might seem trivial
and useless.”

The girl, a little defiantly, studied for an instant Trant’s clear-cut
features. Suddenly she arose and ran from the room, but returned
quickly with a strange little implement in her hand.

It was merely a bit of wire, straight for perhaps three inches, and
then bent in a half circle of five or six inches, the bent portion of
the wire being wound carefully with stout twine, thus:

  [Illustration: A sickle-shaped wire, with string wrapped around the
  curved section.]

“Except for his clothes and some blank writing paper and envelopes
that was absolutely the only thing in the bureau. It was the only
thing at all in the only locked drawer.”

Trant and Rentland stared disappointedly at this strange implement,
which the girl handed to the psychologist.

“You have shown this to your stepfather, Miss Rowan, for a possible
explanation of why a company checker should be so solicitous about
such a thing as this?” asked Trant.

“No,” the girl hesitated. “Will had told me not to say anything; and I
told you father did not like Will. He had made up his mind that I was
to marry Ed Landers. In most ways father is kind and generous. He’s
kept the coupé we came here in for mother and me for two years; and
you see,” she gestured a little proudly about the bedecked and badly
furnished rooms, “you see how he gets everything for us. Mr. Landers
was most generous, too. He took me to the theaters two or three times
every week—always the best seats, too. I didn’t want to go, but father
made me. I preferred Will, though he wasn’t so generous.”

Trant’s eyes returned, with more intelligent scrutiny, to the
mysterious implement in his hand.

“What salary do checkers receive, Rentland?” he asked, in a low tone.

“One hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.”

“And her father, the dock superintendent—how much?” Trant’s expressive
glance now jumping about from one gaudy, extravagant trifle in the
room to another, caught a glimpse again of the electric coupé standing
in the street, then returned to the tiny bit of wire in his hand.

“Three thousand a year,” Rentland replied.

“Tell me, Miss Rowan,” said Trant, “this implement—have you by any
chance mentioned it to President Welter?”

“Why, no, Mr. Trant.”

“You are sure of that? Excellent! Excellent! Now the queer, quiet
little man with the scar on his cheek who came to see Morse; no one
could tell you anything about him?”

“No one, Mr. Trant; but yesterday Will’s landlady told me that a man
has come to ask for Will every forenoon since he disappeared, and she
thinks this may be the man with the scar, though she can’t be sure,
for he kept the collar of his overcoat up about his face. She was to
telephone me if he came again.”

“If he comes this morning,” Trant glanced quickly at his watch, “you
and I, Rentland, might much better be waiting for him over there.”

The psychologist rose, putting the bent, twine-wound bit of wire
carefully into his pocket; and a minute later the two men crossed the
street to the house, already known to Rentland, where Morse had
boarded. The landlady not only allowed them to wait in her little
parlor, but waited with them until at the end of an hour she pointed
with an eager gesture to a short man in a big ulster who turned
sharply up the front steps.

“That’s him—see!” she exclaimed.

“That the man with the scar!” cried Rentland. “Well! I know him.”

He made for the door, caught at the ulster and pulled the little man
into the house by main force.

“Well, Dickey!” the secret agent challenged, as the man faced him in
startled recognition. “What are you doing in this case? Trant, this is
Inspector Dickey, of the Customs Office,” he introduced the officer.

“I’m in the case on my own hook, if I know what case you’re talking
about,” piped Dickey. “Morse, eh? and the American Commodities
Company, eh?”

“Exactly,” said Rentland, brusquely. “What were you calling to see
Landers for?”

“You know about that?” The little man looked up sharply. “Well, six
weeks ago Landers came to me and told me he had something to sell; a
secret system for beating the customs. But before we got to terms, he
began losing his nerve a little; he got it back, however, and was
going to tell me when, all at once, he disappeared, and two days later
he was dead! That made it hotter for me; so I went after Morse. But
Morse denied he knew anything. Then Morse disappeared, too.”

“So you got nothing at all out of them?” Rentland interposed.

“Nothing I could use. Landers, one time when he was getting up his
nerve, showed me a piece of bent wire—with string around it—in his
room, and began telling me something when Rowan called him, and then
he shut up.”

“A bent wire!” Trant cried, eagerly. “Like this?” He took from his
pocket the implement given him by Edith Rowan. “Morse had this in his
room, the only thing in a locked drawer.”

“The same thing!” Dickey cried, seizing it. “So Morse had it, too,
after he became checker at scale No. 3, where the cheating is, if
anywhere. The very thing Landers started to explain to me, and how
they cheated the customs with it. I say, we must have it now,
Rentland! We need only go to the docks and watch them while they
weigh, and see how they use it, and arrest them and then we have them
at last, eh, old man?” he cried in triumph. “We have them at last!”

“You mean,” Trant cut in upon the customs man, “that you can convict
and jail perhaps the checker, or a foreman, or maybe even a dock
superintendent—as usual. But the men higher up—the big men who are
really at the bottom of this business and the only ones worth
getting—will you catch them?”

“We must take those we can get,” said Dickey sharply.

Trant laid his hand on the little officer’s arm.

“I am a stranger to you,” he said, “but if you have followed some of
the latest criminal cases in Illinois perhaps you know that, using the
methods of modern practical psychology, I have been able to get
results where old ways have failed. We are front to front now with
perhaps the greatest problem of modern criminal catching, to catch, in
cases involving a great corporation, not only the little men low down
who perform the criminal acts, but the men higher up, who conceive, or
connive at the criminal scheme. Rentland, I did not come here to
convict merely a dock foreman; but if we are going to reach anyone
higher than that, you must not let Inspector Dickey excite suspicion
by prying into matters at the docks this afternoon!”

“But what else can we do?” said Rentland, doubtfully.

“Modern practical psychology gives a dozen possible ways for proving
the knowledge of the man higher up in this corporation crime,” Trant
answered, “and I am considering which is the most practicable. Only
tell me,” he demanded suddenly; “Mr. Welter I have heard is one of the
rich men of New York who make it a fad to give largely to universities
and other institutions; can you tell me with what ones he may be most
closely interested?”

“I have heard,” Rentland replied, “that he is one of the patrons of
the Stuyvesant School of Science. It is probably the most fashionably
patroned institution in New York; and Welter’s name, I know, figures
with it in the newspapers.”

“Nothing could be better!” Trant exclaimed. “Kuno Schmalz has his
psychological laboratory there. I see my way now, Rentland; and you
will hear from me early in the afternoon. But keep away from the
docks!” He turned and left the astonished customs officers abruptly.
Half an hour later the young psychologist sent in his card to
Professor Schmalz in the laboratory of the Stuyvesant School of
Science. The German, broad-faced, spectacled, beaming, himself came to
the laboratory door.

“Is it Mr. Trant—the young, apt pupil of my old friend, Dr. Reiland?”
he boomed, admiringly. “Ach! luck is good to Reiland! For twenty years
I, too, have shown them in the laboratory how fear, guilt, every
emotion causes in the body reactions which can be measured. But do
they apply it? Pouf! No! it remains to them all impractical, academic,
because I have only nincompoops in my classes!”

“Professor Schmalz,” said Trant, following him into the laboratory,
and glancing from one to another of the delicate instruments with keen
interest, “tell me along what line you are now working.”

“Ach! I have been for a year now experimenting with the plethysmograph
and the pneumograph. I make a taste, I make a smell, or I make a noise
to excite feeling in the subject; and I read by the plethysmograph
that the volume of blood in the hand decreases under the emotions and
that the pulse quickens; and by the pneumograph I read that the
breathing is easier or quicker, depending on whether the emotions are
pleasant or unpleasant. I have performed this year more than two
thousand of those experiments.”

“Good! I have a problem in which you can be of the very greatest use
to me; and the plethysmograph and the pneumograph will serve my
purpose as well as any other instrument in the laboratory. For no
matter how hardened a man may be, no matter how impossible it may have
become to detect his feelings in his face or bearing, he cannot
prevent the volume of blood in his hand from decreasing, and his
breathing from becoming different, under the influence of emotions of
fear or guilt. By the way, professor, is Mr. Welter familiar with
these experiments of yours?”

“What, he!” cried the stout German. “For why should I tell him about
them? He knows nothing. He has bought my time to instruct classes; he
has not bought, py chiminey! everything—even the soul Gott gave me!”

“But he would be interested in them?”

“To be sure, he would be interested in them! He would bring in his
automobile three or four other fat money-makers, and he would show me
off before them. He would make his trained bear—that is me—dance!”

“Good!” cried Trant again, excitedly. “Professor Schmalz, would you be
willing to give a little exhibition of the plethysmograph and
pneumograph, this evening, if possible, and arrange for President
Welter to attend it?”

The astute German cast on him a quick glance of interrogation. “Why
not?” he said. “It makes nothing to me what purpose you will be
carrying out; no, py chiminey! not if it costs me my position of
trained bear; because I have confidence in my psychology that it will
not make any innocent man suffer!”

“And you will have two or three scientists present to watch the
experiments? And you will allow me to be there also and assist?”

“With great pleasure.”

“But, Professor Schmalz, you need not introduce me to Mr. Welter, who
will think I am one of your assistants.”

“As you wish about that, pupil of my dear old friend.”

“Excellent!” Trant leaped to his feet. “Provided it is possible to
arrange this with Mr. Welter, how soon can you let me know?”

“Ach! it is as good as arranged, I tell you. His vanity will arrange
it if I assure the greatest publicity—”

“The more publicity the better.”

“Wait! It shall be fixed before you leave here.”

The professor led the way into his private study, telephoned to the
president of the American Commodities Company, and made the
appointment without trouble.


A few minutes before eight o’clock that evening Trant again mounted
rapidly the stone steps to the professor’s laboratory. The professor
and two others, who were bending over a table in the center of the
room, turned at his entrance. President Welter had not yet arrived.
The young psychologist acknowledged with pleasure the introduction to
the two scientists with Schmalz. Both of them were known to him by
name, and he had been following with interest a series of experiments
which the elder, Dr. Annerly, had been reporting in a psychological
journal. Then he turned at once to the apparatus on the table.

He was still examining the instruments when the noise of a motor
stopping at the door warned him of the arrival of President Welter’s
party. Then the laboratory door opened and the party appeared. They
also were three in number; stout men, rather obtrusively dressed, in
jovial spirits, with strong faces flushed now with the wine they had
taken at dinner.

“Well, professor, what fireworks are you going to show us to-night?”
asked Welter, patronizingly. “Schmalz,” he explained to his
companions, “is the chief ring master of this circus.”

The bearded face of the German grew purple under Welter’s jokingly
overbearing manner; but he turned to the instruments and began to
explain them. The Marey pneumograph, which the professor first took
up, consists of a very thin flexible brass plate suspended by a cord
around the neck of the person under examination, and fastened tightly
against the chest by a cord circling the body. On the outer surface of
this plate are two small, bent levers, connected at one end to the
cord around the body of the subject, and at the other end to the
surface of a small hollow drum fastened to the plate between the two.
As the chest rises and falls in breathing, the levers press more and
less upon the surface of the drum; and this varying pressure on the
air inside the drum is transmitted from the drum through an air-tight
tube to a little pencil which it drops and lifts. The pencil, as it
rises and falls, touching always a sheet of smoked paper traveling
over a cylinder on the recording device, traces a line whose rising
strokes represent accurately the drawing of air into the chest and
whose falling represents its expulsion.

It was clear to Trant that the professor’s rapid explanation, though
plain enough to the psychologists already familiar with the device,
was only partly understood by the big men. It had not been explained
to them that changes in the breathing so slight as to be imperceptible
to the eye would be recorded unmistakably by the moving pencil.

Professor Schmalz turned to the second instrument. This was a
plethysmograph, designed to measure the increase or decrease of the
size of one finger of a person under examination as the blood supply
to that finger becomes greater or less. It consists primarily of a
small cylinder so constructed that it can be fitted over the finger
and made air-tight. Increase or decrease of the size of the finger
then increases or decreases the air pressure inside the cylinder.
These changes in the air pressure are transmitted through an air-tight
tube to a delicate piston which moves a pencil and makes a line upon
the record sheet just under that made by the pneumograph. The upward
or downward trend of this line shows the increase or decrease of the
blood supply, while the smaller vibrations up and down record the
pulse beat in the finger.

There was still a third pencil touching the record sheet above the
other two and wired electrically to a key like that of a telegraph
instrument fastened to the table. When this key was in its normal
position this pencil made simply a straight line upon the sheet; but
instantly when the key was pressed down, the line broke downward also.

This third instrument was used merely to record on the sheet, by the
change in the line, the point at which the object that aroused
sensation or emotion was displayed to the person undergoing
examination.

The instant’s silence which followed Schmalz’s rapid explanation was
broken by one of Welter’s companions with the query:

“Well, what’s the use of all this stuff, anyway?”

“Ach!” said Schmalz, bluntly, “it is interesting, curious! I will show
you.”

“Will one of you gentlemen,” said Trant, quickly, “permit us to make
use of him in the demonstration?”

“Try it, Jim,” Welter laughed, noisily.

“Not I,” said the other. “This is your circus.”

“Yes, indeed it’s mine. And I’m not afraid of it. Schmalz, do your
worst!” He dropped laughing into the chair the professor set for him,
and at Schmalz’s direction unbuttoned his vest. The professor hung the
pneumograph around his neck and fastened it tightly about the big
chest. He laid Welter’s forearm in a rest suspended from the ceiling,
and attached the cylinder to the second finger of the plump hand. In
the meantime Trant had quickly set the pencils to bear upon the record
sheet and had started the cylinder on which the sheet traveled under
them.

“You see, I have prepared for you.” Schmalz lifted a napkin from a
tray holding several little dishes. He took from one of these a bit of
caviar and laid it upon Welter’s tongue. At the same instant Trant
pushed down the key. The pencils showed a slight commotion, and the
spectators stared at this record sheet:

  [Illustration: A polygraph record consisting of three lines. The top
  line is straight except for a dip at the one-third point. The middle
  line rises and falls a dozen times; at the one-third point its
  curves become smaller for several wavelengths. The bottom line
  consists of many small zigzags, and dips down at the one-third point
  before slowly rising back to its original height.]

“Ah!” exclaimed Schmalz, “you do not like caviar.”

“How do you know that?” demanded Welter.

“The instruments show that at the unpleasant taste you breathe less
freely—not so deep. Your finger, as under strong sensation or emotion,
grows smaller, and your pulse beats more rapidly.”

“By the Lord! Welter, what do you think of that?” cried one of his
companions; “your finger gets smaller when you taste caviar!”

It was a joke to them. Boisterously laughing, they tried Welter with
other food upon the tray; they lighted for him one of the black cigars
of which he was most fond, and watched the trembling pencils write the
record of his pleasure at the taste and smell. Through it all Trant
waited, alert, watchful, biding the time to carry out his plan. It
came when, having exhausted the articles at hand, they paused to find
some other means to carry on the amusement. The young psychologist
leaned forward suddenly.

“It is no great ordeal after all, is it, Mr. Welter?” he said. “Modern
psychology does not put its subjects to torture like”—he halted,
meaningly—“_a prisoner in the Elizabethan Age_!”

Dr. Annerly, bending over the record sheet, uttered a startled
exclamation. Trant, glancing keenly at him, straightened triumphantly.
But the young psychologist did not pause. He took quickly from his
pocket a photograph, showing merely a heap of empty coffee sacks piled
carelessly to a height of some two feet along the inner wall of a
shed, and laid it in front of the subject. Welter’s face did not
alter; but again the pencils shuddered over the moving paper, and the
watchers stared with astonishment. Rapidly removing the photograph,
Trant substituted for it the bent wire given him by Miss Rowan. Then
for the last time he swung to the instrument, and as his eyes caught
the wildly vibrating pencils, they flared with triumph.

  [Illustration: In a crowded laboratory, an older gentleman sits
  alongside a table. His right hand rests on the table, and wires lead
  from his fingers to an electrical machine. Atop the machine a roll
  of dark paper scrolls past a moving needle that leaves a light
  zigzag mark on the paper. Behind the gentleman a crowd of several
  other men carefully watch the marks made on the scrolling paper.]

  Caption: Welter’s face did not alter; the watchers stared with
  astonishment

President Welter rose abruptly, but not too hurriedly. “That’s about
enough of this tomfoolery,” he said, with perfect self-possession.

His jaw had imperceptibly squared to the watchful determination of the
prize fighter driven into his corner. His cheek still held the ruddy
glow of health; but the wine flush had disappeared from it, and he was
perfectly sober.

Trant tore the strip of paper from the instrument, and numbered the
last three reactions 1, 2, 3. This is the way the records looked:

  [Illustration: Another polygraph record. It is very similar to the
  previous example, except that the waves in the middle line shrink
  more noticeably at the one-third point, and take longer to return to
  their previous size. Likewise, the dip in the bottom line is deeper
  and wider. Label: Record of the reaction when Trant said: “A
  prisoner in the Elizabethan Age!”]

  [Illustration: Another polygraph record. In this one the rhythm in
  the waves of the middle line are disrupted at the one-third point,
  and do not entirely return to normal. Likewise, the dip in the
  bottom line is deeper yet, and only just climbs back to its original
  height. Label: Record made when Welter saw the photograph of a heap
  of coffee sacks.]

  [Illustration: Another polygraph record. The waves of the middle
  line contract severely at the one-third point, and remain
  contracted. Likewise, the bottom line dips precipitously, and only
  returns to half of its original height. Label: Record made when the
  spring was shown to Welter.]

  Caption: In each of these diagrams the single break in the upper
  line shows the point at which an object or words expected to arouse
  emotion are presented. The wavy line just below it is the record of
  the subject’s breathing. The irregular line at the bottom indicates
  the alteration of the size of the subject’s finger as the blood
  supply increases or decreases.

“Amazing!” said Dr. Annerly. “Mr. Welter, I am curious to know what
associations you have with that photograph and bent wire, the sight of
which aroused in you such strong emotion.”

By immense self-control, the president of the American Commodities
Company met his eyes fairly. “None,” he answered.

“Impossible! No psychologist, knowing how this record was taken, could
look at it without feeling absolutely certain that the photograph and
spring caused in you such excessive emotion that I am tempted to give
it, without further words, the name of ‘intense fright!’ But if we
have inadvertently surprised a secret, we have no desire to pry into
it further. Is it not so, Mr. Trant?”

At the name President Welter whirled suddenly. “Trant! Is your name
Trant?” he demanded. “Well, I’ve heard of you.” His eyes hardened. “A
man like you goes just so far, and then—somebody stops him!”

“As they stopped Landers?” Trant inquired.

“Come, we’ve seen enough, I guess,” said President Welter, including
for one instant in his now frankly menacing gaze both Trant and
Professor Schmalz; he turned to the door, closely followed by his
companions. And a moment later the quick explosions of his automobile
were heard. At the sound, Trant seized suddenly a large envelope,
dropped into it the photograph and wire he had just used, sealed,
signed, and dated it, signed and dated also the record from the
instruments, and hurriedly handed all to Dr. Annerly.

“Doctor, I trust this to you,” he cried, excitedly. “It will be best
to have them attested by all three of you. If possible get the record
photograph to-night, and distribute the photographs in safe places.
Above all, do not let the record itself out of your hands until I come
for it. It is important—extremely important! As for me, I have not a
moment to lose!”


The young psychologist sped down the stone steps of the laboratory
three at a time, ran at top speed to the nearest street corner, turned
it and leaped into a waiting automobile. “The American Commodities
Company’s docks in Brooklyn,” he shouted, “and never mind the speed
limits!”

Rentland and the chauffeur, awaiting him in the machine, galvanized at
his coming.

“Hot work?” the customs’s agent asked.

“It may be very hot; but we have the start of him,” Trant replied as
the car shot ahead. “Welter himself is coming to the docks to-night, I
think, by the look of him! He left just before me, but must drop his
friends first. He suspects, now, that we know; but he cannot be aware
that we know that they are unloading to-night. He probably counts on
our waiting to catch them at the cheating to-morrow morning. So he’s
going over to-night himself, if I size him up right, to order it
stopped and remove all traces before we can prove anything. Is Dickey
waiting?”

“When you give the word he is to take us in and catch them at it. If
Welter himself comes, as you think, it will not change the plan?”
Rentland replied.

“Not at all,” said Trant, “for I have him already. He will deny
everything, of course, but it’s too late now!”

The big car, with unchecked speed, swung down Broadway, slowed after a
twenty-minutes’ run to cross the Brooklyn Bridge, and, turning to the
left, plunged once more at high speed into the narrower and less
well-kept thoroughfares of the Brooklyn water front. Two minutes later
it overtook a little electric coupé, bobbing excitedly down the
sloping street. As they passed it, Trant caught sight of the
illuminated number hanging at its rear, and shouted suddenly to the
chauffeur, who brought the big motor to a stop a hundred feet beyond.
The psychologist, leaping down, ran into the road before the little
car.

“Miss Rowan,” he cried to its single occupant, as it came to a stop.
“Why are you coming over here at this time to-night?”

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Trant!” She opened the door, showing relief in the
recognition. “Oh, I’m so worried. I’m on my way to see father; for a
telegram just came to him from Boston; mother opened it, and told me
to take it to him at once, as it was most important. She wouldn’t tell
me what it was about, but it excited her a great deal. Oh, I’m so
afraid it must be about Will and that was why she wouldn’t tell me.”

“From Boston?” Trant pressed quickly. Having her confidence, the girl
nervously read the telegram aloud by the light of the coupé’s side
lamps. It read:

  Police have taken your friend out of our hands; look out for
  trouble. Wilson.

“Who is Wilson?” Trant demanded.

“I am not sure it is the man, but the captain of the _Elizabethan Age_
is a friend of father’s named Wilson!”

“I can’t help you then, after all,” said Trant, springing back to his
powerful car. He whispered a word to the chauffeur which sent it
driving ahead through the drifts at double its former speed, leaving
the little electric coupé far behind. Ten minutes later Rentland
stopped the motor a block short of a great lighted doorway which
suddenly showed in a length of dark, lowering buildings which lay
beside the American Commodities Company’s Brooklyn docks.

“Now,” the secret agent volunteered, “it is up to me to find Dickey’s
ladder!”

He guided Trant down a narrow, dark court which brought them face to
face with a blank wall; against this wall a light ladder had been
recently placed. Ascending it, they came into the dock inclosure.
Descending again by a dozen rickety, disused steps, they reached a
darker, covered teamway and hurried along it to the docks. Just short
of the end of the open dock houses, where a string of arc lamps threw
their white and flickering light upon the huge, black side of a moored
steamer, Rentland turned into a little shed, and the two came suddenly
upon Customs Officer Dickey.

“This one next to us,” the little man whispered, eagerly, to Trant, as
he grasped his hand, “is the scale house where whatever is being done
is done—No. 3.”

In and out of the yawning gangways of the steamer before them
struggling lines of sweating men were wheeling trucks loaded with
bales of tobacco. Trant looked first to the left, where the bales
disappeared into the tobacco warehouse; then to the right, where,
close at hand, each truck-load stopped momentarily on a scale platform
in front of the low shed which bore the number Dickey indicated in a
large white figure.

“Who’s that?” asked Trant, as a small figure, hardly five feet tall,
cadaverous, beetle-browed, with cold, malignant, red-lidded eyes
passed directly under the arc light nearest them.

“Rowan, the dock superintendent!” Dickey whispered.

“I knew he was small,” Trant returned with surprise, “but I thought
surely he must have some fist to be the terror of these dock
laborers.”

“Wait!” Rentland, behind them, motioned.

A bloated, menacing figure had suddenly swung clear of the group of
dock laborers—a roustabout, goaded to desperation, with a fist raised
against his puny superior. But before the blow had fallen another
fist, huge and black, struck the man over Rowan’s shoulder with a
hammer. He fell, and the dock superintendent passed on without a
backward glance, the giant negro who had struck the blow following in
his footsteps like a dog.

“The black,” Rentland explained, “is Rowan’s bodyguard. He needs him.”

“I see,” Trant replied. “And for Miss Rowan’s sake I am glad it was
that way,” he added, enigmatically.

Dickey had quietly opened a door on the opposite side of the shed; the
three slipped quickly through it and stepped unobserved around the
corner of the coffee warehouse to a long, dark, and narrow space. On
one side of them was the rear wall of scale house No. 3, and on the
other the engine room where Landers’s body had been found. The single
window in the rear of No. 3 scale house had been whitewashed to
prevent anyone from looking in from that side; but in spots the
whitewash had fallen off in flakes. Trant put his eye to one of these
clear spots in the glass and looked in.

The scale table, supported on heavy posts, extended across almost the
whole front of the house, behind a low, wide window, which permitted
those seated at the table to see all that occurred on the docks.
Toward the right end of the table sat the Government weigher; toward
the left end, and separated from him by almost the whole length of the
table, sat the company checker. They were the only persons in the
scale house. Trant, after his first rapid survey of the scene, fixed
his eye upon the man who had taken the place which Landers had held
for three years, and Morse for a few days afterwards—the company
checker. A truck-load of tobacco bales was wheeled on to the scales in
front of the house.

“Watch his left knee,” Trant whispered quickly into Dickey’s ear at
the pane beside him, as the balance was being made upon the beam
before them. As he spoke, the Government weigher adjusted the balance
and they saw the left leg of the company checker pressed hard against
the post which protected the scale rod at his end. Both men in the
scale house then read aloud the weight and each entered it in the book
on the table in front of him. A second truckful was wheeled on to the
scale; and again, just as the Government weigher fixed his balances,
the company checker, so inconspicuously as to make the act
undiscoverable by anyone not looking for that precise move, repeated
the operation. With the next truck they saw it again. The psychologist
turned to the others. Rentland, too, had been watching through the
pane and nodded his satisfaction.

Immediately Trant dashed open the door of the scale house, and threw
himself bodily upon the checker. The man resisted; they struggled.
While the customs men protected him, Trant, wrenching something from
the post beside the checker’s left knee, rose with a cry of triumph.
Then the psychologist, warned by a cry from Rentland, leaped quickly
to one side to avoid a blow from the giant negro. His quickness saved
him; still the blow, glancing along his cheek, hurled him from his
feet. He rose immediately, blood flowing from a superficial cut upon
his forehead where it had struck the scale-house wall. He saw Rentland
covering the negro with a revolver, and the two other customs men
arresting, at pistol point, the malignant little dock superintendent,
the checker, and the others who had crowded into the scale house.

“You see!” Trant exhibited to the customs officers a bit of bent wire,
wound with string, precisely like that the girl had given him that
morning and he had used in his test of Welter the hour before. “It was
almost exactly as we knew it must be! This spring was stuck through a
hole in the protecting post so that it prevented the balance beam from
rising properly when bales were put on the platform. A little pressure
just at that point takes many pounds from each bale weighed. The
checker had only to move his knee, in a way we would never have
noticed if we were not watching for it, to work the scheme by which
they have been cheating for ten years! But the rest of this affair,”
he glanced at the quickly collecting crowd, “can best be settled in
the office.”

He led the way, the customs men taking their prisoners at pistol
point. As they entered the office, Rowan first, a girl’s cry and the
answering oath of her father told Trant that the dock superintendent’s
daughter had arrived. But she had been almost overtaken by another
powerful car; for before Trant could speak with her the outer door of
the office opened violently and President Welter, in an automobile
coat and cap, entered.

“Ah! Mr. Welter, you got here quickly,” said Trant, meeting calmly his
outraged astonishment at the scene. “But a little too late.”

“What is the matter here?” Welter governed his voice commandingly.
“And what has brought you here, from your phrenology?” he demanded,
contemptuously, of Trant.

“The hope of catching red-handed, as we have just caught them, your
company checker and your dock superintendent defrauding the
Government,” Trant returned, “before you could get here to stop them
and remove evidences.”

“What raving idiocy is this?” Welter replied, still with excellent
moderation. “I came here to sign some necessary papers for ships
clearing, and you—”

“I say we have caught your men red-handed,” Trant repeated, “at the
methods used, with your certain knowledge and under your direction,
Mr. Welter, to steal systematically from the United States Government
for—probably the last ten years. We have uncovered the means by which
your company checker at scale No. 3, which, because of its position,
probably weighs more cargoes than all the other scales together, has
been lessening the apparent weights upon which you pay duties.”

“Cheating here under my direction?” Welter now bellowed indignantly.
“What are you talking about? Rowan, what is he talking about?” he
demanded, boldly, of the dock superintendent; but the cadaverous
little man was unable to brazen it out with him.

“You need not have looked at your dock superintendent just then, Mr.
Welter, to see if he would stand the racket when the trouble comes,
for which you have been paying him enough on the side to keep him in
electric motors and marble statuettes. And you cannot try now to
disown this crime with the regular president-of-corporation excuse,
Mr. Welter, that you never knew of it, that it was all done without
your knowledge by a subordinate to make a showing in his department;
and do not expect, either, to escape so easily your certain complicity
in the murder of Landers, to prevent him from exposing your scheme
and—since even the American Commodities Company scarcely dared to have
two ‘accidental deaths’ of checkers in the same month—the shanghaiing
of Morse later.”

“My complicity in the death of Landers and the disappearance of
Morse?” Welter roared.

“I said the murder of Landers,” Trant corrected. “For when Rentland
and Dickey tell to-morrow before the grand jury how Landers was about
to disclose to the Customs Department the secret of the cheating in
weights; how he was made afraid by Rowan, and later was about to tell
anyway and was prevented only by a most sudden death, I think murder
will be the word brought in the indictment. And I said shanghaiing of
Morse, Mr. Welter. When we remembered this morning that Morse had
disappeared the night the _Elizabethan Age_ left your docks and you
and Rowan were so intensely disgusted at its having had to put into
Boston this morning instead of going on straight to Sumatra, we did
not have to wait for the chance information this evening that Captain
Wilson is a friend of Rowan’s to deduce that the missing checker was
put aboard, as confirmed by the Boston harbor police this afternoon,
who searched the ship under our instructions.” Trant paused a moment;
again fixed the now trembling Welter with his eye, and continued: “I
charge your certain complicity in these crimes, along with your
certain part in the customs frauds,” the psychologist repeated.
“Undoubtedly, it was Rowan who put Morse out of the way upon the
_Elizabethan Age_. Nevertheless, you knew that he was a prisoner upon
that ship, a fact which was written down in indelible black and white
by my tests of you at the Stuyvesant Institute two hours ago, when I
merely mentioned to you ‘a prisoner in the _Elizabethan Age_.’

“I do not charge that you, personally, were the one who murdered
Landers; or even that Rowan himself did; whether his negro did, as I
suspect, is a matter now for the courts to decide upon. But that you
undoubtedly were aware that he was not killed accidentally in the
engine room, but was killed the Wednesday night before and his body
hidden under the coffee bags, as I guessed from the fibers of coffee
sacking on his clothes, was also registered as mercilessly by the
psychological machines when I showed you merely the picture of a pile
of coffee sacks.

“And last, Mr. Welter, you deny knowledge of the cheating which has
been going on, and was at the bottom of the other crimes. Well,
Welter,” the psychologist took from his pocket the bent, twine-wound
wire, “here is the ‘innocent’ little thing which was the third means
of causing you to register upon the machines such extreme and
inexplicable emotion; or rather, Mr. Welter, it is the companion piece
to that, for this is not the one I showed you, the one given to Morse
to use, which, however, he refused to make use of; but it is the very
wire I took to-night from the hole in the post where it bore against
the balance beam to cheat the Government. When this is made public
to-morrow, and with it is made public, too, and attested by the
scientific men who witnessed them, the diagram and explanation of the
tests of you two hours ago, do you think that you can deny longer that
this was all with your knowledge and direction?”

The big, bull neck of the president swelled, and his hands clenched
and reclenched as he stared with gleaming eyes into the face of the
young man who thus challenged him.

“You are thinking now, I suppose, Mr. Welter,” Trant replied to his
glare, “that such evidence as that directly against you cannot be got
before a court. I am not so sure of that. But at least it can go
before the public to-morrow morning in the papers, attested by the
signatures of the scientific men who witnessed the test. It has been
photographed by this time, and the photographic copies are distributed
in safe places, to be produced with the original on the day when the
Government brings criminal proceedings against you. If I had it here I
would show you how complete, how merciless, is the evidence that you
knew what was being done. I would show you how at the point marked 1
on the record your pulse and breathing quickened with alarm under my
suggestion; how at the point marked 2 your anxiety and fear increased;
and how at 3, when the spring by which this cheating had been carried
out was before your eyes, you betrayed yourself uncontrollably,
unmistakably. How the volume of blood in your second finger suddenly
diminished, as the current was thrown back upon your heart; how your
pulse throbbed with terror; how, though unmoved to outward appearance,
you caught your breath, and your laboring lungs struggled under the
dread that your wrongdoing was discovered and you would be branded—as
I trust you will now be branded, Mr. Welter, when the evidence in this
case and the testimony of those who witnessed my test are produced
before a jury—a deliberate and scheming thief!”

“— — you!” The three words escaped from Welter’s puffed lips. He put
out his arm to push aside the customs officer standing between him and
the door. Dickey resisted.

“Let him go if he wants to!” Trant called to the officer. “He can
neither escape nor hide. His money holds him under bond!”

The officer stepped aside, and Welter, without another word, went into
the hall. But when his face was no longer visible to Trant, the
hanging pouches under his eyes grew leaden gray, his fat lips fell
apart loosely, his step shuffled; his mask had fallen!

“Besides, we need all the men we have, I think,” said Trant, turning
back to the prisoners, “to get these to a safe place. Miss Rowan,” he
turned then and put out his hand to steady the terrified and weeping
girl, “I warned you that you had probably better not come here
to-night. But since you have come and have had pain because of your
stepfather’s wrong-doings, I am glad to be able to give you the
additional assurance, beyond the fact, which you have heard, that your
fiancé was not murdered, but merely put away on board the _Elizabethan
Age_; that he is safe and sound, except for a few bruises, and,
moreover, we expect him here any moment now. The police were bringing
him down from Boston on the train which arrives at ten.”

He went to the window and watched an instant, as Dickey and Rentland,
having telephoned for a patrol, were waiting with their prisoners.
Before the patrol wagon appeared, he saw the bobbing lanterns of a
lurching cab that turned a corner a block away. As it stopped at the
entrance, a police officer in plain clothes leaped out and helped
after him a young man wrapped in an overcoat, with one arm in a sling,
pale, and with bandaged head. The girl uttered a cry, and sped through
the doorway. For a moment the psychologist stood watching the greeting
of the lovers. He turned back then to the sullen prisoners.

“But it’s some advance, isn’t it, Rentland,” he asked, “not to have to
try such poor devils alone; but, at last, with the man who makes the
millions and pays them the pennies—the man higher up?”



CHAPTER VI

The Chalchihuitl Stone

Tramp—tramp—tramp—tramp—tramp! For three nights and two days the
footsteps had echoed through the great house almost ceaselessly.

The white-haired woman leaning on a cane, pausing again in the upper
hall to listen to them, started, impulsively, for the tenth time that
morning toward her son’s door; but, recognizing once more her utter
inability to counsel or to comfort, she wiped her tear-filled eyelids
and limped painfully back to her own room. The aged negress, again
passing the door, pressed convulsively together her bony hands, and
sobbed pityingly; she had been the childhood nurse of this man whose
footsteps had so echoed for hours as he paced bedroom, library, hall,
museum, study—most frequently of all the little study—in his grief and
turmoil of spirit.

Tramp—tramp—tramp—tramp!

She shuffled swiftly down the stairs to the big, luxurious morning
room on the floor below, where a dark-eyed girl crouched on the couch
listening to his footsteps beating overhead, and listening so
strangely, without a sign of the grief of the mother or even the negro
nurse, that she seemed rather studying her own absence of feeling with
perplexity and doubt.

Tramp—tramp—tramp—tramp!

“Ain’ yo’ sorry for him, Miss Iris?” the negress said.

“Why, Ulame, I—I—” the girl seemed struggling to call up an emotion
she did not feel. “I know I ought to feel sorry for him.”

“An’ the papers? Ain’ yo’ sorry, honey, dem papers is gone—buhned up;
dem papers he thought so much of—all buhned by somebody?”

“The papers?—the papers, Ulame?” the girl exclaimed in bewilderment at
herself. “Oh—oh, I know it must be terrible to him that they are gone;
but I—I can’t feel so sorry about them!”

“Yo’ can’t?” The negress stiffened with anger. “An’ he tol’ me, too,
this mo’nin, now you won’t marry him next Thursday lak’ yo’
promised—since—since yo’ foun’ dat little green stone! Why is
dat—since yo’ foun’ dat little green stone?”

The sincere bewilderment deepened in the girl’s face. “I don’t know
why, Ulame—I tell you truly,” she cried, miserably, “I don’t know any
reason why that stone—that stone should change me so! Oh, I can’t
understand it myself; but I know it is so. Ever since I’ve seen that
stone I’ve known it would be wrong to marry him. But I don’t know
why!”

“Den I do!” The old negress’s eyes blazed wildly. “It’s a’caze yo’
_is_ voodoo! Yo _is_ voodoo! An’ it’s all my faul’, Oh yas—yas it is!”
She rocked. “For yo’se had the ma’k ever since yo’se been a chile; the
ma’k of the debbil’s claw! But I nebber tole Marse Richard till too
late. But hit’s so! Hit’s so! The debbil’s ma’k is on yo’ left
shoulder, and the green stone is de cha’m dat is come to make yo’
break Marse Richard’s heart!”

“Ulame! Oh! Oh!” the girl cried.

“Ulame! Ulame!” a deeper, firm and controlled voice checked them both
as the man, whose steps had sounded overhead the moment before, stood
in the doorway.

He was a strikingly well-born, good-looking man of thirty-six,
strongly set up, muscular, with the body of an athlete surmounted by
the broad-browed head of a student. But his skin, indescribably
bronzed by the tropic sun during many expeditions to Central America,
showed now an underhue of sodden gray; and the thin, red veins which
shot his keen, blue eyes, the tenseness of his well-shaped mouth, the
pulse visibly beating in his temples, the slight trembling of the
usually firm hands, all gave plain evidence of some active grief and
long-continued strain; but at the same time bore witness to the
self-control which held his emotion in check.

The negress, quieted and rebuked by his words, shuffled out as he
entered; and the girl drew herself up quickly to a sitting posture,
rearranging her hair with deft pats.

“You must not mind Ulame!” He crossed to her and held her hand
steadyingly for an instant. “Or think that I shall ask you anything
more except—you have not altered your decision, Iris?” he asked,
gently.

The girl shook her head.

“Then I will not even ask that again, my—Iris,” he caught himself. “If
you will give me the proper form for recalling our wedding
invitations, I will send it at once to Chicago. As to the gifts that
have been already received—will you be good enough also to look up the
convention under these circumstances?” He caught his breath. “I
thought I heard the door bell a moment ago, Iris. Was there some one
for me?”

“Yes, Anna went to the door.” The girl motioned to a maid who for five
minutes had been hovering about the hall, afraid to go to him with the
card she held upon a silver tray.

“Ah! I was expecting him.” He took the card. “Where is he? In the
library?”

“Yes, Dr. Pierce.”

He crushed the card in his hand, touched tenderly with his finger tips
Iris’s pale cheek, and with the same regular step crossed the hall to
the library. A compact figure rose energetically at his coming.

“Mr. Trant?” asked Pierce, carefully closing the door behind him and
measuring with forced collectedness his visitor, who seemed slightly
surprised. “I need not apologize to you for my note asking you to come
to me here in Lake Forest this morning. I understand that with you it
is a matter of business. But I thank you for your promptness. I have
heard of you from a number of sources as a psychologist who has
applied laboratory methods to the solution of—of mysteries—of crimes;
not as a police detective, Mr. Trant, but as a—a—”

“Consultant,” the psychologist suggested.

“Yes; a consultant. And I badly need a consultant, Mr. Trant.” Pierce
dropped into the nearest chair. “You must pardon me. I am not quite
myself this morning. An event—or, rather events—occurred here last
Wednesday afternoon which, though I have endeavored to keep my feeling
under control, have affected me perhaps even more than I myself was
aware; for I noticed your surprise at sight of me, which can only have
been occasioned by some strangeness in my appearance which these
events have caused.”

“I was surprised,” the psychologist admitted, “but only because I
expected to see an older man. When I received your note last evening,
Dr. Pierce, I, of course, made some inquiries in regard to you. I
found you spoken of as one of the greatest living authorities on
Central American antiquities, especially the hieroglyphic writing on
the Maya ruins in Yucatan; and as the expeditions connected with your
name seemed to cover a period of nearly sixty years, I expected to
find you a man of at least eighty.”

“You have confused me with my father, who died in Izabal, Guatemala,
in 1895. Our names and our line of work being the same, our
reputations are often confused, especially as he never published the
results of his work, but left that for me to do. I have not proved a
worthy trustee of that bequest, Mr. Trant!” Pierce added, bitterly. He
arose in agitation, and began again his mechanical pacing to and fro.

“The events of Wednesday had to do with this trust left you by your
father?” the psychologist asked.

“They have destroyed, obliterated, blotted out that trust,” Pierce
replied. “All the fruits of my father’s life work and my own, too,
absolutely without purpose, meaning, excuse or explanation of any
sort! And more than that—and this is the reason I have asked you to
advise me, Mr. Trant, instead of putting the matter into the hands of
the police—with even less apparent reason and without her being able
to give an explanation of any sort, the events of last Wednesday have
had such an effect upon my ward, Iris, to whom I was to be married
next Thursday, that she is no longer able to think of marrying me. She
clearly loves me no longer, though previous to Wednesday no one who
knew us could have the slightest question of her affection for me; and
indeed, though previously she had been the very spirit and soul of my
work, now she seems no longer to care for its continuance in any way,
or to be even sorry for the disaster to it.”

He paused in painful agitation. “I must ask your pardon once more,” he
apologized. “Before you can comprehend any of this I must explain to
you how it happened. My father began his study of the Maya
hieroglyphics as long ago as 1851. He had had as a young man a very
dear friend named James Clarke, who in 1848 took part in an expedition
to Chiapas. On this expedition Clarke became separated from his
companions, failed to rejoin them, and was never heard from again. It
was in search of him that my father in 1850 first went to Central
America; and failing to find Clarke, who was probably dead, he
returned with a considerable collection of the Maya hieroglyphs, which
had strongly excited his interest. Between 1851 and his death my
father made no less than twelve different expeditions to Central
America in search of more hieroglyphs; but in that whole time he did
not publish more than a half dozen short articles regarding his
discoveries, reserving all for a book which he intended to be a
monument to his labors. His passion for perfection prevented him from
ever completing that book, and, on his deathbed, he intrusted its
completion and publication to me. Two years ago I began preparing it
for the stenographer, and last week I had the satisfaction of feeling
that my work was nearly finished. The material consisted of a huge
mass of papers. They contained chapters written by my father which I
am incapable of rewriting; tracings and photographs of the
inscriptions which can be duplicated only by years of labor; original
documents which are irreplaceable; notes of which I have no other
copies. They represented, as you yourself have just said, almost sixty
years of continuous labor. Last Wednesday afternoon, while I was
absent, the whole mass of these papers was taken from the cabinet
where I kept them, and burned—or if not burned, they have completely
vanished.”

He stopped short in his walk, turned on Trant a face which had grown
suddenly livid, and stretched out his hands.

“They were destroyed, Trant—destroyed! Mysteriously, inexplicably,
purposelessly!” his helpless indignation burst from his constraint.
“The destruction of papers such as these could not possibly have
benefited anyone. They were without value or interest except to
scientists; and as to envious or malicious enemies, I have not one,
man or woman—least of all a woman!”

“‘Least of all a woman?’” Trant repeated quickly. “Do you mean by that
that you have reason to believe a woman did it?”

“Yes; a woman! They all heard her! But—I will tell you everything I
can. Last Wednesday afternoon, as I said, I was in Chicago. The two
maids who look after the front part of the house were also out; they
are sisters and had gone to the funeral of a brother.”

“Leaving what others in the house?” Trant interrupted the rapid
current of his speech with a quick gesture.

“My mother, who has hip trouble and cannot go up- or downstairs
without help; my ward, Iris Pierce, who had gone to her room to take a
nap and was so sound asleep upon her bed that when they went for her
twenty minutes later she was aroused with difficulty; my old colored
nurse, Ulame, whom you must have seen pass through here a moment ago;
and the cook, who was in the back part of the house. The gardener, who
was the only other person anywhere about the place, had been busy in
the conservatory, but about a quarter to three went to sweep a light
snowfall from the walks. Fifteen minutes later my mother in her
bedroom in the north wing heard the door bell; but no one went to the
door.”

“Why was that?”

“Besides my mother, who was helpless, and Iris who was in her room,
only the cook and Ulame, as I have just said, were in the house, and
each of them, expecting the other to answer, waited for a second ring.
It is certain that neither went to the door.”

“Then the bell did not ring again?”

“No; it rang only once. Yet almost immediately after the ringing the
woman was inside the house; for my mother heard her voice distinctly
and—”

“A moment, please!” Trant stopped him. “In case the person was not
admitted at the front door, which I assume was locked, was there any
other possibility?”

“One other. The door was locked; but, the day before, the catch of one
of the French windows opening upon the porch had been bent so that it
fastened insecurely. The woman could easily have entered that way.”

“But the fact of the catch would not be evident from outside—it would
be known only to some one familiar with the premises?”

“Yes.”

“Now the voice your mother heard—it was a strange voice?”

“Yes; a very shrill, excited voice of a child or a woman—she could not
be sure which—but entirely strange to her.”

“Shrill and excited, as if arguing with some one else?”

“No; that was one remarkable part of it; she seemed rather talking to
herself. Besides there was no other voice.”

“But in spite of its excited character, your mother could be sure it
was the voice of a stranger?” Trant pressed with greater precision.

“Yes. My mother has been confined to her room so much that her ability
to tell a person’s identity by the sound of the voice or footsteps has
been immensely developed. There could be no better evidence than hers
that this was a strange voice and that it was in the south wing. She
thought at first that it was the voice of a frightened child. Two or
three loud screams were uttered by the same voice, and were repeated
at intervals during all that followed. There was noise of thumping or
pounding, which I believe to have been occasioned in opening the study
door. Then, after a brief interval, came the noise of breaking glass,
and, at the end of another short interval, a smell of burning.”

“The screams continued?”

“At intervals, as I have said. My mother, when the screams first
reached her, hobbled to the electric bell which communicates from her
room to the servants’ quarters and rang it excitedly. But it was
several minutes before her ringing brought the cook up the back
stairs.”

“But the screams were still going on?”

“Yes. Then they were joined in the upper hall by Ulame.”

“They still heard screams?”

“Yes; the three women crouched at the head of the stairs listening to
them. Then Ulame ran to the rear window and called the gardener, who
had almost finished sweeping the rear walks; and the cook, crossing
the hall to the second floor of the south wing, aroused Iris, whom, as
I said, she found so soundly asleep that she was awakened with
difficulty. My mother and I have rooms in the north wing, Iris and
Ulame in the south. Iris had heard nothing of the disturbance, and was
amazed at their account of it. They were joined by the gardener, and
the four who were able descended to the first floor together. The cook
ran immediately to the front door, which, she found, remained closed
and locked with its spring lock. The others went straight on into the
south wing, where she at once followed them. They found the museum
filled with an acrid haze of smoke, and the door of the study closed.
They could still hear through the closed door the footsteps and
movements of the woman in the study.”

“But no more screams?” asked Trant.

“No, only footsteps, which were plainly audible to all four. You can
imagine, Trant, that with three excited women and the gardener, who is
not a courageous man, several moments were wasted in listening to
these sounds and in discussion. Then the gardener pushed open the
door. The glass front of the cabinet in which my papers were kept had
been broken, and a charred mass, still smoking, in the center of the
composition floor of the study was all that we could find of the
papers which represented my father’s and my own life work, Mr. Trant.
The woman whose footsteps only the instant before had been heard in
the study by Iris and the gardener besides the others, had completely
disappeared, in spite of the fact that there was no possible place for
a woman, or even a child, to conceal herself in the study, or to leave
it except by the door which the others entered!”

“And they found no other marks or indications of the person’s presence
except those you have mentioned?”

“No, Mr. Trant, they found—at that time—absolutely none,” Pierce
replied, slowly. “But when I returned that night and myself was able
to go over the room carefully with Iris, I found—this, Mr. Trant,” he
thrust a hand into his pocket, and extended it with a solitary little
egg-shaped stone gleaming upon his palm—“this, Mr. Trant,” he
repeated, staring at the little, blazing crystal egg as though
fascinated, “the mere sight of which cast such an extraordinary
‘spell’ upon my ward, Iris, that, after these two days, trying to
puzzle it out sanely myself, I was unable to bear the strain of it a
moment longer, and wrote you as I did last night, in the hope that
you—if anyone—might be able to advise me.”

“So this is the little green stone!” Trant took it carefully from his
client’s palm and examined it. “The little green stone of which the
negress was speaking to Miss Iris when you came in! You remember the
door was open!”

“Yes; that is the little green stone!” Pierce cried. “The chalchihuitl
stone; the green turquoise of Mexico. The first sight of it struck
Iris dumb and dull-eyed before me and started this strange, this
baffling, inexplicable apathy toward me! Tell me, how can this be?”

“You would hardly have called even me in, I presume,” Trant questioned
quietly, “if you thought it possible that this stone,” he handed it
back, “told her who was in the room and that it was a woman who could
come between you and your ward?”

“Scarcely, Mr. Trant!” Pierce flushed. “You can dismiss that
absolutely. I told you a moment ago, when trying to think who could
have come to ruin my work, that I have no enemy—least of all a woman
enemy. Nor have I a single woman intimate, even a friend, whom Iris
could possibly think of in that way.”

“Will you take me, then, to the rooms where these things happened?”
Trant rose abruptly.

“This is the way the woman must have come,” Pierce indicated as he
pointed Trant into the hall and let him see the arrangement of the
house before he led him on.

The young psychologist, from his exterior view of the place, had
already gained some idea of the interior arrangement; but as he
followed Pierce from the library down the main hall, he was impressed
anew by the individuality of the rambling structure. The main body of
the house, he saw, had evidently been built some forty or fifty years
ago, before Lake Forest had become the most fashionable and wealthy
suburb to the north of Chicago; but the wings had been added later,
one apparently to keep pace with the coming of the more pretentious
country homes about it, the other more particularly to provide place
for exhibiting the owner’s immense collection of Central American
curiosities.

So the wide entrance hall, running half-way through the house, divided
at the center into the hallways of the two wings. At the entrance to
the north wing, the main stairs sprang upward in the graceful sweep of
southern Colonial architecture; while, opposite, the hall of the south
wing was blocked part way down by a heavy wall with but one
flat-topped opening.

“A fire wall, Mr. Trant, and automatic closing fire doors,” Pierce
explained, as they passed through them. “This portion of the south
wing, which we call the museum wing, is a late addition, absolutely
fireproof.”

“It was from the top of the main stairs, if I have understood you
correctly,” Trant glanced back as he passed through the doorway, “that
the women heard the screams. But this stair,” he pointed to a narrow
flight of steps which wound upward from a little anteroom beyond the
flat-topped opening, “this is certainly not what you called the back
stairs. Where does this lead?”

“To the second floor of the museum wing, Mr. Trant.”

“Ah! Where Miss Pierce, and,” he paused reflectively, “the colored
nurse have their bedrooms.”

“Exactly.”

They crossed the anteroom and entered the museum. A ceiling higher in
the museum than in any other part of the house gave space for high,
leaded, clear-glass windows. Under them, ranged on pedestals or
fastened to the wall were original carvings or plaster casts of the
grotesque gods of the Maya mythology; death’s-heads symbolic of their
cruel religion, and cabinets of stone and wooden implements and
earthen vessels, though by far the greater number of the specimens
were reproductions of hieroglyphic inscriptions, each separate glyph
forming a whimsical square cartouche.

But the quick glance of the psychologist passed all these almost
without noting, and centered itself upon an object in the middle of
the room. On a low pedestal stood one of the familiar Central American
stones of sacrifice, with grooved channels to carry away the blood,
and rounded top designed to bend backward the body of the human victim
while the priest, with one quick cut, slew him; and before it, staring
at this stone, as though no continuance of familiarity could make her
unaffected by it, stood the slender, graceful, dark-haired,
dark-skinned girl of whom the psychologist had caught just a glimpse
through the door of the morning room when he entered.

“My ward, Miss Pierce, Mr. Trant,” Pierce introduced them as she
turned. “Mr. Trant is here to make an investigation into the loss of
my papers, Iris.”

“Oh!” said the girl, without interest, “then I’ll not interrupt you. I
was only looking for Ulame. Mr. Trant,” she smiled brightly at the
psychologist, “don’t you think this room is beautiful in the morning
sunlight?”

“Come, Trant,” Pierce passed his hand across his forehead, as he gazed
at the girl’s passionless face, “the study is at the other end of the
museum.” But the psychologist, with his gray eyes narrowing with
interest, his red hair rumpled by an energetic gesture, stood an
instant observing her; and she flushed deeply.

“I know why it is you look at me in that way, Mr. Trant,” she said,
simply. “I know, of course, that a woman has burned Richard’s papers,
for I saw the ashes; besides I myself looked for the papers afterwards
and could not find them. You are thinking that I believe there is
something between Richard and the woman who took this revenge because
we were going to be married; but it is not so—I know Richard has never
cared for any other woman than myself. There is something I do not
understand. Why, loving Richard as I did, did I not care at all about
the papers? Why, since I saw that little green stone, am I indifferent
whether he loves me in that way or not? Why do I feel now that I
cannot marry him? Has the stone bewitched me—the stone, the stone, Mr.
Trant! It seems crazy to think such a thing, though I know no other
reason; and if I said so, no one—least of all you, Mr. Trant, a man of
science—would believe me!”

“On the contrary, Miss Pierce, you will find that I will be the first,
not the last, to recognize that the stone could exercise upon you
precisely the influence you have described!”

“What is that? What is that?” Pierce exclaimed in surprise.

“I would rather see the study, if you please, Dr. Pierce,” Trant bowed
kindly to the girl as he turned to his client, “before being more
explicit.”

“Very well,” Pierce pushed open the door and entered, clearly more
puzzled by Trant’s reply than before. The study was long and narrow,
running across the whole end of the south wing; and, like the museum,
had plain burlap-covered walls without curve or recess of any sort;
and like the museum, also, it was lighted by high, leaded windows
above the cases and shelves. The single door was the one through which
they had entered; and the furniture consisted only of a desk and
table, two chairs, and—along the walls—cabinets and cases of drawers
and pigeon-holes whose fronts carried labels denoting their contents.
To furnish protection from dust, the cabinets all were provided with
sliding glass doors, locking with a key. The floor of the study was of
the same fireproof composition as that of the museum, and a black
smudge near its center still showed where the papers had been burned.
The room had neither fireplace nor closet.

“There is surely no hiding place for anyone here, and we must put that
out of the question,” the young psychologist commented when his eye
had taken in these details.

Then he stepped directly to the cabinet against the end wall, whose
broken glass showed that it was the one in which the papers had been
kept, and laid his hand upon the sliding door. It slipped backward and
forward in its grooves easily.

“The door is unlocked,” he said, with slight surprise. “It certainly
was not unlocked at the time the glass was broken to get at the
papers?”

“No,” Pierce answered, “for before leaving for Chicago that Wednesday,
I carefully locked all the cabinets and put the key in the drawer of
my desk where it is always kept. But that is not the least surprising
part of this affair, Mr. Trant. For when Iris and the servants entered
the room, the cabinet had been unlocked and the key lay on the floor
in front of it. I can account for it only by the supposition that the
woman, having first broken the glass in order to get at the papers,
afterwards happened upon the key and unlocked the cabinet in order to
avoid repeatedly reaching through the jagged edges of the glass.”

“And did she also break off this brass knob which was used in sliding
the door back and forth, or had that been done previously?” inquired
the psychologist.

“It was done at the same time, in attempting to open the door before
the glass was broken, I suppose.”

Trant picked up the brass knob, which had been laid on the top of the
cabinet, and examined it attentively. It had been secured by a thin
bolt through the frame of the door, and in coming loose, the threads
of the bolt, which still remained perfectly straight, had been
stripped off, letting the nut fall inside the cabinet.

“This is most peculiar,” he commented—“and interesting.” Suddenly his
eyes flashed comprehension. “Dr. Pierce, I am afraid your explanation
does not account for the condition of the cabinet.” He swung about,
minutely inspecting the room anew, and with a sharp and comprehensive
glance measuring the height of the windows.

“You were certainly correct in saying that no child or woman could
escape from this room in any other way than by the door, Dr. Pierce,”
he exclaimed. “But could not a man—a man more tall and lithe and
active than either you or I—make his escape through one of those
windows and drop to the walk below without harm?”

“A man, Trant? Yes; of course, that is possible,” Pierce agreed,
impatiently. “But why consider the possibility of a man’s escape, when
there was no question among those who heard the cries that they came
from a woman or a child!”

“The screams came from a woman,” Trant replied. “But not necessarily
the footsteps that were heard from the other side of the door. No, Dr.
Pierce; the condition of this room indicates without any question or
doubt that not one, but two persons were present here when these
events occurred—one so familiar with these premises as to know where
the key to the cabinets was to be found in your desk; the other so
unfamiliar with them as not even to know that the doors of the
cabinets were sliding, not swinging doors, since it was in attempting
to pull the door outward like a swinging door that the knob was broken
off, as is shown by the condition of the bolt which would otherwise
have been bent. And the person whose footsteps were heard was a man,
for only a man could have escaped through the window, as that person
unquestionably must have done.”

“But I do not see how you help things by adding a man’s presence here
to the other,” Pierce protested. “It simply complicates matters, since
it furnishes us no solution as to how the woman escaped!”

But the psychologist, without heeding him, dropped into a chair beside
the table, rested his chin upon his hands, and his eyes grew filmy
with the concentration of thought.

“She may have been helped through the window by the man,” he said,
finally, “but it is not probable. We have no proof that the woman was
in the study when the footsteps were heard, for the screams had
stopped; and we have unquestionable proof that this tight-fitting door
was opened _after_ the papers had been fired, if, as you told me, when
Miss Pierce and the others reached the museum they found it filled
with smoke. Now, Dr. Pierce,” he looked up sharply, “when you first
spoke to me of the loss of these papers, you said they had been
‘burned or vanished.’ Why did you say vanished? Had you any reason for
supposing they had not been burned?”

“No real reason,” Pierce answered after a moment’s hesitation. “The
papers, which I had divided by subjects into tentative chapters, were
put together with wire clips, each chapter separately, and I found no
wire clips among the ashes. But it was likely the papers would not
burn readily without taking the clips off. After taking off the clips,
she—they,” he corrected himself—“may very well have carried them away.
It is too improbable to believe that they brought with them other
papers, with the plan of burning them and giving the appearance of
having destroyed the real ones.”

“That would certainly be too improbable a supposition,” Trant agreed,
and again became deeply thoughtful.

“A remarkable, a startlingly interesting case!” he raised his eyes to
his client’s, but hardly as though speaking to him. “It presents a
problem with which modern scientific psychology—and that alone—could
possibly be competent to deal.

“I saw, of course, Dr. Pierce, that I surprised you when a moment ago
I assured your ward that I—as a psychologist—would be the first to
believe that the chalchihuitl stone could exercise over her the
mysterious influence you all have noted. But I am so confident of the
fact that this stone could influence her, and I am so sure that its
influence is the key to this case, that I want to ask you what you
know about the chalchihuitl stone; what beliefs, superstitions, or
charms, however fantastic, are popularly connected with the green
turquoise. It is a Mexican stone, you said; and you, if anyone, must
know about it.”

“As an archæologist, I have long been familiar with the chalchihuitl
stone, of course,” Pierce replied, gazing at his young adviser with
uneasiness and perplexity, “as the ceremonial marriage stone of the
ancient Aztecs and some still existing tribes of Central America. By
them it is, I know, frequently used in religious rites, bearing a
particularly important part, for instance, in the wedding ceremony.
Though its exact significance and association is not known, I am safe
in assuring you that it is a stone with which many savage
superstitions and spells are to be connected.”

He smiled, deprecatingly; but Trant met his eyes seriously.

“Thank you! Can you tell me, then, whether any peculiarity in your
ward has been noted previous to this, which could not be accounted
for?”

“No; none—ever!” Pierce affirmed confidently, “though her experience
in Central America previous to her coming under our care must
certainly have been most unusual, and would account for some
peculiarity—if she had any.”

“In Central America, Dr. Pierce?” Trant repeated eagerly.

“Yes,” Pierce hesitated, dubiously; “perhaps I ought to tell you, Mr.
Trant, how Iris came to be a member of our family. On the last
expedition which my father made to Central America, and on which I
accompanied him as a young man of eighteen, an Indian near Copan,
Honduras, told us of a wonderful white child whom he had seen living
among an isolated Indian tribe in the mountains. We were interested,
and went out of our way to visit the tribe. We found there, exactly as
he had described, a little white girl about six years old as near as
we could guess. She spoke the dialect of the Indians, but two or three
English words which the sight of us brought from her, made us believe
that she was of English birth. My father wanted to take her with us,
but the Indians angrily refused to allow it.

“The little girl, however, had taken a fancy to me, and when we were
ready to leave she announced her intention of going along. For some
reason which I was unable to fathom, the Indians regarded her with a
superstitious veneration, and though plainly unwilling to let her go,
they were afraid to interfere with her wishes. My father intended to
adopt her, but he died before the expedition returned. I brought the
child home with me, and under my mother’s care she has been educated.
The name Iris Pierce was given her by my mother.”

“You say the Indians regarded her with veneration?” Trant exclaimed,
with an oddly intent glance at the sculptured effigies of the
monsterlike gods which stood on the cases all about. “Dr. Pierce, were
you exact in saying a moment ago that your ward, since she has been in
your care, has exhibited no peculiarities? Was the nurse, Ulame,
mistaken in what I overheard her saying, that Miss Pierce has on her
shoulder the mark,” his voice steadied soberly, “of the devil’s claw?”

“Has she the ‘mark of the devil’s claw’?” Pierce frowned with
vexation. “You mean, has she an anæsthetic spot on her shoulder
through which at times she feels no sensation? Yes, she has; but I
scarcely thought you cared to hear about ‘devil’s claws.’

“Ulame also told me,” Pierce continued, “that the existence of this
spot denotes in the possessor, not only a susceptibility to ‘controls’
and ‘spells,’ but also occult powers of clairvoyance. She even
suggested that my ward could, if she would, tell me who was in the
room and burned my papers. Do you follow her beliefs so much farther?”

“I follow not the negress, but modern scientific psychologists, Dr.
Pierce,” Trant replied, bluntly, “in the belief, the knowledge, that
the existence of the anæsthetic spot called the ‘devil’s claw’ shows
in its possessor a condition which, under peculiar circumstances, may
become what is popularly called clairvoyant.

“Dr. Pierce, an instant ago you spoke—as an archæologist—of the
exploded belief in witchcraft; but please do not forget that that
belief was at one time widespread, almost universal. You speak now—as
an educated man—with equal contempt of clairvoyance; but a half-hour’s
ride down Madison or Halsted Street, with an eye open to the signs in
the second-story windows, will show you how widespread to-day is the
belief in clairvoyance, since so many persons gain a living by it. If
you ask me whether I believe in witchcraft and clairvoyance, I will
tell you I do not believe one atom in any infernal power of one person
over another; and so far as anyone’s being able to read the future or
reveal in the past matters which they have had no natural means of
knowing, I do not believe in clairvoyance. But if you or I believed
that any widespread popular conception such as witchcraft once was and
clairvoyance is to-day, can exist without having somewhere a basis of
fact, we should be holding a belief even more ridiculous than the
negro’s credulity!

“I am certain that no explanation of what happened in this house last
Wednesday and since can be formed, except by recognizing in it one of
those comparatively rare authentic cases from which the popular belief
in witchcraft and clairvoyance has sprung; and I would rest the
solution of this case on the ability of your ward, under the proper
circumstances, to tell us who was in this room last Wednesday, and
what the influence is that has been so strangely exercised over her by
the chalchihuitl stone!”

The psychologist, after the last word, stood with sparkling eyes, and
lips pressed together in a straight, defiant line.

“Iris tell! Iris!” Pierce excitedly exclaimed, when the door opened
behind him, and his ward entered.

“Here is the form you asked me for, Richard,” she said, handing her
guardian a paper, and without showing the least curiosity as to what
was going on between the two men, she went out again.

Pierce’s eyes followed her with strange uneasiness and perplexity;
then fell to the paper she had given him.

“It is the notice of the indefinite postponement of our wedding,
Trant,” he explained. “I must send it to the Chicago papers this
afternoon, unless—unless—” he halted, dubiously.

“Unless the ‘spell’ on Miss Pierce can be broken by the means I have
just spoken of?” Trant smiled slightly as he finished the sentence for
him. “If I am not greatly mistaken, Dr. Pierce, your wedding will
still take place. But as to this notice of its postponement, tell me,
how long before last Wednesday, when this thing happened, was the
earliest announcement of the wedding made in the papers?”

“I should say two weeks,” Pierce replied in surprise.

“Do you happen to know, Dr. Pierce—you are, of course, well known in
Central America—whether the announcement was copied in papers
circulating there?”

“Yes; I have heard from several friends in Central America who had
seen the news in Spanish papers.”

“Excellent! Then it is most essential that the notice of this
postponement be made at once. If you will allow me, I will take it
with me to Chicago this afternoon; and if it meets the eye of the
person I hope, then I trust soon to be able to introduce to you your
last Wednesday’s visitor.”

“Without—Iris?” Pierce asked nervously.

“Believe me, I will do everything in my power to spare Miss Pierce the
experience you seem so unwilling she should undergo. But if it proves
to be the only means of solving this case, you must trust me to the
extent of letting me make the attempt.” He glanced at his watch. “I
can catch a train for Chicago in fifteen minutes, and it will be the
quickest way to get this notice in the papers. I will let you hear
from me again as soon as necessary. I can find my own way out.”

He turned sharply to the door, and, as Pierce made no effort to detain
him, he left the study.


The surprising news of the sudden “indefinite postponement” of the
romantic wedding of Dr. Pierce, the Central American archæologist, to
the ward whom he had brought from Honduras as a child, was made in the
last editions of the Chicago evening papers which reached Lake Forest
that night; and it was repeated with fuller comments in both the
morning and afternoon papers of the next day. But to Pierce’s
increasing anxiety he heard nothing from Trant until the second
morning, and then it was merely a telephone message asking him to be
at home at three o’clock that afternoon and to see that Miss Pierce
was at home also, but to prevent her from seeing or hearing any
visitors who might call at that hour. At ten minutes to three, Pierce
himself, watching nervously at the window, saw the young psychologist
approaching the house in company with two strangers, and himself
admitted them.

“Dr. Pierce, let me introduce Inspector Walker of the Chicago Police,”
Trant, when they had been admitted to the library, motioned to the
larger of his companions, a well-proportioned giant, who wore his
black serge suit with an awkwardness that showed a greater familiarity
with blue broadcloth and brass buttons. “This other gentleman,” he
turned to the very tall, slender, long-nosed man, with an abnormally
narrow head and face, coal black hair and sallow skin, whom Trant and
the officer had half held between them, “calls himself Don Canonigo
Penol, though I do not know whether that is his real name. He speaks
English, and I believe he knows more than anyone else about what went
on in your study last Wednesday.” A momentary flash of white teeth
under Penol’s mustache, which was neither a smile nor a greeting, met
Pierce’s look of inquiry, and he cast uneasy glances to right and left
out of his small crafty eyes. “But as Penol, from the moment of his
arrest, has flatly refused to make any statement regarding the loss of
your papers or the chalchihuitl stone which has so strangely
influenced your ward,” Trant continued, “we have been obliged to bring
him here in hope of getting at the truth through the means I mentioned
to you day before yesterday.”

“The means you mentioned day before yesterday?” echoed Pierce, as he
spun round and faced Trant with keen apprehension; and it was plain to
the psychologist from the gray pallor and nervous trembling of the man
that his anxiety and uncertainty had not been lessened, but rather
increased by their former conversation. “You refer, I presume, to your
plan to gain facts from her through—through clairvoyance!”

“I saw Mr. Trant pick the murderer in the Bronson case,” Inspector
Walker intervened confidently, “in a way no police officer had ever
heard of; and I’ve followed him since. And if he says he can get an
explanation here by clairvoyance, I believe him!” The quiet faith of
the huge officer brought Pierce to a halt.

“For the sake of her happiness and your own, Dr. Pierce,” Trant urged.

“Oh, I don’t know—I don’t know!” Pierce pressed his hands to his
temples in indecision. “I confess this matter is outside my
comprehension. I have spoken again to the persons who recommended me
to you, and they, like Inspector Walker, have only repeated that I can
have absolute confidence in you!”

“It is now three o’clock,” Trant began, brusquely.

“Five minutes after,” said the Inspector.

“Five minutes makes no difference. But it is absolutely necessary, Dr.
Pierce, that if we are to make this test we begin it at once; and I
can scarcely undertake it without your consent. It requires that the
general look of the rooms and the direction of the sunlight should be
the same as at three o’clock last Wednesday afternoon. Dr. Pierce,
will you bring your ward to me in the study?”

He turned to his client with quiet confidence as though all were
settled. “Inspector Walker and Penol will remain here—the Inspector
already knows what I require of him. I noticed a clock Saturday over
the desk in the study and heard it strike the hour; you have no
objection to my turning it back ten or fifteen minutes, Pierce? And
before you go, let me have the chalchihuitl stone!”

For a moment Pierce, with his hands still pressed against his temples,
stood looking at Trant in perplexity and doubt; then, with sudden
resolution, he handed him the chalchihuitl stone and went to get his
ward. A few minutes later he led her into the study where the
psychologist was awaiting them alone. Pierce’s first glance was at the
clock, which he saw had been turned back by Trant to mark five minutes
to three.

“Good afternoon, Miss Pierce,” Trant set a chair for her, with its
back to the clock, as she acknowledged his salutation; then continued,
conversationally: “You spoke the other day of the morning sunlight in
these rooms, but I have been thinking that the afternoon sunlight, as
it gets near three o’clock, is even more beautiful. One can hardly
imagine anything occurring here which would be distasteful or
unpleasant, or shocking—”

The girl’s eyes filled with a vague uneasiness, and turned toward
Pierce, who, not knowing what to expect, leaned against the table
watching her with strained anxiety; and at sight of him the half
formed uneasiness of her gaze vanished. Trant rose sharply, and took
Pierce by the arm.

“You must not look at her so, Dr. Pierce,” he commanded, tensely, “or
you will defeat my purpose. It will be better if she does not even see
you. Sit down at your desk behind her.”

When Pierce had seated himself at the desk, convulsively grasping the
arms of his chair, Trant glanced at the clock, which now marked two
minutes of three, and hastily returned to the girl. He took from his
pocket the chalchihuitl stone which Pierce had given him, and at sight
of it the girl drew back with sudden uneasiness and apprehension.

“I know you have seen this stone before, Miss Pierce,” Trant said,
significantly, “for you and Dr. Pierce found it. But had you never
seen it before then? Think! Its color and shape are so unique that I
believe one who had seen it could never forget it. It is so peculiar
that it would not surprise me to know that it has a very special
significance! And it has! For it is the chalchihuitl stone. It is
found in Central America and Mexico; the Aztecs used it in celebrating
marriage—in Central America, where there are Indians and Spaniards;
tall, slender, long-nosed Spaniards, with coal black hair and sallow
skins and tiny black mustaches—Central America, where all those
sculptured gods and strange inscriptions are found, which the papers
were about that were destroyed one afternoon here in this study!”

As he spoke the clock struck three; and at the sound the girl uttered
a gasp of uncontrollable terror, then poised herself, listening
expectantly. Almost with the last stroke of the clock the door bell
rang, and the girl shrunk suddenly together.

“Tall, dark, slender Spaniards,” Trant continued; but stopped, for the
girl was not heeding him. White and tense, she was listening to
footsteps which were approaching the study door along the floor of the
museum. The door opened suddenly, and Don Canonigo Penol, pushed from
behind by the stern inspector of police, appeared on the threshold.

The girl’s head had fallen back, her eyes had turned upward so that
she seemed to be looking at the ceiling, but they were blank and
sightless; she lay, rather than sat, upon the chair, her clenched
hands close against her sides, her whole attitude one of stony
rigidity.

“Iris! Iris!” cried Pierce in agony.

“It is no use to call,” the psychologist’s outstretched hand prevented
Pierce from throwing himself on his knees beside the girl, “she cannot
hear you. She can hear no one unless they speak of the chalchihuitl
stone and Central America, and, I hope, the events which went forward
in this house last Wednesday. The chalchihuitl stone! The chalchihuitl
stone! She hears that, doesn’t she?”

A full half minute passed while the psychologist, anxiously bending
over the rigid body, waited for an answer. Then, as though by intense
effort, the stony lips parted and the answer came, “Yes!” Pierce fell
back with a cry of amazement; the inspector of police straightened,
astonished; the stolid face of Don Canonigo Penol was convulsed all at
once with a living terror and he slipped from the policeman’s hold and
fell, rather than seated himself, in a chair.

“Who is it that is speaking?” asked Trant in the same steady tone.

“Isabella Clarke,” the voice was clearer, but high-pitched and
entirely different from Iris’s. The psychologist started with
surprise.

“How old is Isabella?” he asked after a moment.

“She is young—a little girl—a child!” the voice was stronger still.

“Does Isabella know of Iris Pierce?”

“Yes.”

“Can she see Iris last Wednesday afternoon at three o’clock?”

“Yes.”

“What is she doing?”

“She is in the library. She went upstairs to take a nap, but she could
not sleep and came down to get a book.”

A long cry from some distant part of the house—a shriek which set
vibrating the tense nerves of all in the little study—suddenly
startled them. Trant turned sharply toward the door; the others,
petrified in their places, followed the direction of his look. Through
the open door of the study and the arched opening of the anteroom, the
foot of the main stairs was discernible; and, painfully and excitedly
descending them, was a white-haired woman leaning on a cane and on the
other side supported by the trembling negress.

“Richard, Richard!” she screamed, “that woman is in the house—in the
study! I heard her voice—the voice of the woman who burned your
papers!”

“It is my mother!” Pierce, suddenly coming to himself, turned with
staring eyes on Trant and darted from the study. He returned an
instant later and closed the door behind him.

“Trant,” he faltered, “my mother says that the voice that she—that we
all—have just heard is the voice of the woman who was in the study
Wednesday.”

The psychologist impatiently stopped the excited man with a gesture.
“You still see Iris?”

“Yes,” the answer came, after a considerable pause.

“She has not left the library? Tell us what she is doing.”

“She turns toward the clock, which is striking three. The door bell
rings. Both the maids are out, so Iris lays down her book and goes to
the door. At the door is a tall, dark man, all alone. He is a Spaniard
from the mountains in Honduras, and his name is Canonigo Penol.”

An indrawing of his breath, sharp almost as a whistle, brought the
gaze of all upon Penol; but the eyes of the Spaniard, starting in
superstitious terror from his livid face, saw only the girl.

“Penol is not known to Iris, but he has come to see her. She is
surprised. She leads him to the library. His manner makes her uneasy,”
the voice, now uninterrupted by Trant’s questions, went on with great
rapidity. “He asks her if she remembers that she lived among Indians.
Iris remembers that. He asks if she remembers that before that she
lived with white men—an American and some Spaniards—who were near and
dear to her. Iris cannot remember. He asks if she remembers him—Penol.
His speech frightens her. He says: ‘Once an American went to Central
America with an expedition, and got lost from his companions. He
crossed rivers; he was in woods, jungles, mountains; he was near
dying. A Spaniard found him. The Spaniard was poor—poor. He had a
daughter.

“‘The American, whose name was James Clarke, loved the daughter and
married her. He did not want ever to go back to the United States; he
was mad—mad with love, and mad about the ancient carved statues of
Central America, the temples and inscriptions. He would sit all day in
front of an inscription making marks on a paper, and afterwards he
would tear the paper up. They had a daughter. Canonigo repeats many
times that they were very poor. They had only one white servant and a
hundred Indians. Sickness in the mountains killed the old Spaniard. In
another year sickness killed the wife also. Now the American was all
alone with his baby daughter and one white servant and the Indians.
Then sickness also took hold of him. He was troubled about his
daughter; he trusted no one; he would drag himself in the night in
spite of his sickness to see that no one had done harm to her.

“‘The American was dying. He proposed to the young Spaniard many
things; finally he proposed that he marry the little girl. There was
no priest, and the American was mad; mad about ancient times and dead,
vanished peoples, and more mad because he was dying; and he married
them after the old custom of the Aztecs, with the chalchihuitl stone
and a bird feather, while they sat on a woven mat with the corners of
their garments tied together—the young Spaniard and the little girl,
who was four years old. Afterwards her father died, and that night the
Spaniard all alone buried him: and when toward morning he came back he
found only a few Indians too old to travel. The others, frightened of
the mad dead man, had gone, taking the little girl with them.’”

“What does Iris do when she hears that?” asked Trant.

“It begins to revive memories in Iris,” the voice answered quickly;
“but she says bravely, ‘What is that to me? Why do you tell me about
it?’ ‘Because,’ says Canonigo Penol, ‘I have the chalchihuitl stone
which bears witness to this marriage!’ And as he holds it to her and
it flashes in the sun, just as it did when they held it before her
when her clothes were tied to his on the mat, she remembers and knows
that it is so; and that she is married to this man! By the flash of
the chalchihuitl stone in the sun she remembers and she knows that the
rest is true!”

“And then?” Trant pressed.

“She is filled with horror. She shrinks from Canonigo. She puts her
hands to her face, because she loved Dr. Pierce with her whole heart—”

“O God!” cried Pierce.

“She cries out that it is not so, though she knows it is the truth.
She dashes the stone from his hand and pushes Canonigo from her. He is
unable to find the stone; and seeing the sculptured gods and the
inscriptions about the room, he thinks it is these by which Dr. Pierce
is able to hold her against him. So now he says that he will destroy
these pictures and he will have her. Iris screams. She runs from
Canonigo to the study. She shuts the door upon him, as he follows. She
sets a chair against it. Canonigo is pushing to get in. But she gets
the key to the cabinet from the desk and opens the cabinet.

“She takes out the papers, but there is no place to hide them before
he enters. So she opens the drawer, but it is full of worthless
papers. She takes out enough of the old papers to make room for the
others, which she puts in the bottom of the drawer underneath the
rest. The old papers she puts into the cabinet above, closing the
cabinet; but she had no time to lock it. Canonigo has pushed the door
open. He has found the stone and tries to show it to her again; but
again she dashes it from his hand. He rushes straight to the cabinet,
for he has seen from the tree where the papers are kept. The cabinet
is unlocked, but he tries to pull the door to him. He pulls off the
knob. Then he smashes the glass with his foot; he begins burning the
worthless papers. So Iris has done all she can and runs from him to
her room. She is exhausted, fainting. She falls upon the bed—”

The voice stopped suddenly. Pierce had sprung to her with a cry, and
putting his arms about her for support, spoke to her again and again.
But she neither moved nor spoke to his entreaties, and seemed entirely
insensible when he touched her. He leaped up, facing Trant in hostile
demand, but still kept one arm about her.

“What is this you have done to her now?” he cried. “And what is this
you have made her say?”

But the psychologist now was not watching either the girl or his
client. His eyes were fixed upon the face of Canonigo Penol, shot with
red veins and livid spots of overpowering terror.

“So, Don Canonigo Penol,” Trant addressed him, “that was the way of
it? But, man, you could scarcely have been enough in love with a girl
four years old to take this long and expensive trip for her nineteen
years later. Was there property then, which belonged to her that you
wanted to get?”

Canonigo Penol heard the question, though he did not look at his
questioner. His eyes, starting from his head, could still see only the
stony face of the girl who, thus unconsciously, under the guidance of
the psychologist, had accused him in a manner which filled him with
superstitious terror. Palpitating, convulsed with fright, with loose
lips shaking and knees which would not bear his weight, he slipped
from his chair and crawled and groveled on the floor before her.

“Oh, speak not—speak not again!” he shrieked. “I will tell all! I
lied; the old Spaniard was not poor—he was rich! But she can have all!
I abandon all claim! Only let me go from here—let me leave her!”

  [Illustration: In a large room a woman slumps in a chair, staring at
  the ceiling with a blank expression. A man kneels before her, upset,
  with his hands clasped before him. Three other men stand around the
  seated woman protectively, closely watching the other man.]

  Caption: “Oh, speak not—speak not again!” he shrieked. “I will tell
  all. I lied”

“First we will see exactly what damage you have done,” Trant answered.
“Dr. Pierce,” he turned collectedly to his client, “you have just
heard the true account of last Wednesday afternoon.”

“You want me to believe that she let him in—she was here and did
that?” Pierce cried. “You think that was all real and—true!”

“Look in the drawer she indicated, and see if she was able, indeed, to
save the papers as she said.”

Mechanically and many times looking back at Trant’s compelling face,
Pierce went to the cabinet, stooped and, pulling out the drawer,
tossed aside a mass of scattering papers on the top and rose with a
bundle of manuscripts held together with wire clips. He stared at them
almost stupidly, then, coming to himself, sorted them through rapidly
and with amazement.

“They are all here!” he cried, astounded. “They are intact. But
what—what trick is this, Mr. Trant?”

“Wait!” Trant motioned him sharply to be silent. “She is about to
awake! Inspector, she must not find you here, or this other,” and
seizing Penol by one arm, while the inspector seized the other, he
pushed him from the room, and closed the study door upon them both.
Then he turned to the girl, whose more regular breathing and lessening
rigidity had warned him that she was coming to herself.

Gently, peacefully, as those of a child wakening from sleep, her eyes
opened; and with no knowledge of all that in the last half hour had so
shaken those who listened in the little study, with no realization
even that an interval of time had passed, she replied to the first
remark that Trant had made to her when she entered the room:

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Trant, the afternoon sun is beautiful; but I like
these rooms better in the morning.”

“You will not mind, Miss Pierce,” Trant answered gently, without
heeding Pierce’s gasp of surprise, and hiding him from the girl’s
sight with his body, as he saw Dr. Pierce could not restrain his
emotion, “if I ask you to leave us for a little while. I have
something to talk over with your guardian.”

She rose, and with a bright smile left them.

“Trant! Trant!” cried Pierce.

“You will understand better, Dr. Pierce,” said the psychologist, “if I
explain this to you from its beginning with the fact of the ‘devil’s
claw,’ which was where I myself began this investigation.

“You remember that I overheard Ulame, the negro nurse, speak of this
characteristic of Miss Pierce. You, like most educated people to-day,
regarded it simply as an anæsthetic spot—curious, but without
extraordinary significance. I, as a psychologist, recognized it at
once as an evidence, first pointed out by the French scientist,
Charcot, of a somewhat unusual and peculiar nervous disposition in
your ward, Miss Iris.

“The anæsthetic spot is among the most important of several physical
evidences of mental peculiarity which, in popular opinion, marked out
its possessors through all ages as ‘different’ from other people. In
some ages and countries they have been executed as witches; in others,
they have been deified as saints; they have been regarded as prophets,
pythonesses, sibyls, ‘clairvoyants.’ For in some respects their mental
life is more acute than that of the mass of mankind, in others it is
sometimes duller; and they are known to scientists as ‘hystericals.’

“Now, when you gave me your account, Dr. Pierce, of what had happened
here last Wednesday, it was evident to me at once that, if any of the
persons in the house had admitted the visitor who rang the bell—and
this seemed highly probable because the bell rang only once, and would
have been rung again if the visitor had not been admitted—the door
could only have been opened by Miss Iris. For we have evidence that
neither the cook nor Ulame answered the bell; and moreover, all of
those in the house, except Miss Iris, had stood together at the top of
the stairs and listened to the screams from below.

“Following you into the study, then, I found plain evidence, as I
pointed out to you at the time, that two persons had been there, one a
man; one perfectly familiar with the premises, the other wholly
unfamiliar with them. I had also evidence, from the smoke in the
museum, that the study door had been open after the papers were
lighted, and I saw that whoever came out of the study could have gone
up the anteroom stairs to the second floor of the south wing, but
could not have passed out through the main hall without being seen by
those listening at the top of the stairway. All these physical facts,
therefore, if uncontradicted by stronger evidence, made it an almost
inevitable conclusion that Miss Iris had been in the study.”

“Yes, yes!” Pierce agreed, impatiently, “if you arrange them in that
order!”

“In contradiction of this conclusion,” Trant went on rapidly, “I had
three important pieces of evidence. First, the statement of your
mother that the voice she heard was that of a strange woman; second,
the fact that Miss Iris had gone to her room to take a nap and had
been found asleep there on the bed by Ulame; third, that your ward
herself denied with evident honesty and perfect frankness that she had
been present, or knew anything at all of what had gone on in the
study. I admit that without the evidence of the anæsthetic spot—or
even with it, if it had not been for the chalchihuitl stone—I should
have considered this contradictory evidence far stronger than the
other.

“But the immense and obvious influence on Miss Iris of the
chalchihuitl stone, when you found it together—an influence which she
could not account for, but which nevertheless was sufficient to make
her refuse to marry you—kept me on the right track. For it made me
certain that the stone must have been connected with some intense
emotional experience undergone by your ward, the details of which she
no longer remembered.”

“No longer remembered!” exclaimed Pierce, incredulously. “When it had
happened only the day before!”

“Ah!” Trant checked him quickly. “You are doing just what I told you a
moment ago the anæsthetic spot had warned me against; you are judging
Miss Iris as though she were like everybody else! I, as a
psychologist, knew that having the mental disposition that the
anæsthetic spot indicated, any such intense emotion, any such tragedy
in her life as the one I imagined, was connected with the chalchihuitl
stone, might be at once forgotten; as you see it was, for when Ulame
aroused her only a few moments later she no longer remembered any part
of it.

“You look incredulous, Dr. Pierce! I am not telling you anything that
is not well authenticated, and a familiar fact to men of science. If
you want corroboration, I can only advise you to trace my statement
through the works on psychology in any well-furnished library, where
you will find it confirmed by hundreds of specific instances. With a
mental disposition like Miss Iris’s, an emotion so intense as that she
suffered divides itself off from the rest of her consciousness. It is
so overpowering that it cannot connect itself with her daily life;
ordinary sights and sounds cannot call it back to memory. It can be
awakened only by some extraordinary means such as those I used when,
as far as I was able, I reproduced for her benefit just now here in
your study all the sights and sounds of last Wednesday afternoon that
preceded and attended her interview with Canonigo Penol.”

“It seems impossible, Mr. Trant,” Pierce pressed his hands to his eyes
dazedly. “But I have seen it with my own eyes!”

“The sudden sleep into which she had fallen before Ulame aroused her,
and the fact that the voice your mother heard seemed to her a strange
one,” Trant continued, “added strength to my conclusion, for both were
only additional evidences of the effect of an intense emotion on a
disposition such as Miss Iris’s. Now, what was this emotional
experience so closely connected with the chalchihuitl stone that the
sight of the stone was able to recall it, with a dulling feeling of
fear and apathy to her emotions, without being in itself able to bring
recollection to her conscious mind, I could only conjecture.

“But after learning from you that while a child she had lived among
Central American Indians, and discovering that the chalchihuitl stone
was a ceremonial stone of savage religious rites—particularly the
marriage rite—I could not help but note the remarkable coincidence
that the man who brought the chalchihuitl stone appeared precisely at
the time he would have come if he had learned from newspapers in
Central America of the girl’s intended marriage. As the most probable
reason for his coming, considering the other circumstances, was to
prevent the wedding, I thought the easiest way to lay hands upon him
and establish his identity was to publish at once the notice that the
wedding had been postponed, which, if he saw it, would make him
confident he had accomplished his object and draw him here again. Draw
him it did, last night, into the arms of Walker and myself, with a
Lake Forest officer along to make the arrest legal.”

“I see! I see! Go on!” Pierce urged intently.

“But though I caught him,” Trant continued, “I could not gain the
really important facts from him by questioning, as I was totally
unaware of the particulars which concerned Miss Iris’s—or rather
Isabella Clarke’s—parentage and self-exiled father. But I knew
that, by throwing her into the true ‘trance’ which you have just
witnessed—a hysterical condition known as monoideic somnambulism to
psychologists—she would be forced to recall and tell us in detail of
the experiences which she had passed through in that condition,
precisely as the persons possessed of the ‘devil’s claw’ who were
burned and tortured as witches in the Middle Ages had the ability
sometimes to go into trances where they knew and told of things which
they were not conscious of in their ordinary state; precisely as
certain clairvoyants to-day are often able to tell correctly certain
things of which they could seem to have no natural knowledge.

“As for Miss Iris, there is now no reason for apprehension.
Ordinarily, in case conditions might arise which would remind her so
strongly of the events that took place here last Wednesday, she would
be thrown automatically into the condition she was in this afternoon
when she gave us her narrative. She would then repeat all the
particulars rapidly aloud, as you have heard her give them; or she
would act them out dramatically, going through all the motions of her
flight from Penol, and her attempt to save your papers. And each
reminder being made more easy by the one before, these ‘trances’ as
you call them, would become more and more frequent.

“But knowing now, as you do, all the particulars of what happened, you
have only to recount them to her, repeating them time after time if
necessary, until she normally remembers them and you have drawn the
two parts of her consciousness back again into one. She will then,
except to the psychologist, be the same as other people, and will show
no more peculiarity in the rest of her life than she had already shown
in that part of it she has passed in your household. My work here, I
think, is done,” the psychologist rose abruptly, and after grasping
the hand which Pierce eagerly and thankfully stretched out to him, he
preceded him through the doorway.

In the high-ceilinged museum, which blazed red with the light of the
setting sun, they came upon Iris, standing again in absorbed
contemplation of the sacrificial stone. She turned and smiled
pleasantly at them, with no sign of curiosity; but Pierce, as he
passed, bent gently and kissed her lips.



CHAPTER VII

The Empty Cartridges

Stephen Sheppard, big game shot and all-around sportsman, lay tensely
on his side in bed, watching for the sun to rise out of Lake Michigan.
When the first crest of that yellow rim would push clear of the grim,
gray horizon stretching its great, empty half circle about the Chicago
shore, he was going to make a decision—a decision for the life or for
the death of a young man; and as he personally had always cared for
that man more than for any other man so much younger, and as his
niece, who was the chief person left in the world that Sheppard loved,
also cared for the man so much that she would surely marry him if he
were left alive, Sheppard was not at all anxious for that day to
begin.

The gray on the horizon, which had been becoming alarmingly pale the
last few moments as he stared at it, now undeniably was spread with
purple and pink from behind the water’s edge. Decide he must, he knew,
within a very few minutes or the rising sun would find him as
faltering in his mind as he was the night before when he had given
himself till daybreak to form his decision. The sportsman shut his
teeth determinedly. No matter how fruitless the hours of darkness when
he had matched mercy with vengeance; no matter how hopeless he had
found it during the earlier moments of that slow December dawn to say
whether he would recognize that his young friend had merely taken the
law into his own hands and done bare justice, and therefore the past
could be left buried, or whether he must return retribution upon that
young man and bring back all that hidden and forgotten past—all was no
matter; he must decide now within five minutes. For it was a
sportsman’s compact he had made with himself to rise with the sun and
act one way or the other, and he kept compacts with himself as
obstinately and as unflinchingly as a man must who has lived decently
a long life alone, without any employment or outside discipline.

Now the great, crimson aurora shooting up into the sky warned him that
day was close upon him; now the semi-circle of gray waters was
bisected by a broad and blood red pathway; now white darts at the
aurora’s center foretold the coming of the sun. He swung his feet out
of bed and sat up—a stalwart, rosy, obstinate old man, his thick,
white, wiry hair tousled in his indecision—and, reaching over swiftly,
snatched up a loose coin which lay with his watch and keys upon the
table beside his bed.

“I’ll give him equal chances anyway,” he satisfied himself as he sat
on the edge of the bed with the coin in his hands. “Tails, he goes
free, but heads, he—hangs!”

Then waiting for the first direct gleam of the sun to give him his
signal, he spun it and put his bare foot upon it as it twirled upon
the floor.

“Heads!” He removed his foot and looked at it without stooping. He
pushed his feet into the slippers beside his bed, threw his
dressing-gown over his shoulders, went directly to the telephone and
called up the North Side Police Station.

“I want you to arrest Jim Tyler—James Tyler at the Alden Club at
once!” he commanded abruptly. “Yes; that’s it. What charge? What do I
care what charge you arrest him on—auto speeding—anything you
want—only get him!” The old sportsman spoke with even sharper brevity
than usual. “Look him up and I’ll come with my charges against him
soon enough. See here; do you know who this is, speaking? This is
Steve Sheppard. Ask your Captain Crowley whether I have to swear to a
warrant at this time in the morning to have a man arrested. All right!

“That starts it!” he recognized grimly to himself, as he slammed down
the receiver. The opposition at the police station had given the
needed drive to his determination. “Now I’ll follow it through.
Beginning with that fellow—Trant,” he recollected, as he found upon
his desk the memorandum which he had made the night before, in case he
should decide this way.

“Mr. Trant; you got my note of last night?” he said, a little less
sharply, after he had called the number noted as Trant’s room address
at his club. “I am Stephen Sheppard—brother of the late Neal Sheppard.
I have a criminal case and—as I wrote you I might—I want your help at
once. If you leave your rooms immediately, I will call for you at your
office before eight; I want you to meet a train with me at
eight-thirty. Very well!”

He rang for his man, then, to order his motor and to tell him to bring
coffee and rolls to his room, which he gulped down while he dressed.
Fifteen minutes later he jumped onto the front seat of his car,
displacing the chauffeur, and himself drove the car rapidly down town.

A crisp, sharp breeze blew in upon them from the lake, scattering dry,
rare flakes of snow. It was a clear, perfect day for the first of
December in Chicago. But Stephen Sheppard was oblivious to it. In the
northern woods beyond the Canada boundary line the breeze would be
sharper and cleaner that day and smell less of the streets and—it was
the very height of his hunting season for big game in those woods! Up
there he would still have been shooting, but as the papers had put it,
“the woods had taken their toll” again this year, and his brother’s
life had been part of that toll.

“Neal Sheppard’s Body Found in the Woods!” He read the headlines in
the paper which the boy thrust into his face, and he slowed the car at
the Rush Street bridge. “Victim of Stray Shot Being Brought to
Chicago.” Well! That was the way it was known! Stephen Sheppard
released his brake, with a jerk; crossed the bridge and, eight minutes
later, brought up the car with a sharper shock before the First
National Bank Building.

He had never met the man he had come to see—had heard of him only
through startling successes in the psychological detection of crime
with which this comparative youth, fresh from the laboratory of a
university and using methods new to the criminals and their pursuers
alike, had startled the public and the wiser heads of the police. But
finding the door to Trant’s office on the twelfth floor standing open,
and the psychologist himself taking off his things, Sheppard first
stared over the stocky, red-haired youth, and then clicked his tongue
with satisfaction.

“It’s lucky you’re early, Mr. Trant,” he approved bluffly. “There is
short enough time as it is, before we meet the train.” He had glanced
at the clock as he spoke, and pulled off his gloves without ceremony.
“You look like what I expected—what I’d heard you were. Now—you know
me?”

“By reputation, at least, Mr. Sheppard,” Trant replied. “There has
been enough in the papers these last two weeks, and as you spoke of
yourself over the telephone just now as the brother of the late Neal
Sheppard, I suppose this morning’s report is correct. That is, your
brother has finally been found in the woods—dead?”

“So you’ve been following it, have you?”

“Only in the papers. I saw, of course, that Mr. Neal Sheppard was
missing from your hunting party in Northern Ontario two weeks ago,”
Trant replied. “I saw that you had been unable to find him and had
given him up for drowned in one of the lakes or dead in the woods, and
therefore you had come home the first of the week to tell his
daughter. Then this morning I saw Mr. Chapin and your guide, whom you
had left to keep up the search, had reported they found him—killed,
apparently, by a stray shot.”

“I see. I told Chapin to give that out till he saw me, no matter how
he found him.” Sheppard tossed his fur cap upon Trant’s flat-topped
desk before him and slapped his heavy gloves, one after the other,
beside it.

“You mean that you have private information that your brother was not
shot accidentally?” Trant leaned over his desk intently.

“Exactly. But I’ve not come to mince matters with you, Trant. He was
murdered, man,—murdered!”

“Murdered? I understand then!” Trant straightened back.

“No, you don’t,” his client contradicted bluntly. “I haven’t come to
ask you to find the murderer for me. I named him to the police and
ordered his arrest before I called you this morning. He is Jim Tyler;
and, as I know he was at his club, they must have him by this time.
There’s mighty little psychology in this case, Trant. But if I’m going
to hang young Jim, I’m going to hang him quick—for it’s not a pleasant
job; and I have called for you merely to hear the proofs that Chapin
and the Indian are bringing—they’ve sent word only that it is murder,
as I suspected—so that when we put those proofs into the hands of the
state’s attorney, they can finish Jim quick—and be done with it!”

“Tyler?” Trant leaned quickly toward his client again, not trying now
to conceal his surprise. “Young Tyler, your shooting-mate and your
partner in the new Sheppard-Tyler Gun Company?”

“Yes, Tyler,” the other returned brusquely, but rising as he spoke,
and turning his back upon the pretext of closing the transom. “My
shooting-mate for the last three years and I guess he’s rather more
than my partner in the gun company; for, to tell the truth, it was for
him I put up the money to start the business. And there are more
reasons than that for making me want to let him go—though he shot my
brother. But those reasons—I decided this morning—are not enough this
late in the day! So I decided also to hold back nothing—to keep back
nothing of what’s behind this crime, whoever it hurts! I said I
haven’t come to mince matters with you, Trant. Well—I shan’t!”

He turned back from the transom, and glanced once more swiftly at the
clock.

“I shall be very glad to go over the evidence for you, Mr. Sheppard,”
Trant acquiesced, following the older man’s glance; “and as you have
come here half an hour before we need start to meet the train—”

“Just so,” the other interrupted bluntly. “I am here to tell you as
much as I am able before we meet the others. That’s why I asked you if
you knew me. So now—exactly how much do you know about me, Trant?”

“I know you are a wealthy man—a large holder of real estate, the
papers say, which has advanced greatly in value; and I know—this is
from the papers too—that you belong to a coterie of men who have grown
up with the city,—old settlers of thirty years’ standing.”

“Quite right. Neal and I came here broke—without a cent, to pick up
what we could in Chicago after the fire. And we made our fortunes
then, easy—or easily, as I’ve learned to say now,” he smiled to
himself grimly, “by buying up lots about the city when they were cheap
and everybody scared and selling them for a song, and we had only to
hold them until they made us rich. I am now a rich old bachelor,
Trant, hunting in season and trap-shooting out, and setting up Jim
Tyler in the gun business between times. The worst that was said about
Neal was his drinking and bad temper; for Leigh, his daughter, goes as
well as anybody else in her circle; and even young Jim Tyler has the
run of a dozen clubs. That’s all good, respectable and satisfactory,
isn’t it? And is that all you know?”

“That’s all,” replied Trant curtly.

“Never heard of Sheppard’s White Palace, did you? Don’t know that when
you speak to one of those old boys of thirty years ago—the coterie,
you called them—about Mr. Stephen Sheppard, the thought that comes
into his head is, ‘Oh! you mean Steve Sheppard, the gambler!’ Thirty
years ago, more or less, we were making our money to buy those lots in
a liquor palace and gambling hell—Neal and I and Jim Tyler’s
father—old Jim.”

“There were more than just Neal and old Tyler and me, though,” he
burst on, pacing the length of the rug beside Trant’s desk and not
looking at his consultant at all. “There were the Findlays
besides—Enoch, who was up in the woods with us, he gets his picture in
the paper every six months or so for paying a thousand dollars for a
thousand-year-old cent piece; and Enoch’s brother, and Chapin, whom
we’re going to meet in a few minutes. We ran a square game—as square
as any; understand that! But we had every other devilment that comes
even to a square gambling house in a wide open town—fights, suicide,
and—murder.”

He broke off, meeting Trant’s quick and questioning glance for a
fraction of an instant with a steely glitter of his gray-green eyes.

“Sure—murder!” he repeated with rougher defiance. “Men shot themselves
and, a good deal oftener, shot each other in our house or somewhere
else, on account of what went on there. But we got things passed up a
deal easier in those days, and we seldom bothered ourselves about a
little shooting till—well, the habit spread to us. I mean, one night
one of us—Len Findlay it was—was shot under conditions that made it
certain that one of us other five—Tyler, or Chapin, or Enoch Findlay,
his brother, or Neal, or I, must have shot him. You see, a pleasant
thing to drop into our happy family! Made it certain only to us, of
course; we got it passed up as a suicide with the police. And that
wasn’t all; for as soon afterward as it was safe to have another
‘suicide,’ old Jim Tyler was shot; and this time we knew it was either
Enoch Findlay or—I told you I wouldn’t mince matters—or Neal. That
broke up the game and the partnership—”

“Wait, wait!” Trant interrupted. “Do you mean me to understand that
your brother shot Tyler?”

“I mean you to understand just what I said,” the old man’s straight
lips closed tightly under his short white mustache; “for I’ve seen too
much trouble come out of just words to be careless with them. Either
Enoch or Neal shot Jim; I don’t know which.”

“In retaliation, because he thought Tyler had shot Len Findlay?”

“Perhaps; but I never thought so, and I don’t think so now,” Sheppard
returned decisively. “For old Jim Tyler was the least up to that sort
of thing of any of us—a tongue-tied, inoffensive old fellow—and he was
dealer in our games; but outside of that Jim didn’t have nerve enough
to handle his own money. But for some reason Neal seemed sure it was
old Jim who had shot Len, and he made Enoch Findlay believe it, too.
So, no matter who actually fired the bullet, it was Neal. Well, it was
up to me to look after old Jim’s widow and his boy. That was
necessary; for after Jim was dead, I found a funny thing. He had taken
his share with the rest of us in the profits of the game; and the rest
of us were getting rich by that time—for we weren’t any of us
gamblers; not in the way of playing it back into the game, that is;
but though I had always supposed that Jim was buying his land like the
rest—and his widow told me so, too—I found nothing when he was dead!”

“But you implied just now,” Trant put in again quickly, “that Tyler
might have had someone else investing for him. Did you look into that
at the time?”

“Yes; I asked them all, but no one knew anything. But we’re coming to
that,” the old man answered impatiently. “I wanted you to see how it
was that I began to look after young Jim and take an interest in him
and do things for him till—till he became what he was to me. Neal
never liked my looking after the boy from the first; we quarreled
about it time and again, and especially after young Jim began growing
up and Neal’s girl was growing up, too; and a year or so ago, when he
began seeing that Leigh was caring for young Jim more than for anyone
else, in spite of what he said, Neal hated the boy worse. He forbade
him his house; and he did a good many other things against him, and
the reason for all of it even I couldn’t make out until this last
hunt.”

The old sportsman stood still now, picked up his fur cap and
thoughtfully began drawing on his big gloves.

“We had gone up this year, as of course you know from the papers, into
the Ontario reserve, just north of the Temagami region, for deer and
moose. The season is good there, but short, closing the middle of
November. Then we were going to cross into Quebec where the season
stays till January. Young Jim Tyler wasn’t with us, for this hunt was
a sort of exclusive fixture just for the old ones, Neal and I, Findlay
and Chapin. But this time, the second day in camp, young Jim Tyler
comes running in upon us—or rather, in on me, for I was the only one
in camp that day, laid up with a bad ankle. He had his gun with him,
one of our new Sheppard-Tylers which we were all trying out for the
first time this year. But he hadn’t followed us for moose. He’d come
to see Neal. For the people that had bought his father’s old house had
been tearing it down to make room for a business building, and they’d
found some papers between the floors which they’d given to young Jim,
and that was what sent him after us, hot after Neal. He showed them to
me; and I understood.

“You see, the only real objection that Neal had been able to keep
against young Jim was that he was a pauper—penniless but for me. And
these papers Jim had were notes and memorandum which showed why Jim
was a pauper and who had made him that, and how Neal himself had got
the better half of old Jim’s best properties. For the papers were
private notes and memoranda of money that old Jim Tyler had given Neal
to invest in land for him; among them a paper in Neal’s writing
acknowledging old Jim’s half interest in Neal’s best lots. Then there
were some personal memorandum of Tyler’s stuck with these, part of
which we couldn’t make out, except that it had to do with the shooting
of Len Findlay; but the rest was clear—showed clear that, just before
he was shot, old Jim Tyler had become afraid of Neal and was trying to
make him convert his papers into regular titles and take his things
out of Neal’s hands.

“I saw, of course, that young Jim must know everything then; so the
only thing I could do was to stop him from hunting up Neal that
morning and in that mood with a gun in his hand. But he laughed at me;
said I ought to know he hadn’t come to kill Leigh’s father, but only
to force a different understanding then and there; and his gun might
come in handy—but he would keep his head as well as his gun. But he
didn’t. For though he didn’t find Neal then, he came across Findlay
and Chapin and blurted it all out to them, so that they stayed with
him till he promised to go home, which he didn’t do either; for one of
our Indians, coming up the trail early next morning with supplies, met
him only half a dozen miles from camp. Jim said he’d laid up over
night because of the snowstorm, but didn’t come back to camp because
he didn’t want to see Neal after the promise he’d made. And there
_had_ been a big snow that night. Chapin and Findlay didn’t get in
till all hours because of it; Chapin about eleven, Findlay not till
near two, dead beat out from tramping through the new snow; and
Neal—he never got in at all.

“I stayed four days after that looking for Neal; but we couldn’t find
him. Then I left Chapin with the Indians to keep on searching, while I
came down, more to see Jim, you understand, than to break the news to
Leigh. Jim admitted he’d stayed near camp till the next morning but
denied he’d even seen Neal, and denied it so strongly that he fooled
me into giving him the benefit of the doubt until last night; and then
Chapin wired me they had found Neal’s body, and to meet them with a
detective, as they have plain evidence against young Jim that he
murdered my brother!”

The old man stopped suddenly, and his eyes shifted from Trant to the
clock. “That’s all,” he concluded abruptly. “Not much psychology in
that, is there? My car is waiting down stairs.”

He pulled the fur cap down upon his ears, and Trant had time only to
throw on his coat and catch his client in the hall, as Sheppard walked
toward the elevators. The chauffeur, at sight of them, opened the
limousine body of the car, and Sheppard got in with Trant, leaving the
man this time to guide the car through the streets.

“There’s where the Palace stood; Neal owns the lot still, and has made
two re-buildings on it,” he motioned toward a towering office
structure as the car slowed at the Clark Street crossing. Then, as
they stopped a moment later at the Polk Street Station, he laid a
muscular hand upon the door, drove it open and sprang out, leaving
Trant inside. The clock in the tower showed just half past eight, and
he hurried into the train shed. Ten minutes later he reappeared,
leading a plump, almost roly-poly man, with a round face, fiery red
from exposure to the weather, who was buttoned from chin to shoe tops
in an ulster and wore a fur cap like his own. Behind them with
noiseless, woodland tread glided a full-blooded Indian, in corduroy
trousers and coat blotched with many forest stains, carrying carefully
a long leather gun-case and cartridge belt.

“This is Chapin, Trant,” Sheppard introduced them, having evidently
spoken briefly of the psychologist to Chapin in the station; “and
McLain,” he motioned toward the Indian.

He stepped after them into the limousine, and as the car jerked and
halted through the crowded city streets back toward his home, he
lifted his eyes to the round-faced man opposite him.

“Where was it, Chapin?” he asked abruptly.

“In Bowton’s mining shack, Steve.”

“What! what!”

“You say the body was found in a miner’s cabin, Mr. Chapin,” the
psychologist broke in, in crisp tones. “Do you mean the miners live in
the cabin and carried him in there after he was shot?”

“No, it is an abandoned mine, Mr. Trant. He was in the deserted cabin
when shot down—shot like a dog, Steve!”

“For God’s sake, let’s drop this till we get to the house!” Sheppard
burst out suddenly, and Trant fell back, still keenly observant and
attentive, while the big car swept swiftly through the less crowded
streets. Only twice Sheppard leaned forward, with forced calmness and
laconic comment, to point out some sight to the Indian; and once he
nodded absently when, passing a meat shop with deer hung beside its
doors, the Indian—finding this the first object on which he dared to
comment—remarked that the skins were being badly torn. Then the motor
stopped before twin, stately, gray-stone houses facing the lake, where
a single broad flight of steps led to two entrance doors which bore
ornate door plates, one the name of Stephen, the other Neal, Sheppard.

Sheppard led the way through the hall into a wide, high trophy and
smoking-room which occupied a bay of the first floor back of the
dining-room, and himself shut the door firmly, after Chapin and Trant
and the Indian, still carefully carrying the gun-case, had entered.

“Now tell me,” he commanded Chapin and the Indian equally, “exactly
how you found him.”

“Neal had plainly taken refuge in the cabin from the snowstorm,
Steve,” Chapin replied almost compassionately. “He was in his stocking
feet, and his shooting-coat and cartridge-belt still lay on the straw
in one of the bunks where he had been sleeping. The man, it seems
clear, entered through the outer door of the mess cabin, which opens
into the bunk-room through a door at its other end. Neal heard him, we
suppose, and picking up his shoes and gun, went to see who it was; and
the man, standing near the outer door, shot him down as he came
through the other—four shots, Steve; two missed.”

“Four shots, and in the cabin!” Sheppard turned to the Indian almost
in appeal; but at McLain’s nod his square chin set firmly. “You were
right in telegraphing me it was murder!”

“Two hit—one here; one here,” the Indian touched his right shoulder
and then the center of his forehead.

“How do you know the man who shot him stood by the outer door?” Trant
interrupted.

“McLain found the shells ejected from his rifle,” Chapin answered; and
the Indian took from his pocket five cartridges—four empty, one still
loaded. “Man shooting kill with four shots and throw last from
magazine there beside it,” he explained. “Not have need it. I find on
floor with empty shells.”

“I see.” Sheppard took the shells and examined them tensely. He went
to his drawer and took out a single fresh cartridge and compared it
carefully with the empty shells and the unfired cartridge the Indian
had found with them, before he handed them, still more tensely, to
Trant. “They are all Sheppard-Tyler’s, Trant, which we were just
trying out for the first time ourselves. No one else had them, no one
else could possibly have them, besides ourselves, but Jim! But the
gun-case, Chapin,” he turned toward the burden the Indian had carried.
“Why have you brought that?”

“It’s just Neal’s gun that we found in his hand, Steve,” Chapin
replied sympathetically, “and his cartridge-belt that was in the
bunk.”

The Indian unstrapped the case and took out the gun. Then he took from
another pocket a single empty shell, this time, and four full ones,
three of which he put into the magazine of the rifle, and extended it
to Chapin.

“Neal had time to try twice for Ji—for the other fellow, Steve,”
Chapin explained, “for he wasn’t killed till the fourth shot. But
Neal’s first shell,” he pointed to the pierced primer of the cartridge
he had taken from the Indian, “missed fire, you see; and he was hit so
hard before he could shoot the other,” he handed over the shell, “that
it must have gone wild. Its recoil threw the next cartridge in place
all right, as McLain has it now,” he handed over the gun, “but Neal
couldn’t ever pull the trigger on it then.”

“I see.” Sheppard’s teeth clenched tight again, as he examined the
faulty cartridge his brother had tried to shoot, the empty shell, and
the three cartridges left intact in the rifle. He handed them after
the others to Trant. And for an instant more his green-gray eyes,
growing steadily colder and more merciless, watched the silent young
psychologist as he weighed again and again and sorted over, without
comment, the shells that had slain Neal Sheppard; and weighed again in
his fingers the one the murderer had not needed to use. Then Trant
turned suddenly to the cartridge-belt the Indian held, and taking out
one shell compared it with the others.

“They are different?” he said inquiringly.

“Only that these are full metal-patched bullets, like the one I showed
you from the drawer, while those in Neal’s belt are soft-nosed,”
Sheppard answered immediately. “We had both kinds in camp, for we were
making the first real trial of the new gun; but we used only the
soft-nosed in hunting. They are Sheppard-Tyler’s, Trant—all of them;
and that is the one important thing and enough of itself to settle the
murderer!”

“But can you understand, Mr. Sheppard, even if the man who shot the
four shells found he didn’t need the fifth,”—the young psychologist
held up the single, unshot shell which the Indian had found near the
door—“why he should throw it there? And more particularly I can’t make
out why—” He checked himself and swung from his client to the Indian
as the perplexity which had filled his face when he first handled the
shells gave way to the quick flush of energetic action.

“Suppose this were the mess-room of the cabin, McLain,” he gestured to
the trophy-room, as he shot out his question; “can you show me how it
was arranged and what you found there?”

“Yes, yes;” the Indian turned to the end wall and pointed, “there the
door to outside; on floor near it, four empty shells, one full one.”
He stalked to a corner at the opposite end. “Here door to bunk-room.
Here,” he stopped and touched his fingers to the floor, “Neal
Sheppard’s shoes where he drop them. Here,” he rose and touched the
wall in two spots about the height of a man’s head above the floor,
“bullet hole, and bullet hole, when he miss.”

“What! what!” cried Trant, “two bullet holes above the shoes?”

“Yes; so.”

“And the body—that lay near the shoes?”

“Oh, no; the body here!” the Indian moved along the end wall almost to
the other corner. “One shell beside it that miss fire, one empty
shell. Neal Sheppard’s matchbox—that empty, too—on floor. Around body
burned matches.”

“Burned matches around the body?” Trant echoed in still greater
excitement.

“Yes; and on body.”

“On it?”

“Yes; man, after he shot, go to him and burn matches—I think—to see
him dead.”

“Then they must have shot in the dark!” Trant’s excited face flushed
red with sudden and complete comprehension. “Of course, dolt that I
was! With these shells in my hand, I should have guessed it! That is
as plain a reason for this peculiar distribution of the shells as it
is for the matches which, as the Indian says, the man must have taken
from your brother’s match-box to look at him and make sure he was
dead.” He had whirled to face his client. “It was all shot in the
dark.”

“Shot in the dark!” Sheppard echoed. He seemed to have caught none of
the spirit of his young adviser’s new comprehension; but, merely
echoing his words, had turned from him and stared steadily out of the
window to the street; and as he stared, thinking of his brother shot
down in darkness by an unseen enemy, his eyes, cold and merciless
before, began to glow madly with his slow but—once aroused—obstinate
and pitiless anger.

“Mr. Trant;” he turned back suddenly, “I do not deny that when I
called for you this morning, instead of getting a detective from the
city police as Chapin expected, it was not to hang Jim Tyler, as I
pretended, but with a determination to give him every chance that was
coming to him after I had to go against him. But he gave Neal
none—none!—and it’s no matter what Neal did to his father; I’m keeping
you here now to help me hang him! And Chapin! when I ordered Tyler’s
arrest, I told the police I’d prefer charges against him this morning,
but he seems impatient. He’s coming here with Captain Crowley from the
station now,” he continued with short, sharp distinctness. “So let him
in, Chapin—I don’t care to trust myself at the door—Jim’s come for it,
and—I’ll let him have it!”

“You mean you are going to charge him with murder now, before that
officer, Mr. Sheppard?” Trant moved quickly before his client, as
Chapin obediently went toward the door. “Don’t,” he warned tersely.

“Don’t? Why?”

“The first bullet in your brother’s gun that failed—the other
three—the one which the other fellow did not even try to shoot,” Trant
enumerated almost breathlessly, as he heard the front door open. “Do
they mean nothing to you?”

And putting between his strong even teeth the cartridge with its
primer pierced which had failed in Neal Sheppard’s gun, he tore out
the bullet with a single wrench and held the shell down. “See! it was
empty, Mr. Sheppard! That was the first one in your brother’s gun!
That was why it didn’t go off! And this—the last one the other man
had, the one he didn’t even try to shoot,” Trant jerked out the bullet
from it too with another wrench of his teeth—“was empty as well. See!
And the other man knew it; that was why he didn’t even try to shoot
it, but ejected it on the floor as it was!”

“How did you guess that? And how did you know that the other
cartridge, the one Jim—the other fellow—didn’t even try to fire—wasn’t
loaded, too?” Sheppard now checked short in surprise, stupefied and
amazed, gazed, with the other white-haired man and the Indian, at the
empty shells.

But Trant went on swiftly: “Are Sheppard-Tyler shells so poorly
loaded, Mr. Sheppard, that two out of ten of them are bad? And not
only two, but this—and this—and this,” at each word he dropped on the
table another shell, “the three left in your brother’s rifle. For
these others are bad—unloaded, too! So that even if he had been able
to pull the trigger on them, they would have failed like the first;
and I know that for the same reason that I know about the first ones.
Five out of ten shells of Sheppard-Tyler loading ‘accidentally’ with
no powder in them. That is too much for you—for anyone—to believe, Mr.
Sheppard! And that was why I said to you a moment ago, as I say again,
don’t charge that young man out there with murder!”

“You mean,” Sheppard gasped, “that Jim did not kill Neal?”

“I didn’t say that,” Trant returned sharply. “But your brother was not
shot down in cold-blooded murder; I’m sure of that! Whether Jim Tyler,
or another, shot him, I can not yet say; but I hope soon to prove. For
there were only four men in the woods who had Sheppard-Tyler guns; and
he must have been shot either by Tyler, or Findlay, or Chapin, or—to
open all the possibilities—by yourself, Mr. Sheppard!” the
psychologist continued boldly.

“Who? Me?” roared Chapin in fiery indignation.

“What—what’s that you’re saying?” The old sportsman stood staring at
his young adviser, half in outrage, half in astonishment.

Then, staring at the startling display of the empty shells—whose
meaning was as yet as incomprehensible to him as the means by which
the psychologist had so suddenly detected them—and dazed by Trant’s
sudden and equally incomprehensible defense of young Tyler after he
had detected them, he weakened. “I—I’m afraid. I don’t understand what
you mean, Mr. Trant!” he said helplessly; then, irritated by his own
weakness, he turned testily toward the door: “I wonder what is keeping
them out there?”

“Mr. Trant says,” Chapin burst out angrily, “that either you or I is
as likely to have shot Neal as young Jim! But Mr. Trant is crazy;
we’ll have young Jim in here and prove it!” and he threw open the
door.

But it was not young Tyler, but a girl, tall and blond, with a lithe,
straight figure almost like a boy’s, but with her fine, clear-cut
features deadly pale, and with her gray eyes—straight and frank, like
Sheppard’s, but much deeper and softer—full of grief and terror, who
stood first in the doorway.

“Leigh! So it was you keeping them out there! Leigh,” her uncle’s
voice trembled as he spoke to the girl, “what are you doing here?”

“No; what are you doing, uncle?” the girl asked in clear, fearless
tones. “Or rather, I mean, what have Mr. Chapin and this guide and
this—this gentleman,” she looked toward Trant and the gun Sheppard had
handed him, “come here for this morning? And why have they brought Jim
here—this way?” She moved aside a little, as though to let Trant see
behind her the set and firm, but also very pale, features of young
Tyler and the coarser face of the red-haired police officer. “I know,”
she continued, as her uncle still stood speechless, “that it must have
something to do with my father; for Jim could not deny it. But
what—what is it,” she appealed again, with the terror gleaming in her
eyes which told, even to Trant, that she must half suspect, “that
brings you all here this way this morning, and Jim too?”

“Run over home again, my dear,” the uncle stooped and kissed her
clumsily. “Run back home now, for you can’t come in.”

“Yes; you’ll go back home now, won’t you, Leigh?” Tyler touched her
hand.

“Perhaps you had better let Miss Sheppard in for a moment first, Mr.
Tyler,” Trant suggested. “For, in regard to what she seems to fear, I
have only encouragement for her.”

“You mean you—” Tyler’s pale, defiant lips parted impulsively, but he
quickly checked himself.

“I am not afraid to ask it, Jim,” the girl this time sought his
fingers with her own. “Do you mean you—are not here to try to connect
Jim with the—disappearance of my father?”

“No, Miss Sheppard,” Trant replied steadily, while the eyes of the two
older men were fixed upon him scarcely less intently than the girl’s;
“and I have asked you to come in a moment, because I feel safe in
assuring you that Mr. Tyler can not have been connected with the
disappearance of your father in the way they have made you fear. And
more than that, it is quite possible that within a few moments I will
be able to prove that he is clear of any connection with it
whatever—quite possible, Miss Sheppard. That was all I wanted to tell
you.”

“Who are you?” the girl cried. “And can you make my uncle believe
that, too? Do you think I haven’t known, uncle, what you thought when
Jim went up there after you and—father was lost? I know that what you
suspect is impossible; but,” she turned to Trant again, “can you make
my uncle believe that, too?”

“Your uncle, though he seemed to forget the fact a moment ago, has
retained me precisely to clear Mr. Tyler from the circumstantial
evidence that seemed so conclusive against him,” said Trant, with a
warning glance at the amazed Sheppard, “and I strongly hope that I
will be able to do so.”

“Oh, I did not understand! I will wait upstairs, then,” the girl
turned from Trant to Sheppard in bewilderment, touched Tyler’s arm as
she brushed by him in the door, and left them.

“Thank you for your intention in making it easier for her—whoever you
are—even if you have to take it back later,” Tyler said grimly to the
psychologist. “But since Crowley has told me,” he turned now to
Sheppard, “that it was you who ordered him to arrest me at the club
this morning, I suppose, now that Leigh is gone, that means that you
have found your brother shot as he deserved and as you expected
and—you think I did it!”

“Morning, Mr. Sheppard,” the red-haired police captain nodded.
“Morning, Mr. Trant; giving us some more of the psycho-palmistry?
Considerable water’s gone past the mill since you put an electric
battery on Caylis, the Bronson murderer, and proved him guilty just as
we were getting ready to send Kanlan up for the crime. As for this
young man,” he motioned with his thumb toward Tyler, “I took him in
because Mr. Sheppard asked it; but as Mr. Sheppard didn’t make any
charge against him, and this Tyler wanted to come up here, I brought
him on myself, not hearing from Mr. Sheppard. I suppose now it’s Mr.
Neal Sheppard’s death, after seeing the morning papers and hearing the
young lady.”

“Just so, Captain Crowley,” said Trant brusquely, “but we’ll let Mr.
Sheppard make his charge or not make it, just as he sees fit, after we
get through with the little test we’re going to carry out. And I am
greatly mistaken, if, after we are through, he will bring any such
charge as you have suggested. But come in, Captain; I am glad that you
are here. The test I am going to make may seem so trivial to these
gentlemen that I am glad to have a practical man like yourself here
who has seen more in such a test as the one I am going to make now,
than can appear on the surface.”

“‘More than appears on the surface’ is the word, Mr. Trant,” the
captain cried impulsively. “Mr. Sheppard, it’s myself has told you
about Mr. Trant before; and I’ll back anything he does to the limit,
since I see him catch the Bronson murderer, as I just told you, by a
one-cell battery that would not ring a door bell.”

“I shall ask you to bear that in mind, if you will, Mr. Sheppard and
Mr. Chapin,” the psychologist smiled slightly as he looked about the
room, and then crossed over to the mantel and took from it five of the
six small stone steins with silver tops which stood there.
“Particularly as I have not here even the regular apparatus for the
test, but must rather improvise. If I had you in my offices or in the
psychological laboratory fitted with that regular apparatus I could
prove in an instant which of you, if any, was the one who shot these
four cartridges to kill Neal Sheppard, and discarded this fifth,” he
touched again the shells on the table. “But, as I said, I hope we can
manage here.”

“Which of us?” Chapin echoed. “So you’re going to try me, too?” He
raised a plump fist and shook it angrily under Trant’s nose. “You
think I did it?”

“I didn’t say so, Mr. Chapin,” Trant replied pacificatingly. “I said
there were excellent chances that Mr. Tyler was not the one who did
the shooting; so if that is so, it must have been done by one of the
other men who carried Sheppard-Tyler rifles. I thought of you merely
as one of those; and as the test I am about to try upon Mr. Tyler
would be as simple and efficient a test to determine your
connection—or lack of connection—with this shooting, I shall ask you
to take it after Mr. Tyler, if necessary.”

He raised the tops of the steins, as he spoke, peered into them to see
they were empty; then put into his pocket the good shell which he had
taken from the belt the Indian had given him, and picked up the five
little covered cups again.

“As I have a stop second hand to my watch, Mr. Sheppard,” he
continued, “all I need now is some shot—ordinary bird shot, or small
shot of any size.”

“Shot?” Sheppard stared at the steins crazily, but catching Captain
Crowley’s equally uncomprehending but admiringly confident eyes, he
nodded, “of course. You will find all the shot you can want in the gun
cabinet in the corner.”

Trant crossed to the cabinet and opened the drawer. He returned in
less than a minute, as they stood exchanging curious glances, and
placed five steins in a row on the table before him.

“Please take up the middle one now, Mr. Tyler,” he requested, as he
took out his watch. “Thank you. Now the one to the right of it; and
tell me, is it the same weight as the other, or heavier, or lighter?”

“The same weight or lighter—perhaps a little lighter,” Tyler answered
readily. “But what of it? What is this?” he asked curiously.

“Take up the middle stein again.” Trant, disregarding his question,
glanced at the time interval on his watch; “the first stein you picked
up, Mr. Tyler; and then take up the remaining three in any order, and
tell me, as quickly as you can, whether they seem the same weight,
lighter or heavier to you. Thank you,” he acknowledged noncommittally
again, as Tyler acquiesced, his wonder at so extraordinary a test
increasing.

The psychologist glanced over the list of answers he had noted on a
slip of paper with the time taken for each. Then he gathered up the
five steins without comment and redistributed them on the table.

“It looks bright for you, Mr. Tyler,” he commented calmly; “but I will
ask you to go over the steins again;” and a second, and then a third
time, he made Tyler take up all five steins in turn and tell him
whether each seemed the same weight, lighter or heavier than the first
he handled.

“What’s all this tomfoolery with steins got to do with who shot Neal
Sheppard?” Chapin blurted out contemptuously. But when he turned for
concurrence to Stephen Sheppard, he found the old sportsman’s anxious
gaze again fixed on the intent face of the police captain who once
before, by his own admission, had seen Trant pick a murderer by
incomprehensible work, and his own contempt as well gave place to
apprehensive wonder at what might lurk behind this apparently childish
experiment.

  [Illustration: In a trophy-room three men stand around a small round
  table, one writing in a notebook. On the table are several large
  lidded steins and a small pile of shotgun shells. The man on the
  right is carefully lifting two of the steins. Several men stand
  further back and watch over the proceedings.]

  Caption: “What’s all this tomfoolery with steins got to do with who
  shot Neal Sheppard?” Chapin blurted out contemptuously

“You ask what this means, Mr. Chapin?” Trant looked up as he finished
his notes. “It has made me certain that Mr. Tyler, at least, is
guiltless of the crime of which he has been suspected. As to who shot
Neal Sheppard, if you will kindly take up those steins just as you
have seen him do, perhaps I can tell you.”

For the fraction of an instant Chapin halted; then, as under direct
gaze of the psychologist, he reached out to pick up the first stein in
the test, whose very seeming triviality made it the more
incomprehensible to him, the sweat broke out on the backs of his
hands; but he answered stoutly:

“That’s heavier; the same; this lighter; and this the same again.”

And again: “The same; heavier; lighter; the same! Now, what’s the
answer?”

“That my feeling which you forced upon me to make me choose you—I
admit it—for the rôle you were so willing to assign to Tyler, Mr.
Chapin, would probably have made me waste valuable time, if I had not
been able to correct it, scientifically, as easily as I confirmed my
other feeling in Tyler’s favor. For there can be no question now that
you had no more to do with the shooting of Neal Sheppard than he had.
I must make still another test to determine the man who fired these
shots.”

“You mean you want to try _me_?” Sheppard demanded, uneasy and
astounded.

“I would rather test the other man first, Mr. Sheppard; the fourth man
who was in the woods with you,” Trant corrected calmly.

“_Findlay?_”

The psychologist, as he looked around, saw in the faces of Sheppard,
Chapin, and young Tyler alike, indignant astonishment.

“You don’t know Findlay, Mr. Trant,” Sheppard said roughly, losing
confidence again in spite of Crowley; “or you would understand that he
is the last man among us who could be suspected. Enoch is a regular
hermit—what they call a ‘recluse’! Only once a year are we able to get
him to tear himself away from his musty old house and his collections
of coins, and then only for old sake’s sake, to go to the north woods
with us. Your crazy test with the steins has led you a long way off
the track if you think it’s Findlay.”

“It has led me inevitably to the conclusion that, if it was one of you
four men, it was either Findlay or yourself, Mr. Sheppard,” Trant
asserted firmly. “You yourself know best whether it is necessary to
test him.”

Sheppard stared at the obstinate young psychologist for a full minute.
“At least,” he said finally with the same roughness, “we can keep
young Jim still in custody.” He looked at the police officer, who
nodded. Then he went to the house telephone on the wall, spoke shortly
into it, and turned:

“I’ll take you to Findlay, Trant. I’ve called the motor.”

Five minutes later the little party in the trophy-room broke up—Tyler,
under the watch of Captain Crowley, going to the police station, but
as yet without charge against him; Chapin going about his own
business; Trant and his client speeding swiftly down the boulevard in
the big motor.

“You want to stop at your office, I suppose,” Sheppard asked, “for you
haven’t brought the steins you used in your test with us?”

“Yes—but no,” Trant suddenly recollected; “you have mentioned once or
twice that Findlay is a collector of coins—a numismatist.”

“The craziest in Chicago.”

“Then if you’ll drop me for a minute at Swift and Walton’s curio shop
in Randolph Street that will be enough.”

Sheppard glanced at his young adviser wonderingly; and looked more
wonderingly still when Trant came out from the curio shop jingling a
handful of silver coins, which he showed quietly.

“They’re silver florins of one of the early Swiss states,” he
exclaimed; “borrowed of Swift and Walton, by means of a deposit, and
guaranteed to make a collector sit up and take notice. They’ll get me
an interview with Mr. Findlay, I hope, without the need of an
introduction. So if you will point out the house to me and let me out
a block or so from it, I will go in first.”

“And what do you want me to do?” asked Sheppard, startled.

“Come in a few minutes later; meet him as you would naturally. Your
brother’s body has been found; tell him about it. You suspect young
Tyler; tell him that also. Maybe he can help you. You need not
recognize me until I see I want you; but my work, I trust, will be
done before you get there.”

“Enoch Findlay help me?” queried Sheppard in perplexity. “You mean
help me to trace Neal’s murderer. But it is you who said because,
against all reason, you suspect Enoch, Mr. Trant, that we have come
here! For there’s the house,” he pointed. And Trant, not making any
answer, leaped out as the car was slowing, and left him.

The big old Michigan avenue dwelling, Trant saw at a glance, was in
disrepair; but from inattention, the psychologist guessed, not from
lack of money. The maid who opened the door was a slattern. The hall,
with its mingled aroma of dust and cooking, spoke eloquently of the
indifference of the house’s chief occupant; and the musty front room,
with its coin cases and curios, was as unlike the great light and airy
“den” where Stephen Sheppard hung his guns and skins and antlers, as
the man whom Trant rose to greet was unlike his friend, the hale and
ruddy old sportsman.

As Trant looked over this man, whose great height—six feet four or
five inches—was reduced at least three inches by the studious stoop of
his shoulders; as he took note of his worn and careless clothing and
his feet forced into bulging slippers; as he saw the parchment skin,
and met the eyes, so light in color that the iris could scarcely be
detected from the whites, like the unpainted eyes of a statue, he
appreciated the surprise that Findlay’s former partners, Sheppard and
Chapin, had experienced at the suggestion that this might be the
murderer.

“I shall ask only a little of your time, Mr. Findlay,” Trant put his
hand into his pocket for his coins, as though the proffered hand of
the other had been extended for them. “I have come to ask your
estimate, as an expert, upon a few coins which I have recently picked
up. I have been informed that you can better advise me as to their
value than any other collector in Chicago. My coins seem to be of the
early Swiss states.”

“Early Swiss coins are almost as rare as Swiss ships in the present
day, sir.” Findlay took the round bits of silver with the collector’s
intense absorption, which made him forget that he had not even asked
his visitor’s name. “And these are exceptionally rare and interesting
pieces. I have never seen but one other of these which I am fortunate
enough to possess. They are all the same, I see,” he sifted them
swiftly one after the other into his palm. “But—what’s this—what’s
this?” he cried with sudden disappointment as he took the top ones up
separately for more individual examination. “I hope you have not paid
too great a price for these.” He went to one of his cases and, opening
it, took out an exact duplicate of Trant’s coin. “For see!” he weighed
the two accurately in his fingers; “this first one of yours compares
most favorably with this specimen of mine, which is unquestionably
genuine. But this—this—this and this; ah, yes; and this, too”—he
sorted over the others swiftly and picked out five—“are certainly
lighter and I’m afraid they are counterfeit. But where are my scales?”

“Lighter?” Trant repeated, in apparent bewilderment.

“The correct coin, you see,” the collector replied, tossing his own
silver pieces into his scales, “should be over 400 grains—almost an
ounce. But these,” he placed the ten pieces one after the other on the
balance, too absorbed to notice the ringing of the door bell, “the
five I feared for, are quite light—twenty grains at least, you see?”
He reweighed them once more, carefully.

“That is certainly most interesting.” Trant grimly looked up at the
expert as though trying to deny a disappointment. “But it is quite
worth having the five coins light, to witness the facility with which
an expert like yourself can pick them out, unerringly, without
fail—barely twenty grains difference in four hundred.”

He looked up, still betraying only astonishment. But Findlay’s face,
after the first flush of his collector’s absorption, had suddenly
grown less cordial.

“I did not get your name, sir,” he started; then turned, at the
opening of the door behind him, to face Stephen Sheppard.

“Findlay!” the sportsman cried, scarcely waiting for the servant who
had admitted him to vanish, and not appearing to notice Trant at all.
“They’ve found Neal’s body! In Bowton’s mining shack—murdered, Enoch,
murdered! We’ll have young Jim Tyler up for it! Unless,” he hesitated,
and looked at Trant, and added, as though the compelling glance of the
psychologist constrained him to it, “unless you know something that
will help him, Enoch!”

“Hush, Steve! Hush!” the coin collector fell back upon the chair,
beside his desk, with an anxious glance at the psychologist. “I have a
man here.” He gathered himself together. “And what is it possible that
I could tell to save young Jim?”

“You might tell _why_, Mr. Findlay,” Trant said sharply, nerving
himself for the coming struggle, “for I know already _how_ you shot
Neal Sheppard yourself!”

But no struggle came.

“What—you?” Findlay burst from his pale lips; then caught the
recognition of this stranger in Sheppard’s face and fell back—trapped.

He clasped his hands convulsively together and stretched them out
before him on the desk. In his cheek something beat and beat with
ceaseless pulse.

“Murdered, Steve?” the latent fire seemed fanned in Findlay at last.
“But first”—he seemed to check something short on his lips—“who are
you? And why,” he turned to Trant, “why did you come to me with those
coins? I mean—how much do you know?”

“I am retained by Mr. Sheppard in this case,” Trant replied, “and only
turned coin collector to prove how you picked out those shells with
which you shot Neal Sheppard. And I know enough more to know that you
could not have murdered him in any right sense, and enough to assure
you that, if you tell how you shot him to save young Tyler, you can
count on me for competent confirmation that it was not murder.”

But the tall, gaunt man, bent in his chair, seemed scarcely to hear
the psychologist’s words or even to be conscious, longer, of his
presence. When he lifted his eyes, they gave no sign as they swept by
Trant’s figure. Findlay saw only his old partner and friend.

“But you shot him, Enoch? How and why?”

“How?” the Adam’s apple worked in Findlay’s throat, and the words
seemed wrenched from his lips as though their weight were a burden too
heavy for him longer to bear. “How, Steve? I shot him as he shot Len,
my brother, thirty years ago!”

“Then it was Neal that shot Len and—and started the murder among us?”
the old sportsman in his turn sought tremblingly for a seat. “For all
these years I have known in my heart that it was done by Neal; but,
Enoch, you didn’t shoot him now because he shot Len—thirty years ago!”

“No, not because he shot Len; but because he made me kill—made me
murder old Jim Tyler for it! Now do you understand? Neal shot Len, my
brother; and for that, perhaps I should not have shot Neal when, at
last, I found it out thirty years later. But for that murder he did
himself, _he made me murder poor old Jim Tyler_, my best friend! So I
shot him as he made me shoot Jim Tyler. It was both or none! Neal
would be alive to-day, if Jim was!”

“Neal shot Len and made you shoot old Jim Tyler for it?”

“Yes; I shot him, Steve! I shot old Jim—old Jim, who was the truest
friend to me of you all! I shot old Jim, whose bed I’d shared—and for
these thirty years old Jim has never left me. There are men like that,
Steve, who do a thing in haste, and then can’t forget. For I’m one of
them. I was no kind of a man for a murderer, Steve; I was no man for
the business we were in. Len led me—led me where I ought never to have
gone, for I hadn’t nerve like he and you and Neal had! Then Len was
shot, and Neal came to me and told me old Jim had done it. I was wild,
Steve—wild, for I’d had a difference with Jim and I knew Jim had had a
difference with Len—over me. So I believed it! But I had no gun. I
never carried one, you know. Neal gave me one and told me to go and
shoot him, or Jim’d shoot me, too. And I shot old Jim—shot him in the
back; that’s the kind of man I was—no nerve. I couldn’t face him when
I did it. But I’ve faced him often enough since, God knows! By night
and by day; by foul weather or by fair weather; for old Jim and I have
got up and gone to bed together ever since—thirty years. And it’s made
me what I am—you see, I never had the nerve. I told you!”

“But Neal, Enoch? How did you come to shoot Neal two weeks ago—how did
all that make you?” Sheppard urged excitedly.

“I’m telling you! Those two weeks ago—two weeks ago to-day, young Jim
came up into the woods red hot; for he had the papers he showed you
showing Neal had cheated him out of money. He met Chapin and me, too,
and told us and showed us the papers. There was one paper there that
didn’t mean anything to young Jim or to you or to Chapin, or to anyone
else that didn’t know old Jim intimately—old Jim had his own way of
putting things—but it meant a lot to me. For all these years I’ve been
telling you about—all these years I’ve been carrying old Jim with me,
getting up and lying down with him, and whenever he came to me, I’d
been saying to him, ‘I know, Jim, I killed you; but it was justice;
you killed my brother!’ But that paper made me know different. It made
me know it wasn’t old Jim that killed Len, Steve; it was Neal—and Jim
knew it; and that was why Neal set me on Jim and made me kill him;
because Jim knew it! That was like Neal, wasn’t it, Steve? Never do
anything straight, Neal wouldn’t, when he could do it crooked! He
wanted to get rid of old Jim—he owed him money and was afraid of him
now, for Jim knew he’d killed Len—and he saw a safe way to make me do
it. So then at last I knew why old Jim had never left me, but had been
following me all these years—always with me; and I never let on to
Chapin. I just went to look for Neal. ‘This time,’ said I to myself,
‘it’s justice!’ And—I found him sitting on a log, with his gun behind
him, a little drunk—for he always carried a flask with him, you
know—and whistling. I couldn’t face him any more than I could Jim, and
I came up behind him. Three times I took a bead on Neal’s back, and
three times I couldn’t pull the trigger—for he never stopped
whistling, and I knew if I shot him then I’d hear that whistling all
my life—and the third time he turned and saw me. He must have seen the
whole thing on my face; I can’t keep anything. But he had nerve, Neal
did. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘it’s Enoch Findlay, the murderer, shooting in the
back as usual.’ ‘I’m what you made me,’ says I, ‘but you’ll never make
any difference to another man!’ ‘Give me a chance,’ says Neal. ‘Don’t
shoot me sitting!’ Neal had nerve, I tell you—I never had any; but
that time for once in my life, I got it. ‘Get up,’ says I, ‘and take
your gun; you’ll have as fair a chance as I will.’ But that wasn’t
quite true. I never had Neal’s nerve—I didn’t have it even then. But
I’ve always been a better shot than him; I’ve never drunk; and he
hasn’t been steady for years. So I knew I still had the advantage; and
Neal knew it, too; but he doesn’t let on.

“‘Thank you, Enoch,’ he says. ‘Now I’ll kill you, of course; but while
I’m doing it, maybe you’ll hit me—no knowing; and I don’t care to have
a soft-nose bullet mushroom inside of me. Besides, wouldn’t you rather
have a clean hole—you’ve seen what the soft-noses do to the deer!’
‘It’s all we’ve got,’ says I; but I guess he had me on that then. For
I had seen the game hit by soft-nose bullets; and if I had to have him
around with a bullet hole in him after I’d killed him, I wanted a
clean bullet hole anyway—not the other kind. ‘Have you got the other
kind?’ I said. ‘I’ll go to camp and get some,’ he answered. I don’t
know what was in me; I had my nerve that day—for the first and only
time in my life. I guess it was that, Steve, and it was a new feeling
and I wanted to enjoy it. I knew there was some devilment in what he
said; but I wanted to give him every chance—yes, I enjoyed giving the
chance for more crookedness to him before I finished him; for I knew I
was going to finish him then.

“‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll wait for you in the clearing by Bowton’s
mining shack’; for I saw in his eyes that he was afraid not to come
back to me; and I watched him go, and went over to Bowton’s and sat
down with my back against the shanty, so he couldn’t come up and shoot
me from behind, and waited. It was dark and cloudy; he was gone four
hours, and before he got back it began to snow. It got so that you
couldn’t see ten feet in that blizzard; but I sat outside in the snow
till Neal came back; then we went into the shack together and agreed
to wait till it was over—no man on earth could have done any shooting
in that storm then, and we knew we couldn’t get back to camp till it
was over. We sat there in the shack, and looked at each other. Night
came, and we were still looking; only now we couldn’t see each other
any longer, but sat waiting to hear the other moving—only neither of
us moved. Then we did—slowly and carefully. Sometimes I sat in one
place, sometimes in another, for I didn’t want him to know just where
I was for fear he’d shoot. But he was afraid to shoot first; for if he
missed, I’d see him by the flash and get him, sure. It kept on
snowing. Once Neal said, ‘We’ll settle this thing in the morning.’
‘All right,’ says I—but moved again, for I thought he would surely
shoot then.

“I kept wondering when my nerve would go, but it stayed by me, and I
tell you I enjoyed it; he moved more often than I did. For the first
time in my life I wasn’t afraid of Neal Sheppard; and he was afraid of
me. He laid down in one of the bunks and I could hear him turning from
side to side; but he didn’t dare to sleep any, and I didn’t either.
Then he said, ‘This is hell, ain’t it!’ ‘If it is,’ I said, ‘it’s a
taste of what you’re going to get after!’ After I’d shot him, I meant.
Then he said, ‘I want to sleep, and I can’t sleep while you’re living;
let’s settle this thing now!’

“‘In the dark?’ I asked. ‘Not if I can find a light,’ he says, and I
promised not to shoot him while he lit a match—I had none. He lit one
and looked for a piece of candle, but couldn’t find any. Then I said,
‘If you want to do it in the dark, I’m agreeable’; for I’d been
thinking that maybe it was only because of the dark, now, that I had
my nerve, and maybe when daylight came and I could see him, I might be
afraid of him. So we agreed to it.

“He felt for me in the dark, and held out five shells. We’d
agreed in the afternoon to fight at fifty paces with five shells
each—steel-patched bullets—and shoot till one killed. So he counted
out five in his hand and offered them to me, keeping the other five
for himself. I felt the five he gave me. They were full metal-patched,
all right; the kind for men to fight with; they’d either kill or make
a clean wound. But something about him—and I knew I had to be looking
for devilment—made me suspicious of him. ‘What are your five,’ I said
at a venture; ‘soft-nose? Are you going to use sporting lead on me?’
‘They’re the same as yours,’ he said; but I got more suspicious.
‘Let’s trade, then,’ I said. ‘Feel the steel on them, then,’ he handed
me one. I felt; and it was metal-patched, all right; but then I knew
what was the bottom of his whole objection to the bullets; his shell
was heavier than mine. Mine were lighter; they were unloaded; I mean
they had no powder. He knew the powder we use was so little compared
to the weight of the case and bullet it could easily pass all right;
no one could spot the difference—no one, except one trained like me;
and I was sure he never thought I could. It all flashed across me ten
times quicker than that as soon as I felt his cartridges; but I said
nothing. I told you I had my nerve that night. For the same second my
plan flashed to me, too; my plan to turn his own trick against him and
not let him know! So I gave him back his shell; let him think it was
all right; but I knocked all ten, his and mine, on the floor.

“Then we had to get down and look for them on the floor. I knew I
could pick out the good from the bad easy; but he—well, whenever I
found a light one, I left it; but when I found a heavy one, I kept it.
I got four good ones so easy and quick that he never guessed I was
picking them; he was fumbling—I could almost feel him sweat—trying to
be sure he was getting good shells. He got one, by accident, before I
found it; so I had to take one bad one; but I knew he had four bad,
though he himself couldn’t know anything about that. Then we loaded
the guns, and went out into the big room of the cabin, and backed away
from each other.

“I backed as quick as I could, but he went slower. I did that so I
could hear his footsteps, and I listened and knew just about where he
was. We didn’t either one of us want to fire first, for the other one
would see his flash and fire at it. But after I had waited as long as
I could and knew that he hadn’t moved because I heard no footsteps, I
fired twice—as fast as I could pull the trigger—where I heard him
last; and from just the opposite corner from where I last heard him, I
heard the click of his rifle—the hammer falling on one of his bad
shells, or it might have been the last for me. I didn’t see how he
could have got there without my knowing it; but I didn’t stop to think
of that. I just swung and gave it to him quick—two shots again, but
not so quick but that—between them—his hammer struck his good shell
and the bullet banged through the wall behind me. But then I gave him
my fourth shot—straight; for his hammer didn’t even click again.
Besides, I heard him fall. I waited a long time to see if he moved;
but he didn’t. I threw the bad cartridge out of my gun, and went over
and felt for him. I got the matchbox and lit matches and saw he was
dead; and I saw, too, how he had got in that corner without me
hearing. He was in his stockings; he had taken off his shoes and
sneaked from the corner where I first shot for him, so he would have
killed me if I hadn’t seen to it that he had the bad shells he fixed
for me. It struck a sort of a shiver to me to see that—to see him
tricky and fighting foul to the end. But that was like Neal, wasn’t
it, Steve? That was like him, clear to the last, looking for any
unfair advantage he could take? That’s how and why I killed Neal,
Steve—and this time it was justice, Steve! For Neal had it coming!
Steve, Steve! didn’t Neal have it coming?”

He stretched out his hands to his old friend, the brother of the man
he had killed, in pitiable appeal; and as the other rose, with his
face working with indecision and emotion, Trant saw that the question
he had asked and the answer that was to be given were for those two
alone, and he went out and left them.

The psychologist waited at the top of the high stone entrance steps
for several minutes before Sheppard joined him and stood drinking in
great breaths of the cold December air as though by its freshness to
restore his nervous balance.

“I do not know what your decision is, Mr. Sheppard,” said the younger
man finally, “as to what will be done in the matter. I may tell you
that the case had already given me independent confirmation of Mr.
Findlay’s remarkable statement in the important last particulars. So
it will be no surprise to me, and I shall not mention it, if I am
never called on by you to bear witness to the very full confession we
have just heard.”

“Confession?” Sheppard started. “Findlay does not regard it a
confession, Mr. Trant, but as his defense; and I—I rather think that
during the last few minutes I have been looking at it in that light.”

He led the way toward the automobile, and as they stepped into it, he
continued: “You have proved completely, Mr. Trant, all the assertions
you made at my house this morning, but I am still guessing how the
means you used could have made you think of Findlay as the man who
killed Neal—the one whom I would have least suspected.”

“You know already,” Trant answered, “what led me to the conclusion
that your brother was killed in the dark; and that it was certainly
not a murder, but a duel, or, at least, some sort of a formal fight
between two men, had occurred to me with compelling suggestiveness as
soon as the Indian showed to me the intact shells—all with full
metal-patched bullets, though these were not carried by you for game
and no other such shells were found in your brother’s belt. And not
only were the intact shells with steel-patched bullets, but the shots
fired were also steel-patched bullets, as the Indian noticed from
their holes through the logs. So here were two men with five
metal-patched shells apiece firing at each other.

“It still more strongly suggested some sort of a duel to me,” the
psychologist continued, “when they told us the singularly curious fact
that two of the bullets had pierced the wall directly above the place
where your brother’s shoes stood. This could reasonably be explained
if I held my suspicion that the men had fought a duel in the
dark—shooting by sound; but I could not even guess at any other
explanation which was not entirely fantastic. And when I discovered
immediately afterwards that, of the ten special shells which these men
seemed to have chosen to fire at each other, five had been unloaded,
it made the fact final to me; for it was utterly absurd to suppose
that of the ten shells to be shot under such circumstances, five—just
one half—would have been without powder by accident. But I am free to
confess,” Trant continued frankly, “that I did not even guess at the
true explanation of that—for I have accepted Mr. Findlay’s statement
as correct. I had accounted for it by supposing that, in this duel,
the men more consciously chose their cartridges and that the duel was
a sort of repeating rifle adaptation of two men dueling with one
loaded and one unloaded pistol. In the essential fact, however, I was
correct and that was that the men did choose the shells; so, granting
that, it was perfectly plain that one of the men had been able to
clearly discriminate between the loaded and the unloaded shells, and
the other had not. For not only did the one have four good shells to
the other’s one—in itself an almost convincing figure—but the man with
four did not even try to shoot his bad shell, while it appeared that
the other had tried to shoot his bad one first. Now as there was not
the slightest difference to the eye between the bad and good shells
and—that which made it final—the duel was fought in the dark, the
discrimination which one man had and your brother did not, could only
have been an ability for fine discrimination in weight.”

“I see!” Comprehension dawned curiously upon Sheppard’s face.

“For the bullet and the case of those special shells of yours, Mr.
Sheppard,” the psychologist continued rapidly, “were so heavy—weighing
together over three hundred grains, as I weighed them at your gun
cabinet—and the smokeless powder you were trying was of such
exceptional power that you had barely twenty grains in a cartridge; so
the difference in weight between one of those full shells and an empty
one was scarcely one-fifteenth—an extremely difficult difference for
one without special deftness to detect in such delicate weights. It
was entirely indistinguishable to you; and also apparently so to Mr.
Chapin, though I was not at first convinced whether it was really so
or not. However, as I have trained myself in laboratory work to fine
differences—a man may work up to discriminations as fine as
one-fortieth—I was able to make out this essential difference at once.

“This reduced my case to a single and extremely elementary
consideration: _could_ young Tyler have picked out those shells in the
dark and shot Neal Sheppard with them. If he could, then I could take
up the circumstantial evidence against him, which certainly seemed
strong. But if he could not, then I had merely to test the other men
who carried Sheppard-Tyler rifles and were gone from camp the night
your brother was shot, as well as young Tyler—though that circumstance
seemed to have been forgotten in the case against Tyler.”

“I see!” Sheppard cried again. “So that was what you were doing with
the steins and shot! But how could you tell that from the steins?”

“I was making a test, as you understand now, Mr. Sheppard,” Trant
explained, “to determine whether or not Tyler—and after him, Mr.
Chapin—could have distinguished easily between a loaded shell weighing
something over 320 grains and one without the 20 odd grains of
smokeless powder; that is, to find if either could discriminate
differences of no more than one-fifteenth in such a small weight. To
test for this in the laboratory and with the proper series of
experiment weights, I should have a number of rubber blocks of
precisely the same size and appearance, but graded in weight from 300
grains to something over 320 grains. If I had the subject take up the
300 grain weight and then the others in succession, asking him to call
them heavier or lighter or the same weight, and then made him go over
all the weights again in a different order, I could have as accurately
proved his sense of weight discrimination as an oculist can prove the
power of sight of the eyes, and with as little possibility of anyone
fooling me. But I could not arrange a proper series of experiment
weights of only 300 grains without a great deal of trouble; and it was
not necessary for me to do so. For under the operation of a well-known
psychological principle called Weber’s Law, I knew that the same ratio
of discrimination between weights holds pretty nearly constant for
each individual, whether the experiment is made with grains, or
ounces, or pounds. In other words, if a person’s ‘threshold of
difference’—as his power of weight discrimination is called—is only
one-tenth in grains, it is the same in drams or ounces; and if he can
not accurately determine whether one stein weighs one-fifteenth more
than another, neither can he pick out the heavier shell if the
difference is only one-fifteenth. So I merely had to take five of your
steins, fill the one I used as a standard with shot till it weighed
about six ounces, or 100 drams. The other steins I weighted to 105,
107, 108, 110 drams respectively; and by mixing them up and timing
both Tyler’s and Chapin’s answers so as to be sure they were answering
their honest, first impressions of the weights of the steins and were
not trying to trick me, I found that neither could consistently tell
whether the steins that weighed one-twentieth, one-fifteenth or even
the steins which weighed one-twelfth more were heavier, lighter or the
same as the standard stein; and it was only when they got the one
which weighed 110 drams and was one-tenth heavier that they were
always right. So I knew.”

“I see! I see!” Sheppard cried eagerly. “Then the coins you took to
Findlay were—”

“Weights to try him in precisely the same sense,” Trant continued.
“Only they approximated much more closely the weights of the bullets
and had, indeed, even finer differences in weight. Five were genuine
old florins weighing 400 grains, while the other five were light
twenty grains or only one-twentieth; yet Findlay picked them out at
once from the others, as soon as he compared them, without a moment’s
hesitation.”

“Simple as you make it out now, young man,” Sheppard said to his young
adviser admiringly, “it was a wonderful bit of work. And whether or
not it would have proved that you were needed to save Tyler’s life,
you have certainly saved me from making the most serious criminal
charge against him; and you have spared him and my niece from starting
their lives together under the shame and shadow of the public
knowledge of my brother’s past. I am going now, of course, to see that
Jim is freed and that even the suspicion that my brother was not
killed accidentally in the woods, gets no further than Captain
Crowley. I can see to that! And you, Mr. Trant—”

“I have retained the privilege, fortunately, Mr. Sheppard,” Trant
interrupted, “since I am unofficial, of judging for myself when
justice has been done. And I told you that the story we have just
heard satisfied me as the truth. My office is in the next block. You
will leave me there?”



CHAPTER VIII

The Axton Letters

The sounds in her dressing-room had waked her just before five. Ethel
Waldron could still see, when she closed her eyes, every single, sharp
detail of her room as it was that instant she sprang up in bed, with
the cry that had given the alarm, and switched on the electric light.
Instantly the man had shut the door; but as she sat, strained, staring
at it to reopen, the hands and dial of her clock standing on the
mantel beside the door, had fixed themselves upon her retina like the
painted dial of a jeweler’s dummy. It could have been barely five,
therefore, when Howard Axton, after his first swift rush in her
defense had found the window which had been forced open; had picked up
the queer Turkish dagger which he found broken on the sill, and,
crying to the girl not to call the police, as it was surely “the same
man”—the same man, he meant, who had so inexplicably followed him
around the world—had rushed to his room for extra cartridges for his
revolver and run out into the cold sleet of the March morning.

So it was now an hour or more since Howard had run after the man,
revolver in hand; and he had not reappeared or telephoned or sent any
word at all of his safety. And however much Howard’s life in wild
lands had accustomed him to seek redress outside the law, hers still
held the city-bred impulse to appeal to the police. She turned from
her nervous pacing at the window and seized the telephone from its
hook; but at the sound of the operator’s voice she remembered again
Howard’s injunction that the man, whenever he appeared, was to be left
solely to him, and dropped the receiver without answering. But she
resented fiercely the advantage he held over her which must oblige
her, she knew, to obey him. He had told her frankly—threatened her,
indeed—that if there was the slightest publicity given to his
homecoming to marry her, or any further notoriety made of the
attending circumstances, he would surely leave her.

At the rehearsal of this threat she straightened and threw the
superfluous dressing gown from her shoulders with a proud, defiant
gesture. She was a straight, almost tall girl, with the figure of a
more youthful Diana and with features as fair and flawless as any
younger Hera, and in addition a great depth of blue in very direct
eyes and a crowning glory of thick, golden hair. She was barely
twenty-two. And she was not used to having any man show a sense of
advantage over her, much less threaten her, as Howard had done. So, in
that impulse of defiance, she was reaching again for the telephone she
had just dropped, when she saw through the fog outside the window the
man she was waiting for—a tall, alert figure hastening toward the
house.

She ran downstairs rapidly and herself opened the door to him, a fresh
flush of defiance flooding over her. Whether she resented it because
this man, whom she did not love but must marry, could appear more the
assured and perfect gentleman without collar, or scarf, and with his
clothes and boots spattered with mud and rain, than any of her other
friends could ever appear; or whether it was merely the confident,
insolent smile of his full lips behind his small, close-clipped
mustache, she could not tell. At any rate she motioned him into the
library without speaking; but when they were alone and she had closed
the door, she burst upon him.

“Well, Howard? Well? Well, Howard?” breathlessly.

“Then you have not sent any word to the police, Ethel?”

“I was about to—the moment you came. But—I have not—yet,” she had to
confess.

“Or to that—” he checked the epithet that was on his lips—“your friend
Caryl?”

She flushed, and shook her head.

He drew his revolver, “broke” it, ejecting the cartridges carelessly
upon the table, and threw himself wearily into a chair. “I’m glad to
see you understand that this has not been the sort of affair for
anyone else to interfere in!”

“Has been, you mean;” the girl’s face went white; “you—you caught him
this time and—and killed him, Howard?”

“Killed him, Ethel?” the man laughed, but observed her more carefully.
“Of course I haven’t killed him—or even caught him. But I’ve made
myself sure, at last, that he’s the same fellow that’s been trying to
make a fool of me all this year—that’s been after me, as I wrote you.
And if you remember my letters, even you—I mean even a girl brought up
in a city ought to see how it’s a matter of honor with me now to
settle with him alone!”

“If he is merely trying to ‘make a fool of you,’ as you say—yes,
Howard,” the girl returned hotly. “But from what you yourself have
told me of him, you know he must be keeping after you for some serious
reason! Yes; you know it! I can see it! You can’t deny it!”

“Ethel—what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that, if you do not think that the man who has been following
you from Calcutta to Cape Town, to Chicago, means more than a joke for
you to settle for yourself; anyway, _I_ know that the man who has now
twice gone through the things in _my_ room, is something for me to go
to the police about!”

“And have the papers flaring the family scandal again?” the man
returned. “I admit, Ethel,” he conceded, carefully calculating the
sharpness of his second sting before he delivered it, “that if you or
I could call in the police without setting the whole pack of papers
upon us again, I’d be glad to do it, if only to please you. But I told
you, before I came back, that if there was to be any more airing of
the family affairs at all, I could not come; so if you want to press
the point now, of course I can leave you,” he gave the very slightest
but most suggestive glance about the rich, luxurious furnishings of
the great room, “in possession.”

“You know I can’t let you do that!” the girl flushed scarlet. “But
neither can you prevent me from making the private inquiry I spoke of
for myself!” She went to the side of the room and, in his plain
hearing, took down the telephone and called a number without having to
look it up.

“Mr. Caryl, please,” she said. “Oh, Henry, is it you? You can take me
to your—Mr. Trant, wasn’t that the name—as soon as you can now. . . .
Yes; I want you to come here. I will have my brougham. Immediately!”
And still without another word or even a glance at Axton, she brushed
by him and ran up the stairs to her room.

He had made no effort to prevent her telephoning; and she wondered at
it, even as, in the same impetus of reckless anger, she swept up the
scattered letters and papers on her writing desk, and put on her
things to go out. But on her way downstairs she stopped suddenly. The
curl of his cigarette smoke through the open library door showed that
he was waiting just inside it. He meant to speak to her before she
went out. Perhaps he was even glad to have Caryl come in order that he
might speak his say in the presence of both of them. Suddenly his
tobacco’s sharp, distinctive odor sickened her. She turned about, ran
upstairs again and fled, almost headlong, down the rear stairs and out
the servants’ door to the alley.

The dull, gray fog, which was thickening as the morning advanced,
veiled her and made her unrecognizable except at a very few feet; but
at the end of the alley, she shrank instinctively from the glance of
the men passing until she made out a hurrying form of a man taller
even than Axton and much broader. She sprang toward it with a shiver
of relief as she saw Henry Caryl’s light hair and recognized his even,
open features.

“Ethel!” he caught her, gasping his surprise. “You here? Why—”

“Don’t go to the house!” She led him the opposite way. “There is a cab
stand at the corner. Get one there and take me—take me to this Mr.
Trant. I will tell you everything. The man came again last night.
Auntie is sick in bed from it. Howard still says it is his affair and
will do nothing. I had to come to you.”

Caryl steadied her against a house-wall an instant; ran to the corner
for a cab and, returning with it, half lifted her into it.

Forty minutes later he led her into Trant’s reception-room in the
First National Bank Building; and recognizing the abrupt, decisive
tones of the psychologist in conversation in the inner office, Caryl
went to the door and knocked sharply.

“I beg your pardon, but—can you possibly postpone what you are doing,
Mr. Trant?” he questioned quickly as the door opened and he faced the
sturdy and energetic form of the red-haired young psychologist who, in
six months, had made himself admittedly the chief consultant in
Chicago on criminal cases. “My name is Caryl. Henry Howell introduced
me to you last week at the club. But I am not presuming upon that for
this interruption. I and—my friend need your help badly, Mr. Trant,
and immediately. I mean, if we can not speak with you now, we may be
interrupted—unpleasantly.”

Caryl had moved, as he spoke, to hide the girl behind him from the
sight of the man in the inner office, who, Caryl had seen, was a
police officer. Trant noted this and also that Caryl had carefully
refrained from mentioning the girl’s name.

“I can postpone this present business, Mr. Caryl,” the psychologist
replied quietly. He closed the door, but reopened it almost instantly.
His official visitor had left through the entrance directly into the
hall; the two young clients came into the inner room.

“This is Mr. Trant, Ethel,” Caryl spoke to the girl a little nervously
as she took a seat. “And, Mr. Trant, this is Miss Waldron. I have
brought her to tell you of a mysterious man who has been pursuing
Howard Axton about the world, and who, since Axton came home to her
house two weeks ago, has been threatening her.”

“Axton—Axton!” the psychologist repeated the name which Caryl had
spoken, as if assured that Trant must recognize it. “Ah! Of course,
Howard Axton is the son!” he frankly admitted his clearing
recollection and his comprehension of how the face of the girl had
seemed familiar. “Then you,” he addressed her directly, “are Miss
Waldron, of Drexel Boulevard?”

“Yes; I am that Miss Waldron, Mr. Trant,” the girl replied, flushing
red to her lips, but raising her head proudly and meeting his eyes
directly. “The step-daughter—the daughter of the second wife of Mr.
Nimrod Axton. It was my mother, Mr. Trant, who was the cause of Mrs.
Anna Axton getting a divorce and the complete custody of her son from
Mr. Axton twenty years ago. It was my mother who, just before Mr.
Nimrod Axton’s death last year, required that, in the will, the
son—the first Mrs. Axton was then dead—should be cut off absolutely
and entirely, without a cent, and that Mr. Axton’s entire estate be
put in trust for her—my mother. So, since you doubtless remember the
reopening of all this again six months ago when my mother, too, died,
I am now the sole heir and legatee of the Axton properties of upwards
of sixty millions, they tell me. Yes; I am that Miss Waldron, Mr.
Trant!”

“I recall the accounts, but only vaguely—from the death of Mr. Axton
and, later, of the second Mrs. Axton, your mother, Miss Waldron,”
Trant replied, quietly, “though I remember the comment upon the
disposition of the estate both times. It was from the pictures
published of you and the accompanying comment in the papers only a
week or two ago that I recognized you. I mean, of course, the recent
comments upon the son, Mr. Howard Axton, whom you have mentioned, who
has come home at last to contest the will.”

“You do Miss Waldron an injustice—all the papers have been doing her a
great injustice, Mr. Trant,” Caryl corrected quickly. “Mr. Axton has
not come to contest the will.”

“No?”

“No. Miss Waldron has had him come home, at her own several times
repeated request, so that she may turn over to him, as completely as
possible, the whole of his father’s estate! If you can recall, in any
detail, the provisions of Mr. Axton’s will, you will appreciate, I
believe, why we have preferred to let the other impression go
uncorrected. For the second Mrs. Axton so carefully and completely cut
off all possibility of any of the property being transferred in any
form to the son, that Miss Waldron, when she went to a lawyer to see
how she could transfer it to Howard Axton, as soon as she had come
into the estate, found that her mother’s lawyers had provided against
every possibility except that of the heir marrying the disinherited
son. So she sent for him, offering to establish him into his estate,
even at that cost.”

“You mean that you offered to marry him?” Trant questioned the girl
directly again. “And he has come to gain his estate in that way?”

“Yes, Mr. Trant; but you must be fair to Mr. Axton also,” the girl
replied. “When I first wrote him, almost a year ago, he refused point
blank to consider such an offer. In spite of my repeated letters it
was not till six weeks ago, after a shipwreck in which he lost his
friend who had been traveling with him for some years, that he would
consent even to come home. Even now I—I remain the one urging the
marriage.”

The psychologist looked at the girl keenly and questioningly.

“I need scarcely say how little urging he would need, entirely apart
from the property,” Caryl flushed, “if he were not gentleman enough to
appreciate—partly, at least—Miss Waldron’s position. I—her friends, I
mean, Mr. Trant—have admitted that he appeared at first well enough in
every way to permit the possibility of her marrying him if she
considers that her duty. But now, this mystery has come up about the
man who has been following him—the man who appeared again only this
morning in Miss Waldron’s room and went through her papers—”

“And Mr. Axton cannot account for it?” the psychologist helped him.

“Axton won’t tell her or anybody else who the man is or why he follows
him. On the contrary, he has opposed in every possible way every
inquiry or search made for the man, except such as he chooses to make
for himself. Only this morning he made a threat against Miss Waldron
if she attempted to summon the police and ‘take the man out of his
hands’; and it is because I am sure that he will follow us here to
prevent her consulting you—when he finds that she has come here—that I
asked you to see us at once.”

“Leave the details of his appearance this morning to the last then,”
Trant requested abruptly, “and tell me where you first heard of this
man following Mr. Axton, and how? How, for instance, do you know he
was following him, if Mr. Axton is so reticent about the affair?”

“That is one of the strange things about it, Mr. Trant”—the girl took
from her bosom the bundle of letters she had taken from her room—“he
used to write to amuse me with him, as you can see here. I told you I
wrote Mr. Axton about a year ago to come home and he refused to
consider it. But afterwards he always wrote in reply to my letters in
the half-serious, friendly way you shall see. These four letters I
brought you are almost entirely taken up with his adventures with the
mysterious man. He wrote on typewriter, as you see”—she handed them
over—“because on his travels he used to correspond regularly for some
of the London syndicates.”

“London?”

“Yes; the first Mrs. Axton took Howard to England with her when he was
scarcely seven, immediately after she got her divorce. He grew up
there and abroad. This is his first return to America. I have arranged
those letters, Mr. Trant,” she added as the psychologist was opening
them for examination now, “in the order they came.”

“I will read them that way then,” Trant said, and he glanced over the
contents of the first hastily; it was postmarked at Cairo, Egypt, some
ten months before. He then re-read more carefully this part of it:

  “But a strange and startling incident has happened since my last
  letter to you, Miss Waldron, which bothers me considerably. We are,
  as you will see by the letter paper, at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo,
  but could not, after our usual custom, get communicating rooms. It
  was after midnight, and the million noises of this babel-town had
  finally died into a hot and breathless stillness. I had been writing
  letters, and when through I put out the lights to get rid of their
  heat, lighted instead the small night lamp I carry with me, and
  still partly dressed threw myself upon the bed, without, however,
  any idea of going to sleep before undressing. As I lay there I heard
  distinctly soft footsteps come down the corridor on which my room
  opens and stop apparently in front of the door. They were not, I
  judged, the footsteps of a European, for the walker was either
  barefooted or wore soft sandals. I turned my head toward the door,
  expecting a knock, but none followed. Neither did the door open,
  though I had not yet locked it. I was on the point of rising to see
  what was wanted, when it occurred to me that it was probably not at
  my door that the steps had stopped but at the door directly
  opposite, across the corridor. Without doubt my opposite neighbor
  had merely returned to his room and his footsteps had ceased to
  reach my ears when he entered and closed his door behind him. I
  dozed off. But half an hour later, as nearly as I can estimate it, I
  awoke and was thinking of the necessity for getting undressed and
  into bed, when a slight—a very slight rustling noise attracted my
  attention. I listened intently to locate the direction of the sound
  and determine whether it was inside the room or out of it, and then
  heard in connection with it a slighter and more regular sound which
  could be nothing else than breathing. Some living creature, Miss
  Waldron, was in my room. The sounds came from the direction of the
  table by the window. I turned my head as silently as I was able, and
  was aware that a man was holding a sheet of paper under the light of
  the lamp. He was at the table going through the papers in my writing
  desk. But the very slight noise I had made in turning on the bed had
  warned him. He rose, with a hissing intake of the breath, his feet
  pattered softly and swiftly across the floor, my door creaked under
  his hand, and he was gone before I could jump from the bed and
  intercept him. I ran out into the hallway, but it was empty. I
  listened, but could hear no movement in any of the rooms near me. I
  went back and examined the writing desk, but found nothing missing;
  and it was plain nothing had been touched except some of my letters
  from you. But, before finally going to bed, you may well believe, I
  locked my door carefully; and in the morning I reported the matter
  to the hotel office. The only description I could give of the
  intruder was that he had certainly worn a turban, and one even
  larger it seemed to me than ordinary. The hotel attendants had seen
  no one coming from or entering my corridor that night who answered
  this description. The turban and the absence of European shoes, of
  course, determined him to have been an Egyptian, Turk or Arab. But
  what Egyptian, Turk or Arab could have entered my room with any
  other object than robbery—which was certainly not the aim of my
  intruder, for the valuables in the writing desk were untouched. That
  same afternoon, it is true, I had had an altercation amounting
  almost to a quarrel with a Bedouin Arab on my way back from
  Heliopolis; but if this were he, why should he have taken revenge on
  my writing desk instead of on me? And what reason on earth can any
  follower of the Prophet have had for examining with such particular
  attention my letters from you? It was so decidedly a strange thing
  that I have taken all this space to tell it to you—one of the
  strangest sort of things I’ve had in all my knocking about; and
  Lawler can make no more of it than I.”

“Who is this Lawler who was with Mr. Axton then?” Trant looked up
interestedly from the last page of the letter.

“I only know he was a friend Howard made in London—an interesting man
who had traveled a great deal, particularly in America. Howard was
lonely after his mother’s death; and as Mr. Lawler was about his age,
they struck up a friendship and traveled together.”

“An English younger son, perhaps?”

“I don’t know anything else except that he had been in the English
army—in the Royal Sussex regiment—but was forced to give up his
commission on account of charges that he had cheated at cards. Howard
always held that the charges were false; but that was why he wanted to
travel.”

“You know of no other trouble which this Lawler had?”

“No, none.”

“Then where is he now?”

“Dead.”

“Dead?” Trant’s face fell.

“Yes; he was the friend I spoke of that was lost—drowned in the wreck
of the _Gladstone_ just before Howard started home.”

Trant picked up the next letter, which was dated and postmarked at
Calcutta.

  “Miss Waldron, I have seen him again,” he read. “Who, you ask? My
  Moslem friend with a taste for your correspondence. You see, I can
  again joke about it; but really it was only last night and I am
  still in a perfect funk. It was the same man—I’ll swear it—shoeless
  and turbaned and enjoying the pleasant pursuit of going through my
  writing desk for your letters. Did he follow us down the Red Sea,
  across the Indian Ocean—over three thousand miles of ocean travel? I
  can imagine no other explanation—for I would take oath to his
  identity—the very same man I saw at Cairo, but now here in this
  Great Eastern Hotel at Calcutta, where we have two rooms at the end
  of the most noisome corridor that ever caged the sounds and odors of
  a babbling East Indian population, and where the doors have no
  locks. I had the end of a trunk against my door, notwithstanding the
  fact that an Indian servant I have hired was sleeping in the
  corridor outside across the doorway, but it booted nothing; for
  Lawler in the next room had neglected to fasten his door in any way,
  trusting to his servant, who occupied a like strategic position
  outside the threshold, and the door between our two rooms was open.
  I had been asleep in spite of everything—in spite of the snores and
  stertorous breathing of a floorful of sleeping humans, for the
  partitions between the rooms do not come within several feet of the
  ceiling; in spite of the distant bellowing of a sacred bull, and the
  nearer howl of a very far from sacred dog, and a jingling of
  elephant bells which were set off intermittently somewhere close at
  hand whenever some living thing in their neighborhood—animal or
  human—shifted its position. I was awakened—at least I believe it was
  this which awakened me—by a creaking of the floor boards in my room,
  and, with what seemed a causeless, but was certainly one of the most
  oppressive feelings of chilling terror I have ever experienced, I
  started upright in my bed. He was there, again at my writing desk,
  and rustling the papers. For an instant I remained motionless; and
  in that instant, alarmed by the slight sound I had made, he fled
  noiselessly, pattered through the door between the rooms and loudly
  slammed it shut, slammed Lawler’s outer door behind him, and had
  gone. I crashed the door open, ran across the creaking floor of the
  other room—where Lawler, awakened by the slamming of the doors, had
  whisked out of bed—and opened the door into the corridor. Lawler’s
  servant, aroused, but still dazed with sleep, blubbered that he had
  seen no one, though the man must have stepped over his very body. A
  dozen other servants, sleeping before their masters’ doors in the
  corridor, had awakened likewise, but cried out shrilly that they had
  seen no one. Lawler, too, though the noise of the man’s passage had
  brought him out of bed, had not seen him. When I examined my writing
  desk I found, as before at Cairo, that nothing had been taken. The
  literary delight of looking over your letters seems to be all that
  draws him—of course, I am joking; for there must be a real reason.
  What it is that he is searching for, why it is that he follows me,
  for he has never intruded on anyone else so far as I can learn, I
  would like to know—I would like to know—I would like to know! The
  native servants asked in awe-struck whispers whether I noticed if
  his feet were turned backwards; for it seems they believe that to be
  one of the characteristics of a ghost. But the man was flesh and
  blood—I am sure of it; and I am bound that if he comes again I will
  learn his object, for I sleep now with my pistol under my pillow,
  and next time—I shall shoot!”

Trant, as he finished the last words, looked up suddenly at Miss
Waldron, as though about to ask a question or make some comment, but
checked himself, and hastily laying aside this letter he picked up the
next one, which bore a Cape Town date line:

  “My affair with my mysterious visitor came almost to a conclusion
  last night, for except for a careless mistake of my own I should
  have bagged him. Isn’t it mystifying, bewildering—yes, and a little
  terrifying—he made his appearance here last night in Cape Town,
  thousands of miles away from the two other places I had encountered
  him; and he seemed to have no more difficulty in entering the house
  of a Cape Town correspondent, Mr. Arthur Emsley, where we are
  guests, than he had before in entering public hotels, and when
  discovered he disappeared as mysteriously as ever. This time,
  however, he took some precautions. He had moved my night lamp so
  that, with his body in shadow, he could still see the contents of my
  desk; but I could hear his shoulders rubbing on the wall and located
  him exactly. I slipped my hand noiselessly for my revolver, but it
  was gone. The slight noise I made in searching for it alarmed him,
  and he ran. I rushed out into the hall after him. Mr. Emsley and
  Lawler, awakened by the breaking of the glass, had come out of their
  rooms. They had not seen him, and though we searched the house he
  had disappeared as inexplicably as the two other times. But I have
  learned one thing: It is not a turban he wears, it is his coat,
  which he takes off and wraps around his head to hide his face. An
  odd disguise; and the possession of a coat of that sort makes it
  probable he is a European. I know of only two Europeans who have
  been in Cairo, Calcutta and Cape Town at the same time we were—both
  travelers like ourselves; a guttural young German named Schultz, a
  freight agent for the Nord Deutscher Lloyd, and a nasal American
  named Walcott, who travels for the Seric Medicine Co. of New York. I
  shall keep an eye on both of them. For, in my mind at least, this
  affair has come to be a personal and bitter contest between the
  unknown and myself. I am determined not only to know who this man is
  and what is the object of his visits, but to settle with him the
  score which I now have against him. I shall shoot him next time he
  comes as mercilessly as I would a rabid dog; and I should have shot
  him this time except for my own careless mistake through which I had
  let my revolver slip to the floor, where I found it. By the bye, we
  sail for home—that is, England—next week on the steamer _Gladstone_,
  but, I am sorry to say, without my English servant, Beasley. Poor
  Beasley, since these mysterious occurrences, has been bitten with
  superstitious terror; the man is in a perfect fright, thinks I am
  haunted, and does not dare to embark on the same ship with me, for
  he believes that the _Gladstone_ will never reach England in safety
  if I am aboard. I shall discharge him, of course, but furnish him
  with his transportation home and leave him to follow at his leisure
  if he sees fit.”

“This is the first time I have heard of another man in their party who
might possibly be the masquerader, Miss Waldron;” Trant swung suddenly
in his revolving chair to face the girl again. “Mr. Axton speaks of
him as his English servant—I suppose, from that, he left England with
Mr. Axton.”

“Yes, Mr. Trant.”

“And therefore was present, though not mentioned, at Cairo, Calcutta
and Cape Town?”

“Yes, Mr. Trant; but he was dismissed at that time by Mr. Axton and is
now, and also was, at the mysterious man’s next appearance, in the
Charing Cross Hospital in London. He had his leg broken by a cab; and
one of the doctors there wrote Mr. Axton two days ago telling him of
Beasley’s need of assistance. It could not have been Beasley.”

“And there was no one else with Mr. Axton, except his friend Lawler
who, you say, was drowned in a wreck?”

“No one else but Mr. Lawler, Mr. Trant; and Howard himself saw him
dead and identified him, as you will see in that last letter.”

Trant opened the envelope and took out the enclosure interestedly; but
as he unfolded the first page, a printed sheet dropped out. He spread
it upon his desk—a page from the London _Illustrated News_ showing
four portraits with the caption, “Sole survivors of the ill-fated
British steamer _Gladstone_, wrecked off Cape Blanco, January 24,” the
first portrait bearing the name of Howard Axton and showing the
determined, distinctly handsome features and the full lips and
deep-set eyes of the man whom the girl had defied that morning.

“This is a good portrait?” Trant asked abruptly.

“Very good, indeed,” the girl answered, “though it was taken almost
immediately after the wreck for the _News_. I have the photograph from
which it was made at home. I had asked him for a picture of himself in
my last previous letter, as my mother had destroyed every picture,
even the early pictures, of him and his mother.”

Trant turned to the last letter.

  “Wrecked, Miss Waldron. Poor Beasley’s prophecy of disaster has come
  only too true, and I suppose he is already congratulating himself
  that he was ‘warned’ by my mysterious visitor and so escaped the
  fate that so many have suffered, including poor Lawler. Of course
  you will have seen all about it in the staring headlines of some
  newspaper long before this reaches you. I am glad that when found I
  was at once identified, though still unconscious, and my name listed
  first among the very few survivors, so that you were spared the
  anxiety of waiting for news of me. Only four of us left out of that
  whole shipload! I had final proof this morning of poor Lawler’s
  death by the finding of his body.

  “I was hardly out of bed when a mangy little man—a German
  trader—came to tell me that more bodies had been found, and, as I
  have been called upon in every instance to aid in identification, I
  set out with him down the beach at once. It was almost impossible to
  realize that this blue and silver ocean glimmering under the blazing
  sun was the same white-frothing terror that had swallowed up all my
  companions of three days before. The greater part of the bodies
  found that morning had been already carried up the beach. Among
  those remaining on the sand the first we came upon was that of
  Lawler. It lay upon its side at the entrance of a ragged sandy cove,
  half buried in the sand, which here was white as leprosy. His ears,
  the sockets of his eyes, and every interstice of his clothing were
  filled with this white and leprous sand by the washing of the waves;
  his pockets bulged and were distended with it.”

“What! What!” Trant clutched the letter from the desk in excitement
and stared at it with eyes flashing with interest.

“It is a horrible picture, Mr. Trant,” the girl shuddered.

“Horrible—yes, certainly,” the psychologist assented tensely; “but I
was not thinking of the horror,” he checked himself.

“Of what, then?” asked Caryl pointedly.

But the psychologist had already returned to the letter in his hand,
the remainder of which he read with intent and ever-increasing
interest:

  “Of course I identified him at once. His face was calm and showed no
  evidence of his last bitter struggle, and I am glad his look was
  thus peaceful. Poor Lawler! If the first part of his life was not
  all it should have been—as indeed he frankly told me—he atoned for
  all in his last hour; for undoubtedly, Miss Waldron, Lawler gave his
  life for mine.

  “I suppose the story of the wreck is already all known to you, for
  our one telegraph wire that binds this isolated town to the outside
  world has been laboring for three days under a load of messages. You
  know then that eighteen hours out of St. Vincent fire was discovered
  among the cargo, that the captain, confident at first that the fire
  would be got under control, kept on his course, only drawing in
  somewhat toward the African shore in case of emergency. But a very
  heavy sea rising, prevented the fire-fighters from doing efficient
  work among the cargo and in the storm and darkness the _Gladstone_
  struck several miles to the north of Cape Blanco on a hidden reef at
  a distance of over a mile from the shore.

  “On the night it occurred I awakened with so strong a sense of
  something being wrong that I rose, partly dressed myself, and went
  out into the cabin, where I found a white-faced steward going from
  door to door arousing the passengers. Heavy smoke was billowing up
  the main companion-way in the light of the cabin lamps, and the
  pitching and reeling of the vessel showed that the sea had greatly
  increased. I returned and awoke Lawler, and we went out on deck. The
  sea was a smother of startling whiteness through which the
  _Gladstone_ was staggering at the full power of her engines. No
  flame as yet was anywhere visible, but huge volumes of smoke were
  bursting from every opening in the fore part of the vessel. The
  passengers, in a pale and terrified group, were kept together on the
  after deck as far as possible from the fire. Now and then some
  pallid, staring man or woman would break through the guard and rush
  back to the cabin in search of a missing loved one or valuables.
  Lawler and I determined that one of us must return to the stateroom
  for our money, and Lawler successfully made the attempt. He returned
  in ten minutes with my money and papers and two life preservers. But
  when I tried to put on my life preserver I found it to be old and in
  such a condition as made it useless. Lawler then took off the
  preserver that he himself had on, declaring himself to be a much
  better swimmer than I—which I knew to be the case—and forced me to
  wear it. This life preserver was all that brought me safely ashore,
  and the lack of it was, I believe, the reason for Lawler’s death.
  Within ten minutes afterward the flames burst through the forward
  deck—a red and awful banner which the fierce wind flattened into a
  fan-shaped sheet of fire against the night—and the _Gladstone_
  struck with terrific force, throwing everything and everybody flat
  upon the deck. The bow was raised high upon the reef, while the
  stern with its maddened living freight began to sink rapidly into
  the swirl of foaming waters. The first two boats were overfilled at
  once in a wild rush, and one was stove immediately against the
  steamer’s side and sank, while the other was badly damaged and made
  only about fifty yards’ progress before it went down also. The
  remaining boats all were lowered from the starboard davits, and got
  away in safety; but only to capsize or be stove upon the reef.
  Lawler and I found places in the last boat—the captain’s. At the
  last moment, just as we were putting off, the fiery maw of the
  _Gladstone_ vomited out the scorched and half-blinded second
  engineer and a single stoker, whom we took in with difficulty. There
  was but one woman in our boat—a fragile, illiterate Dutchwoman from
  the neighborhood of Johannesburg—who had in her arms a baby. How
  strange that of our boatload those who alone survived should be the
  Dutchwoman, but without her baby; the engineer and stoker, whom the
  fire had already partly disabled, and myself, a very indifferent
  swimmer—while the strongest among us all perished! Of what happened
  after leaving the ship I have only the most indistinct recollection.
  I recall the swamping of our boat, and cruel white waters that
  rushed out of the night to engulf us; I recall a blind and painful
  struggle against a power infinitely greater than my own—a struggle
  which seemed interminable; for, as a matter of fact, I must have
  been in the water fully four hours and the impact of the waves alone
  beat my flesh almost to a jelly; and I recall the coming of
  daylight, and occasional glimpses of a shore which seemed to project
  itself suddenly above the sea and then at once to sink away and be
  swallowed by it. I was found unconscious on the sands—I have not the
  faintest idea how I got there—and I was identified before coming to
  myself (it may please you to know this) by several of your letters
  which were found in my pocket. At present, with my three rescued
  companions—whose names even I probably never should have known if
  the _Gladstone_ had reached England safely—I am a most enthralling
  center of interest to the white, black and parti-colored inhabitants
  of this region; and I am writing this letter on an antiquated
  typewriter belonging to the smallest, thinnest, baldest little
  American that ever left his own dooryard to become a missionary.”

Trant tossed aside the last page and, with eyes flashing with a deep,
glowing fire, he glanced across intensely to the girl watching him;
and his hands clenched on the table, in the constraint of his
eagerness.

“Why—what is it, Mr. Trant?” the girl cried.

“This is so taken up with the wreck and the death of Lawler,” the
psychologist touched the last letter, “that there is hardly any more
mention of the mysterious man. But you said, since Mr. Axton has come
home, he has twice appeared and in your room, Miss Waldron. Please
give me the details.”

“Of his first appearance—or visit, I should say, since no one really
saw him, Mr. Trant,” the girl replied, still watching the psychologist
with wonder, “I can’t tell you much, I’m afraid. When Mr. Axton first
came home, I asked him about this mysterious friend; and he put me off
with a laugh and merely said he hadn’t seen much of him since he last
wrote. But even then I could see he wasn’t so easy as he seemed. And
it was only two days after that—or nights, for it was about one
o’clock in the morning—that I was wakened by some sound which seemed
to come from my dressing-room. I turned on the light in my room and
rang the servant’s bell. The butler came almost at once and, as he is
not a courageous man, roused Mr. Axton before opening the door to my
dressing-room. They found no one there and nothing taken or even
disturbed except my letters in my writing desk, Mr. Trant. My aunt,
who has been taking care of me since my mother died, was aroused and
came with the servants. She thought I must have imagined everything;
but I discovered and showed Mr. Axton that it was _his letters to me_
that had appeared to be the ones the man was searching for. I found
that two of them had been taken and every other typewritten letter in
my desk—and only those—had been opened in an apparent search for more
of his letters. I could see that this excited him exceedingly, though
he tried to conceal it from me; and immediately afterwards he found
that a window on the first floor had been forced, so some man had come
in, as I said.”

“Then last night.”

“It was early this morning, Mr. Trant, but still very dark—a little
before five o’clock. It was so damp, you know, that I had not opened
the window in my bedroom, which is close to the bed; but had opened
the windows of my dressing-room, and so left the door between open. It
had been closed and locked before. So when I awoke, I could see
directly into my dressing-room.”

“Clearly?”

“Of course not at all clearly. But my writing-desk is directly
opposite my bedroom door; and in a sort of silhouette against my
shaded desk light, which he was using, I could see his figure—a very
vague, monstrous looking figure, Mr. Trant. Its lower part seemed
plain enough; but the upper part was a formless blotch. I confess at
first that enough of my girl’s fear for ghosts came to me to make me
see him as a headless man, until I remembered how Howard had seen and
described him—with a coat wrapped round his head. As soon as I was
sure of this, I pressed the bell-button again and this time screamed,
too, and switched on my light. But he slammed the door between us and
escaped. He went through another window he had forced on the lower
floor with a queer sort of dagger-knife which he had broken and left
on the sill. And as soon as Howard saw this, he knew it was the same
man, for it was then he ordered me not to interfere. He made off after
him, and when he came back, he told me he was sure it was the same
man.”

“This time, too, the man at your desk seemed rummaging for your
correspondence with Mr. Axton?”

“It seemed so, Mr. Trant.”

“But his letters were all merely personal—like these letters you have
given me?”

“Yes.”

“Amazing!” Trant leaped to his feet, with eyes flashing now with
unrestrained fire, and took two or three rapid turns up and down the
office. “If I am to believe the obvious inference from these letters,
Miss Waldron—coupled with what you have told me—I have not yet come
across a case, an attempt at crime more careful, more cold-blooded
and, withall, more surprising!”

“A crime—an attempt at crime, Mr. Trant?” cried the white and startled
girl. “So there was cause for my belief that something serious
underlay these mysterious appearances?”

“Cause?” Trant swung to face her. “Yes, Miss Waldron—criminal cause, a
crime so skillfully carried on, so assisted by unexpected circumstance
that you—that the very people against whom it is aimed have not so
much as suspected its existence.”

“Then you think Howard honestly believes the man still means nothing?”

“The man never meant ‘nothing,’ Miss Waldron; but it was only at first
the plot was aimed against Howard Axton,” Trant replied. “Now it is
aimed solely at you!”

The girl grew paler.

“How can you say that so surely, Mr. Trant?” Caryl demanded, “without
investigation?”

“These letters are quite enough evidence for what I say, Mr. Caryl,”
Trant returned. “Would you have come to me unless you had known that
my training in the methods of psychology enabled me to see causes and
motives in such a case as this which others, untrained, can not see?

“You have nothing more to tell me which might be of assistance?” he
faced the girl again, but turned back at once to Caryl. “Let me tell
you then, Mr. Caryl, that I am about to make a very thorough
investigation of this for you. Meanwhile, I repeat: a definite, daring
crime was planned first, I believe, against Howard Axton and Miss
Waldron; but now—I am practically certain—it is aimed against Miss
Waldron alone. But there cannot be in it the slightest danger of
intentional personal hurt to her. So neither of you need be uneasy
while I am taking time to obtain full proof—”

“But, Mr. Trant,” the girl interrupted, “are you not going to tell
me—you _must_ tell me—what the criminal secret is that these letters
have revealed to you?”

“You must wait, Miss Waldron,” the psychologist answered kindly, with
his hand on the doorknob, as though anxious for the interview to end.
“What I could tell you now would only terrify you and leave you
perplexed how to act while you were waiting to hear from me. No; leave
the letters, if you will, and the page from the _Illustrated News_,”
he said suddenly, as the girl began gathering up her papers. “There is
only one thing more. You said you expected an interruption here from
Howard Axton, Mr. Caryl. Is there still a good chance of his coming
here or—must I go to see him?”

“Miss Waldron telephoned to me, in his presence, to take her to see
you. Afterwards she left the house without his knowledge. As soon as
he finds she has gone, he will look up your address, and I think you
may expect him.”

“Very good. Then I must set to work at once!” He shook hands with both
of them hurriedly and almost forcing them out his door, closed it
behind them, and strode back to his desk. He picked up immediately the
second of the four letters which the girl had given him, read it
through again, and crossed the corridor to the opposite office, which
was that of a public stenographer.

“Make a careful copy of that,” he directed, “and bring it to me as
soon as it is finished.”

A quarter of an hour later, when the copy had been brought him, he
compared it carefully with the original. He put the copy in a drawer
of the desk and was apparently waiting with the four originals before
him when he heard a knock on his door and, opening it, found that his
visitor was again young Caryl.

“Miss Waldron did not wish to return home at once; she has gone to see
a friend. So I came back,” he explained, “thinking you might make a
fuller statement of your suspicions to me than you would in Miss
Waldron’s presence.”

“Fuller in what respect, Mr. Caryl?”

The young man reddened.

“I must tell you—though you already may have guessed—that before Miss
Waldron inherited the estate and came to believe it her duty to do as
she has done, there had been an—understanding between us, Mr. Trant.
She still has no friend to look to as she looks to me. So, if you mean
that you have discovered through those letters—though God knows how
you can have done it—anything in Axton which shows him unfit to marry
her, you must tell me!”

“As far as Axton’s past goes,” Trant replied, “his letters show him a
man of high type—moral, if I may make a guess, above the average.
There is a most pleasing frankness about him. As to making any further
explanation than I have done—but good Lord! what’s that?”

The door of the office had been dashed loudly open, and its still
trembling frame was filled by a tall, very angry young man in
automobile costume, whose highly colored, aristocratic looking
features Trant recognized immediately from the print in the page of
the _Illustrated London News_.

“Ah, Mr. Caryl here too?—the village busybody!” the newcomer sneered,
with a slight accent which showed his English education. “You are
insufferably mixing yourself in my affairs,” he continued, as Caryl,
with an effort, controlled himself and made no answer. “Keep out of
them! That is my advice—take it! Does a woman have to order you off
the premises before you can understand that you are not wanted? As for
you,” he swung toward Trant, “you are Trant, I suppose!”

“Yes, that is my name, Mr. Axton,” replied the psychologist, leaning
against his desk.

The other advanced a step and raised a threatening finger. “Then that
advice is meant for you, too. I want no police, no detectives, no
outsider of any sort interfering in this matter. Make no mistake; it
will be the worse for anyone who pushes himself in! I came here at
once to take the case out of your hands, as soon as I found Miss
Waldron had come here. This is strictly my affair—keep out of it!”

“You mean, Mr. Axton, that you prefer to investigate it personally?”
the psychologist inquired.

“Exactly—investigate and punish!”

“But you cannot blame Miss Waldron for feeling great anxiety even on
your account, as your personal risk in making such an investigation
will be so immensely greater than anyone’s else would be.”

“My risk?”

“Certainly; you may be simply playing into the hand of your strange
visitor, by pursuing him unaided. Any other’s risk,—mine, for
instance, if I were to take up the matter—would be comparatively
slight, beginning perhaps by questioning the nightwatchmen and
stableboys in the neighborhood with a view to learning what became of
the man after he left the house; and besides, such risks are a part of
my business.”

Axton halted. “I had not thought of it in that light,” he said
reflectively.

“You are too courageous—foolishly courageous, Mr. Axton.”

“Do you mind if I sit down? Thank you. You think, Mr. Trant, that an
investigation such as you suggest, would satisfy Miss Waldron—make her
easier in her mind, I mean?”

“I think so, certainly.”

“And it would not necessarily entail calling in the police? You must
appreciate how I shrink from publicity—another story concerning the
Axton family exploited in the daily papers!”

“I had no intention of consulting the police, or of calling them in,
at least until I was ready to make the arrest.”

“I must confess, Mr. Trant,” said Axton easily, “that I find you a
very different man from what I had expected. I imagined an uneducated,
somewhat brutal, perhaps talkative fellow; but I find you, if I may
say so, a gentleman. Yes, I am tempted to let you continue your
investigation—on the lines you have suggested.”

“I shall ask your help.”

“I will help you as much as is in my power.”

“Then let me begin, Mr. Axton, with a question—pardon me if I open a
window, for the room is rather warm—I want to know whether you can
supplement these letters, which so far are the only real evidence
against the man, by any further description of him,” and Trant, who
had thrown open the window beside him, undisturbed by the roar that
filled the office from the traffic-laden street below, took the
letters from his pocket and opened them one by one, clumsily, upon the
desk.

“I am afraid I cannot add anything to them, Mr. Trant.”

“We must get on then with what we have here,” the psychologist hitched
his chair near to the window to get a better light on the paper in his
hand, and his cuff knocked one of the other letters off the desk onto
the windowsill. He turned, hastily but clumsily, and touched, but
could not grasp it before it slipped from the sill out into the air.
He sprang to his feet with an exclamation of dismay, and dashed from
the room. Axton and Caryl, rushing to the window, watched the paper,
driven by a strong breeze, flutter down the street until lost to sight
among wagons; and a minute later saw Trant appear below them,
bareheaded and excited, darting in and out among vehicles at the spot
where the paper had disappeared; but it had been carried away upon
some muddy wagon-wheel or reduced to tatters, for he returned after
fifteen minutes’ search disheartened, vexed and empty handed.

“It was the letter describing the second visit,” he exclaimed
disgustedly as he opened the door. “It was most essential, for it
contained the most minute description of the man of all. I do not see
how I can manage well, now, without it.”

“Why should you?” Caryl said in surprise at the evident stupidity of
the psychologist. “Surely, Mr. Axton, if he can not add any other
details, can at least repeat those he had already given.”

“Of course!” Trant recollected. “If you would be so good, Mr. Axton, I
will have a stenographer take down the statement to give you the least
trouble.”

“I will gladly do that,” Axton agreed; and, when the psychologist had
summoned the stenographer, he dictated without hesitation the
following letter:

  “The second time that I saw the man was at Calcutta, in the Great
  Eastern Hotel. He was the same man I had seen at Cairo—shoeless and
  turbaned; at least I believed then that it was a turban, but I saw
  later, at Cape Town, that it was his short brown coat wrapped round
  his head and tied by the sleeves under his chin. We had at the Great
  Eastern two whitewashed communicating rooms opening off a narrow,
  dirty corridor, along whose whitewashed walls at a height of some
  two feet from the floor ran a greasy smudge gathered from the heads
  and shoulders of the dark-skinned, white-robed native servants who
  spent the nights sleeping or sitting in front of their masters’
  doors. Though Lawler and I each had a servant also outside his door,
  I dragged a trunk against mine after closing it—a useless
  precaution, as it proved, as Lawler put no trunk against his—and
  though I see now that I must have been moved by some foresight of
  danger, I went to sleep afterward quite peacefully. I awakened
  somewhat later in a cold and shuddering fright, oppressed by the
  sense of some presence in my room—started up in bed and looked
  about. My trunk was still against the door as I had left it; and
  besides this, I saw at first only the furniture of the room, which
  stood as when I had gone to sleep—two rather heavy and much
  scratched mahogany English chairs, a mahogany dresser with swinging
  mirror, and the spindle-legged, four-post canopy bed on which I lay.
  But presently, I saw more. He was there—a dark shadow against the
  whitewashed wall beside the flat-topped window marked his position,
  as he crouched beside my writing desk and held the papers in a bar
  of white moonlight to look at them. For an instant, the sight held
  me motionless, and suddenly becoming aware that he was seen, he
  leaped to his feet—a short, broad-shouldered, bulky man—sped across
  the blue and white straw matting into Lawler’s room and drove the
  door to behind him. I followed, forcing the door open with my
  shoulder, saw Lawler just leaping out of bed in his pajamas, and
  tore open Lawler’s corridor door, through which the man had
  vanished. He was not in the corridor, though I inspected it
  carefully, and Lawler, though he had been awakened by the man’s
  passage, had not seen him. Lawler’s servant, pretty well dazed with
  sleep, told me in blank and open-mouthed amazement at my question,
  that he had not seen him pass; and the other white-draped Hindoos,
  gathering about me from the doors in front of which they had been
  asleep, made the same statement. None of these Hindoos resembled in
  the least the man I had seen, for I looked them over carefully one
  by one with this in mind. When I made a light in my room in order to
  examine it thoroughly, I found nothing had been touched except the
  writing desk, and even from that nothing had been taken, although
  the papers had been disturbed. The whole affair was as mysterious
  and inexplicable as the man’s first appearance had been, or as his
  subsequent appearance proved; for though I carefully questioned the
  hotel employés in the morning I could not learn that any such man
  had entered or gone out from the hotel.”

“That is very satisfactory indeed;” Trant’s gratification was evident
in his tone, as Axton finished. “It will quite take the place of the
letter that was lost. There is only one thing more—so far as I know
now—in which you may be of present help to me, Mr. Axton. Besides your
friend Lawler, who was drowned in the wreck of the _Gladstone_, and
the man Beasley—who, Miss Waldron tells me, is in a London
hospital—there were only two men in Cape Town with you who had been in
Cairo and Calcutta at the same time you were. You do not happen to
know what has become of that German freight agent, Schultz?”

“I have not the least idea, Mr. Trant.”

“Or Walcott, the American patent medicine man?”

“I know no more of him than of the other. Whether either of them is in
Chicago now, is precisely what I would like to know myself, Mr. Trant;
and I hope you will be able to find out for me.”

“I will do my best to locate them. By the way, Mr. Axton, you have no
objection to my setting a watch over your family home, provided I
employ a man who has no connection with the police?”

“With that condition I think it would be a very good idea,” Axton
assented. He waited to see whether Trant had anything more to ask him;
then, with a look of partially veiled hostility at Caryl, he went out.

The other followed, but stopped at the door.

“We—that is, Miss Waldron—will hear from you, Mr. Trant?” he asked
with sudden distrust—“I mean, you will report to her, as well as to
Mr. Axton?”

“Certainly; but I hardly expect to have anything for you for two or
three days.”

The psychologist smiled, as he shut the door behind Caryl. He dropped
into the chair at his desk and wrote rapidly a series of telegrams,
which he addressed to the chiefs of police of a dozen foreign and
American cities. Then, more slowly, he wrote a message to the Seric
Medicine Company, of New York, and another to the Nord Deutscher
Lloyd.

The first two days, of the three Trant had specified to Caryl, passed
with no other event than the installing of a burly watchman at the
Axton home. On the third night this watchman reported to Miss Waldron
that he had seen and driven off, without being able to catch, a man
who was trying to force a lower window; and the next morning—within
half an hour of the arrival of the Overland Limited from San
Francisco—Trant called up the Axton home on the telephone with the
news that he thought he had at last positive proof of the mysterious
man’s identity. At least, he had with him a man whom he wanted Mr.
Axton to see. Axton replied that he would be very glad to see the man,
if Trant would make an appointment. In three quarters of an hour at
the Axton home, Trant answered; and forty minutes later, having first
telephoned young Caryl, Trant with his watchman, escorting a stranger
who was broad-shouldered, weasel-eyed, of peculiarly alert and guarded
manner, reached the Axton doorstep. Caryl had so perfectly timed his
arrival, under Trant’s instructions, that he joined them before the
bell was answered.

Trant and Caryl, leaving the stranger under guard of the watchman in
the hall, found Miss Waldron and Axton in the morning-room.

“Ah! Mr. Caryl again?” said Axton sneeringly. “Caryl was certainly not
the man you wanted me to see, Trant!”

“The man is outside,” the psychologist replied. “But before bringing
him in for identification I thought it best to prepare Miss Waldron,
and perhaps even more particularly you, Mr. Axton, for the surprise he
is likely to occasion.”

“A surprise?” Axton scowled questioningly. “Who is the fellow?—or
rather, if that is what you have come to find out from me, where did
you get him, Trant?”

“That is the explanation I wish to make,” Trant replied, with his hand
still upon the knob of the door, which he had pushed shut behind him.
“You will recall, Mr. Axton, that there were but four men whom we know
to have been in Cairo, Calcutta, and Cape Town at the same time you
were. These were Lawler, your servant Beasley, the German Schultz, and
the American Walcott. Through the Seric Medicine Company I have
positively located Walcott; he is now in Australia. The Nord Deutscher
Lloyd has given me equally positive assurance regarding Schultz.
Schultz is now in Bremen. Miss Waldron has accounted for Beasley, and
the Charing Cross Hospital corroborates her; Beasley is in London.
There remains, therefore, the inevitable conclusion that either there
was some other man following Mr. Axton—some man whom Mr. Axton did not
see—or else that the man who so pried into Mr. Axton’s correspondence
abroad and into your letters, Miss Waldron, this last week here in
Chicago, was—Lawler; and this I believe to have been the case.”

“Lawler?” the girl and Caryl echoed in amazement, while Axton stared
at the psychologist with increasing surprise and wonder. “Lawler?”

“Oh! I see,” Axton all at once smiled contemptuously. “You believe in
ghosts, Trant—you think it is Lawler’s ghost that Miss Waldron saw!”

“I did not say Lawler’s ghost,” Trant replied a little testily. “I
said Lawler’s self, in flesh and blood. I am trying to make it plain
to you,” Trant took from his pocket the letters the girl had given him
four days before and indicated the one describing the wreck, “that I
believe the man whose death you so minutely and carefully describe
here in this letter as Lawler, was not Lawler at all!”

“You mean to say that I didn’t know Lawler?” Axton laughed
loudly—“Lawler, who had been my companion in sixteen thousand miles of
travel?”

Trant turned as though to reopen the door into the hall; then paused
once more and kindly faced the girl.

“I know, Miss Waldron,” he said, “that you have believed that Mr.
Lawler has been dead these six weeks; and it is only because I am so
certain that the man who is to be identified here now will prove to be
that same Lawler that I have thought best to let you know in advance.”

He threw open the door, and stood back to allow the Irish watchman to
enter, preceded by the weasel-faced stranger. Then he closed the door
quickly behind him, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and spun
swiftly to see the effect of the stranger upon Axton.

That young man’s face, despite his effort to control it, flushed and
paled, flushed and went white again; but neither to Caryl nor the girl
did it look at all like the face of one who saw a dead friend alive
again.

“I do not know him!” Axton’s eyes glanced quickly, furtively about. “I
have never seen him before! Why have you brought him here? This is not
Lawler!”

“No; he is not Lawler,” Trant agreed; and at his signal the Irishman
left his place and went to stand behind Axton. “But you know him, do
you not? You have seen him before! Surely I need not recall to you
this special officer Burns of the San Francisco detective bureau! That
is right; you had better keep hold of him, Sullivan; and now, Burns,
who is this man? Do _you_ know _him_? Can you tell us who he is?”

“Do I know him?” the detective laughed. “Can I tell you who he is?
Well, rather! That is Lord George Albany, who got into Claude
Shelton’s boy in San Francisco for $30,000 in a card game; that is Mr.
Arthur Wilmering, who came within a hair of turning the same trick on
young Stuyvesant in New York; that—first and last—is Mr. George Lawler
himself, who makes a specialty of cards and rich men’s sons!”

“Lawler? George Lawler?” Caryl and the girl gasped again.

“But why, in this affair, he used his own name,” the detective
continued, “is more than I can see; for surely he shouldn’t have
minded another change.”

“He met Mr. Howard Axton in London,” Trant suggested, “where there was
still a chance that the card cheating in the Sussex guards was not
forgotten, and he might at any moment meet someone who recalled his
face. It was safer to tell Axton all about it, and protest innocence.”

“Howard Axton?” the girl echoed, recovering herself at the name. “Why,
Mr. Trant; if this is Mr. Lawler, as this man says and you believe,
then where is Mr. Axton—oh, where is Howard Axton?”

“I am afraid, Miss Waldron,” the psychologist replied, “that Mr.
Howard Axton was undoubtedly lost in the wreck of the _Gladstone_. It
may even have been the finding of Howard Axton’s body that this man
described in that last letter.”

“Howard Axton drowned! Then this man—”

“Mr. George Lawler’s specialty being rich men’s sons,” said the
psychologist, “I suppose he joined company with Howard Axton because
he was the son of Nimrod Axton. Possibly he did not know at first that
Howard had been disinherited, and he may not have found it out until
the second Mrs. Axton’s death, when the estate came to Miss Waldron,
and she created a situation which at least promised an opportunity. It
was in seeking this opportunity, Miss Waldron, among the intimate
family affairs revealed in your letters to Howard Axton that Lawler
was three times seen by Axton in his room, as described in the first
three letters that you showed to me. That was it, was it not, Lawler?”

The prisoner—for the attitude of Sullivan and Burns left no doubt now
that he was a prisoner—made no answer.

“You mean, Mr. Trant,” the eyes of the horrified girl turned from
Lawler as though even the sight of him shamed her, “that if Howard
Axton had not been drowned, this—this man would have come anyway?”

“I cannot say what Lawler’s intentions were if the wreck had
not occurred,” the psychologist replied. “For you remember that
I told you that this attempted crime has been most wonderfully
assisted by circumstances. Lawler, cast ashore from the wreck of the
_Gladstone_, found himself—if the fourth of these letters is to be
believed—identified as Howard Axton, even before he had regained
consciousness, by your stolen letters to Howard which he had in his
pocket. From that time on he did not have to lift a finger, beyond the
mere identification of a body—possibly Howard Axton’s—as his own.
Howard had left America so young that identification here was
impossible unless you had a portrait; and Lawler undoubtedly had
learned from your letters that you had no picture of Howard. His own
picture, published in the _News_ over Howard’s name, when it escaped
identification as Lawler, showed him that the game was safe and
prepared you to accept him as Howard without question. He had not even
the necessity of counterfeiting Howard’s writing, as Howard had the
correspondent’s habit of using a typewriter. Only two possible dangers
threatened him. First, was the chance that, if brought in contact with
the police, he might be recognized. You can understand, Miss Waldron,
by his threats to prevent your consulting them, how anxious he was to
avoid this. And second, that there might be something in Howard
Axton’s letters to you which, if unknown to him, might lead him to
compromise and betray himself in his relations with you. His sole
mistake was that, when he attempted to search your desk for these
letters, he clumsily adopted once more the same disguise that had
proved so perplexing to Howard Axton. For he could have done nothing
that would have been more terrifying to you. It quite nullified the
effect of the window he had fixed to prove by the man’s means of exit
and entrance that he was not a member of the household. It sent you,
in spite of his objections and threats, to consult me; and, most
important of all, it connected these visits at once with the former
ones described in Howard’s letters, so that you brought the letters to
me—when, of course, the nature of the crime, though not the identity
of the criminal, was at once plain to me.”

“I see it was plain; but was it merely from these letters—these
typewritten letters, Mr. Trant?” cried Caryl incredulously.

“From those alone, Mr. Caryl,” the psychologist smiled slightly,
“through a most elementary, primer fact of psychology. Perhaps you
would like to know, Lawler,” Trant turned, still smiling, to the
prisoner, “just wherein you failed. And, as you will probably never
have another chance such as the one just past for putting the
information to practical use—even if you were not, as Mr. Burns tells
me, likely to retire for a number of years from active life—I am
willing to tell you.”

The prisoner turned on Trant his face—now grown livid—with an
expression of almost superstitious questioning.

“Did you ever happen to go to a light opera with Howard Axton, Mr.
Lawler,” asked Trant, “and find after the performance that you
remembered all the stage-settings of the piece but could not recall a
tune—you know you cannot recall a tune, Lawler—while Axton, perhaps,
could whistle all the tunes but could not remember a costume or a
scene? Psychologists call that difference between you and Howard Axton
a difference in ‘memory types.’ In an almost masterly manner you
imitated the style, the tricks and turns of expression of Howard Axton
in your letter to Miss Waldron describing the wreck—not quite so well
in the statement you dictated in my office. But you could not imitate
the primary difference of Howard Axton’s mind from yours. That was
where you failed.

“The change in the personality of the letter writer might easily have
passed unnoticed, as it passed Miss Waldron, had not the letters
fallen into the hands of one who, like myself, is interested in the
manifestations of mind. For different minds are so constituted that
inevitably their processes run more easily along certain channels than
along others. Some minds have a preference, so to speak, for a
particular type of impression; they remember a sight that they have
seen, they forget the sound that went with it; or they remember the
sound and forget the sight. There are minds which are almost wholly
ear-minds or eye-minds. In minds of the visual, or eye, type, all
thoughts and memories and imaginations will consist of ideas of sight;
if of the auditory type, the impressions of sound predominate and
obscure the others.

“The first three letters you handed me, Miss Waldron,” the
psychologist turned again to the girl, “were those really written by
Howard Axton. As I read through them I knew that I was dealing with
what psychologists call an auditory mind. When, in ordinary memory, he
recalled an event he remembered best its sounds. But I had not
finished the first page of the fourth letter when I came upon the
description of the body lying on the sand—a visual memory so clear and
so distinct, so perfect even to the pockets distended with sand, that
it startled and amazed me—for it was the first distinct visual memory
I had found. As I read on I became certain that the man who had
written the first three letters—who described a German as guttural and
remembered the American as nasal—could never have written the fourth.
Would that first man—the man who recalled even the sound of his
midnight visitor’s shoulders when they rubbed against the wall—fail to
remember in his recollection of the shipwreck the roaring wind and
roaring sea, the screams of men and women, the crackling of the fire?
They would have been his clearest recollection. But the man who wrote
the fourth letter recalled most clearly that the sea was white and
frothy, the men were pallid and staring!”

“I see! I see!” Caryl and the girl cried as, at the psychologist’s
bidding, they scanned together the letters he spread before them.

“The subterfuge by which I destroyed the second letter of the set,
after first making a copy of it—”

“You did it on purpose? What an idiot I was!” exclaimed Caryl.

“Was merely to obviate the possibility of mistake,” Trant continued,
without heeding the interruption. “The statement this man dictated, as
it was given in terms of ‘sight,’ assured me that he was not Axton.
When, by means of the telegraph, I had accounted for the present
whereabouts of three of the four men he might possibly be, it became
plain that he must be Lawler. And finding that Lawler was badly wanted
in San Francisco, I asked Mr. Burns to come on and identify him.

“And the stationing of the watchman here was a blind also, as well as
his report of the man who last night tried to force the window?” Caryl
exclaimed.

Trant nodded. He was watching the complete dissolution of the
swindler’s effrontery. Trant had appreciated that Lawler had let him
speak on uninterrupted as though, after the psychologist had shown his
hand, he held in reserve cards to beat it. But his attempt to sneer
and scoff and contemn was so weak, when the psychologist was through,
that Ethel Waldron—almost as though to spare him—arose and motioned to
Trant to tell her, whatever else he wished, in the next room.

Trant followed her a moment obediently; but at the door he seemed to
recollect himself.

“I think there is nothing else now, Miss Waldron,” he said, “except
that I believe I can spare you the reopening of your family affairs
here. Burns tells me there is more than enough against him in
California to keep Mr. Lawler there for some good time. I will go with
him, now,” and he stood aside for Caryl to go, in his place, into the
next room.



CHAPTER IX

The Eleventh Hour

On the third Sunday in March the thermometer dropped suddenly in
Chicago a little after ten in the evening. A roaring storm of mingled
rain and snow, driven by a riotous wind—wild even for the Great Lakes
in winter—changed suddenly to sleet, which lay in liquid slush upon
the walks. At twenty minutes past the hour, sleet and slush had both
begun to freeze. Mr. Luther Trant, hastening on foot back to his rooms
at his club from north of the river where he had been taking tea,
observed—casually, as he observed many things—that the soft mess
underfoot had coated with tough, rubbery ice, through which the heels
of his shoes crunched at every step while his toes left almost no
mark.

But he noted this then only as a hindrance to his haste. He had been
taking the day “off” away from both his office and his club; but
fifteen minutes before, he had called up the club for the first time
that day and had learned that a woman—a wildly terrified and anxious
woman—had been inquiring for him at intervals during the day over the
telephone, and that a special delivery letter from the same source had
been awaiting him since six o’clock. The psychologist, suddenly
stricken with a sense of guilt and dereliction, had not waited for a
cab.

As he hurried down Michigan Avenue now, he was considering how affairs
had changed with him in the last six months. Then he had been a callow
assistant in a psychological laboratory. The very professor whom he
had served had smiled amusedly, almost derisively, when he had
declared his belief in his own powers to apply the necromancy of the
new psychology to the detection of crime. But the delicate instruments
of the laboratory—the chronoscopes, kymographs, plethysmographs,
which made visible and recorded unerringly, unfalteringly, the most
secret emotions of the heart and the hidden workings of the brain;
the experimental investigations of Freud and Jung, of the German
and French scientists, of Munsterberg and others in America—had
fired him with the belief in them and in himself. In the face of
misunderstanding and derision, he had tried to trace the criminal, not
by the world-old method of the marks he had left on things, but by the
evidences which the crime had left on the mind of the criminal
himself. And so well had he succeeded that now he could not leave his
club even on a Sunday, without disappointing somewhere, in the
great-pulsating city, an appeal to him for help in trouble. But as he
turned at the corner into the entrance of the club, he put aside this
thought and faced the doorman.

“Has she called again?”

“The last time, sir, was at nine o’clock. She wanted to know if you
had received the note, and said you were to have it as soon as you
came in.”

The man handed it out—a plain, coarse envelope, with the red two-cent
and the blue special delivery stamp stuck askew above an uneven line
of great, unsteady characters addressing the envelope to Trant at the
club. Within it, ten lines spread this wild appeal across the paper:

  “If Mr. Trant will do—for some one unknown to him—the greatest
  possible service—to save perhaps a life—a life! I beg him to come to
  —— Ashland Avenue between seven and nine o’clock to-night! Eleven!
  For God’s sake come—between seven and nine! Later will be too late.
  Eleven! I tell you it may be worse than useless to come after
  eleven! So for God’s sake—if you are human—help me! You will be
  expected.

  “W. Newberry.”

The psychologist glanced at his watch swiftly. It was already
twenty-five minutes to eleven!

Besides the panic expressed by the writing itself, the broken
sentences, the reiterated appeal, most of all the strange and
disconnected recurrence three times in the few short lines of the word
eleven—which plainly pointed to that hour as the last at which help
might avail—the characters themselves, which were the same as those on
the envelope, confirmed the psychologist’s first impression that the
note was written by a man, a young man, too, despite the havoc that
fear and nervelessness had played with him.

“You’re sure it was a woman’s voice on the phone?” he asked quickly.

“Yes, sir; and she seemed a lady.”

Trant hastily picked up the telephone on the desk; “Hello! Is this the
West End Police Station? This is Mr. Trant. Can you send a
plain-clothes man and a patrolman at once to —— Ashland Avenue? . . .
No; I don’t know what the trouble is, but I understand it is a matter
of life and death; that’s why I want to have help at hand if I need
it. Let me know who you are sending.”

He stood impatiently tapping one heel against the other, while he
waited for the matter to be adjusted at the police station, then swung
back to receive the name of the detective: “Yes. . . . You are sending
Detective Siler? Because he knows the house? . . . Oh, there has been
trouble there before? . . . I see. . . . Tell him to hurry. I will try
and get there myself before eleven.”

He dashed the receiver back on to the hook, caught his coat collar
close again and ran swiftly to claim a taxicab which was just bringing
another member up to the club.

The streets were all but empty; and into the stiffening ice the chains
on the tires of the driving wheels bit sharply; so it still lacked ten
minutes of the hour, as Trant assured himself by another quick glance
at his watch, when the chauffeur checked the motor short before the
given number on Ashland Avenue, and the psychologist jumped out.

The vacant street, and the one dim light on the first floor of the old
house, told Trant the police had not yet arrived.

The porticoed front and the battered fountain with cupids, which rose
obscurely from the ice-crusted sod of the narrow lawn at its side,
showed an attempt at fashion. In the rear, as well as Trant could see
it in the indistinct glare of the street lamps, the building seemed to
fall away into a single rambling story.

As the psychologist rang the bell and was admitted, he saw at once
that he had not been mistaken in believing that the cab which had
passed his motor only an instant before had come from the same house;
for the mild-eyed, white-haired little man, who opened the door almost
before the bell had stopped ringing, had not yet taken off his
overcoat. Behind him, in the dim light of a shaded lamp, an equally
placid, white-haired little woman was laying off her wraps; and their
gentle faces were so completely at variance with the wild terror of
the note that Trant now held between his fingers in his pocket, that
he hesitated before he asked his question:

“Is W. Newberry here?”

“I am the Reverend Wesley Newberry,” the little man answered. “I am no
longer in the active service of the Lord; but if it is a case of
immediate necessity and I can be of use—”

“No, no!” Trant checked him. “I have not come to ask your service as a
minister, Mr. Newberry. I am Luther Trant. But I see I must explain,”
the psychologist continued, at first nonplused by the little man’s
stare of perplexity, which showed no recognition of the name, and then
flushing with the sudden suspicion that followed. “To-night when I
returned to my club at half-past ten, I was informed that a
woman—apparently in great anxiety—had been trying to catch me all day;
and had finally referred me to this special delivery letter which was
delivered for me at six o’clock.” Trant extended it to the staring
little minister. “Of course, I can see now that both telephone calls
and note may have been a hoax; but—in Heaven’s name! What is the
matter, Mr. Newberry?”

The two old people had taken the note between them. Now the little
woman, her wraps only half removed, had dropped, shaking and pale,
into the nearest chair. The little man had lost his placidity and was
shuddering in uncontrolled fear. He seemed to shrink away; but
stiffened bravely.

“A hoax? I fear not, Mr. Trant!” The man gathered himself together.
“This note is not from me; but it is, I must not deceive myself,
undoubtedly from our son Walter—Walter Newberry. This writing, though
broken beyond anything I have seen from him in his worst dissipations
is undoubtedly his. Yet Walter is not here, Mr. Trant! I mean—I mean,
he should not be here! There have been reasons—we have not seen or
heard of Walter for two months. He can not be here now—surely he can
not be here now, unless—unless—my wife and I went to a friend’s this
evening; this is as though the writer had known we were going out! We
left at half-past six and have only just returned. Oh, it is
impossible that Walter could have come here! But Martha, we have not
seen Adele!” The livid terror grew stronger on his rosy, simple face
as he turned to his wife. “We have not seen Adele, Martha, since we
came in! And this gentleman tells us that a woman in great trouble was
sending for him. If Walter had been here—be strong, Martha; be strong!
But come—let us look together!”

He had turned, with no further word of explanation, and pattered
excitedly to the stairs, followed by his wife and Trant.

“Adele! Adele!” the old man cried anxiously, knocking at the door
nearest the head of the stairs; and when he received no answer, he
flung the door open.

“Dreadful! Dreadful!” he wrung his hands, while his wife sank weakly
down upon the upper step, as she saw the room was empty. “There is
something very wrong here, Mr. Trant! This is the bedroom of my
daughter-in-law, Walter’s wife. She should be here, at this hour! My
son and his wife are separated and do not live together. My son, who
has been unprincipled and uncontrollable from his childhood up, made a
climax to his career of dissipation two months ago by threatening the
life of his wife because she refused—because she found it impossible
to live longer with him. It was a most painful affair; the police were
even called in. We forbade Walter the house. So if she called to you
because he was threatening her again, and he returned here to-night to
carry out his threat, then Adele—Adele was indeed in danger!”

“But why should _he_ have written me that note?” Trant returned
crisply. “However—if we believe the note at all—there is surely now no
time to lose, Mr. Newberry. We must search the entire house at once
and make sure, at least, that Mrs. Walter Newberry is not in some
other part of it!”

“You are right—quite right!” the little man pattered rapidly from door
to door, throwing the rooms open to the impatient scrutiny of the
psychologist; and while they were still engaged in this search upon
the upper floor, a tall clock on the landing of the stairs struck
eleven!

So strongly had the warning of the note impressed Trant that, at the
signal of the hour, he stopped short; the others, seeing him, stopped
too, and stared at him with blanched faces, while all three
apprehensively strained their ears for some sound which might mark the
note’s fulfillment. And scarcely had the last deep stroke of the hour
ceased to resound in the hall, when suddenly, sharply, and without
other warning, a revolver shot rang out, followed so swiftly by three
others that the four reports rang almost as one through the silent
house. The little woman screamed and seized her husband’s arm. His
hand, in turn, hung upon Trant. The psychologist, turning his head to
be surer of the direction of the sound, for an instant more stared
indecisively; for though the shots were plainly inside the house, the
echoes made it impossible to locate them exactly. But almost
immediately a fifth shot, seeming louder and more distinct in its
separateness, startled them again.

“It is in the billiard room!” the wife shrieked, with a woman’s
quicker location of indoor sounds.

The little minister ran to seize the lamp, as Trant turned toward the
rear of the house. The woman started with them; but at that instant
the doorbell rang furiously; and the woman stopped in trembling
confusion. The psychologist pushed her husband on, however; and taking
the lamp from the elder man’s shaking hand, he now led Newberry into
the one-story addition which formed the back part of the house. Here
he found that the L shaped passage into which they ran, opened at one
end apparently on to a side porch. Newberry, now taking the lead,
hurried down the other branch of the passage past a door which was
plainly that of a kitchen, came to another further down the passage,
tried it, and recoiled in fresh bewilderment to find it locked.

“It is never locked—never! Something dreadful must have been happening
in here!” he wrung his hands again weakly.

“We must break it down then!” Trant drew the little man aside, and,
bracing himself against the opposite wall, threw his shoulder against
it once—twice, and even a third time, ineffectually, till a uniformed
patrolman, and another man in plain clothes, coming after them with
Mrs. Newberry, added their weight to Trant’s, and the door crashed
open.

A blast of air from the outside storm instantly blew out both the lamp
in Trant’s hand and another which had been burning in the room. The
woman screamed and threw herself toward some object on the floor which
the flare of the failing lights had momentarily revealed; but her
husband caught in the darkness at her wrist and drew her to him. Siler
and the patrolman, swearing softly, felt for matches and tried vainly
in the draft to relight the lamp which Trant had thrust upon the
table; for the psychologist had dashed to the window which was letting
in the outside storm, stared out, then closed it and returned to light
the lamp, which belonged in the room, as the plain-clothes man now lit
the other.

This room which Mrs. Newberry had called the billiard room, he saw
then, was now used only for storage purposes and was littered with the
old rubbish which accumulates in every house; but the arrangement of
the discarded furniture showed plainly the room had recently been
fitted for occupancy as well as its means allowed. That the occupant
had taken care to conceal himself, heavy sheets of brown paper pasted
over the panes of all the windows—including that which Trant had found
open—testified; that the occupant had been well tended, a full tray of
food—practically untouched—and the stubs of at least a hundred
cigarettes flung in the fireplace, made plain. These things Trant
appreciated only after the first swift glance which showed him a
huddled figure with its head half under a musty lounge which stood
furthest from the window. It was not the body of a woman, but that of
a man not yet thirty, whose rather handsome face was marred by deep
lines of dissipation. The mother’s shuddering cry of recognition had
showed that this was Walter Newberry.

Trant knelt beside the officers working over the body; the blood had
been flowing from a bullet wound in the temple, but it had ceased to
flow. A small, silver-mounted automatic revolver, such as had been
recently widely advertised for the protection of women, lay on the
floor close by, with the shells which had been ejected as it was
fired. The psychologist straightened.

“We have come too late,” he said simply to the father. “It was
necessary, as he foresaw, to get here before eleven, if we were to
help him; for he is dead. And now—” he checked himself, as the little
woman clutched her husband and buried her face in his sleeve, and the
little man stared up at him with a chalky face—“it will be better for
you to wait somewhere else till we are through here.”

“In the name of mercy, Mr. Trant!” Newberry cried miserably, as the
psychologist picked up a lamp and lighted the two old people into the
hall, “what is this terrible thing that has happened here? What is
it—Oh, what is it, Mr. Trant? And where—where is Adele?”

“I am here, father; I am here!” a new voice broke clearly and calmly
through the confusion, and the light of Trant’s lamp fell on a slight
but stately girl advancing down the hallway. “And you,” she said as
composedly to the psychologist, though Trant could see now that her
self-possession was belied by the nervous picking of her fingers at
her dress and her paleness, which grew greater as she met his eyes,
“are Mr. Trant—and you came too late!”

“You are—Mrs. Walter Newberry?” Trant returned. “You were the one who
was calling me up this morning and this afternoon?”

“Yes,” she said. “I was his wife. So he is dead!”

She took no heed of the quick glance Trant flashed to assure himself
that she spoke in this way before she could have seen the body from
her place in the hall; and she turned calmly still to the old man who
was clinging to her crying nervously now, “Adele! Adele! Adele!”

“Yes, dear father and dear mother!” she began compassionately. “Walter
came back—” she broke off suddenly; and Trant saw her grow pale as
death with staring eyes fixed over his shoulder on Siler, who had come
to the doorway. “You—you brought the police, Mr. Trant! I—I thought
you had nothing to do with the police!”

“Never mind that,” the plain-clothes man checked Trant’s answer. “You
were saying your husband came home, Mrs. Newberry—then what?”

“Then—but that is all I know; I know nothing whatever about it.”

“Your shoes and skirt are wet, Mrs. Newberry,” the plain-clothes man
pointed significantly.

“I—I heard the shots!” she caught herself up with admirable
self-control. “That was all. I ran over to the neighbors’ for help;
but I could get no one.”

“Then you’ll have a chance to make your statement later,” Siler
answered in a business-like way. “Just now you’d better look after
your father and mother.”

He took the lamp from Trant and held it to light them down the hall,
then turned swiftly to the patrolman: “She is going upstairs with
them; watch the front stairs and see that she does not go out. If she
comes down the back stairs we can see her.”

As the patrolman went out, the plain-clothes man turned back into the
room, leaving the door ajar so that the rear stairs were visible.
“These husband and wife cases, Mr. Trant,” he said easily. “You
think—and the man thinks, too—the woman will stand everything; and she
does—till he does one more thing too much, and, all of a sudden, she
lets him have it!”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit premature,” the psychologist suggested,
“to assume that she killed him?”

“Didn’t you see how she shut up when she saw me?” Siler’s eyes met
Trant’s with a flash of opposition. “That was because she recognized
me and knew that, having been here last time there was trouble, I knew
that he had been threatening her. It’s a cinch! Regular minister’s
son, he was; the old man’s a missionary, you know; spent his life till
two years ago trying to turn Chinese heathens into Christians. And
this Walter—our station blotter’d be black with his doings; only, ever
since he made China too hot to hold him and the old man brought him
back here, everything’s been hushed up on the old man’s account. But I
happen to have been here before; and all winter I’ve known there’d be
a killing if he ever came back. Hell! I tell you it was a relief to me
to see it was him on the floor when that door went down. There are no
powder marks, you see,” the officer led Trant’s eyes back to the wound
in the head of the form beside the lounge. “He could not have shot
himself. He was shot from further off than he could reach. Besides,
it’s on the left side.”

“Yes; I saw,” Trant replied.

“And that little automatic gun,” the officer stooped now and picked up
the pistol that lay on the floor beside the body, “is hers. I saw it
the last time I was called in here.”

“But how could he have known—if she shot him—that she was going to
kill him just at eleven?” Trant objected, pulling from his pocket the
note, which old Mr. Newberry had returned to him, and handing it to
Siler. “He sent that to me; at least, the father says it is in his
handwriting.”

“You mean,” Siler’s eyes rose slowly from the paper, “that she must
have told him what she was going to do—premeditated murder?”

“I mean that the first fact which we have—and which certainly seems to
me wholly incompatible with anything which you have suggested so
far—is that Walter Newberry foresaw his own death and set the hour of
its accomplishment; and that his wife—it is plain at least to me—when
she telephoned so often for me to-day, was trying to help him to
escape from it. Now what are the other facts?” Trant went on rapidly,
paying no attention to the obstinate glance in the eyes of the
officer. “I distinctly heard five shots—four together and then, after
a second or so, one. You heard five?”

“Yes.”

“And five shots,” the psychologist’s quick glances had been taking in
the finer details of the room, “are accounted for by the bullet
holes—one through the lower pane of the window I found open, which
shows it was down and closed during the shooting, as there is no break
in the upper half; one on the plaster there to the side; one under the
moulding there four feet to the right; and one more, in the plaster
almost as far to the left. The one that killed him makes five.”

“Exactly!” Siler followed Trant’s indication triumphantly, “the fifth
in his head! The first four went off in their struggle; and then she
got away and, with the fifth, shot him.”

“But the shells,” Trant continued; “for that sort of revolver ejects
the shells as they are fired—and I see only four. Where is the fifth?”

“You’re trying to fog this thing all up, Mr. Trant.”

“No; I’m trying to clear it. How could anyone have left the room after
the firing of the last shot? No one could have gone through the door
and not been seen by us in the hall; besides the door was bolted on
the inside,” Trant pointed to the two bolts. “No one could have left
except by the window—this window which was open when we came in, but
which must have been closed when one, at least, of the shots was being
fired. You remember I went at once to it and looked out, but saw
nothing.”

Trant re-crossed the room swiftly and threw the window open, intently
re-examining it. On the outside it was barred with a heavy grating,
but he saw that the key to the grating was in the lock.

“Bring the lamp,” he said to the plain-clothes man; and as Siler
screened the flame against the wind—“Ah!” he continued, “look at the
ice cracked from it there—it must have been swung open. He must have
gone out this way!”

“He?” Siler repeated.

The plain-clothes man had squeezed past Trant, as the grating swung
back, and lamp in hand had let himself easily down to the ice-covered
walk below the window, and was holding his light, shielded, just above
the ground. “It was she,” he cried triumphantly—“the woman, as I told
you! Look at her marks here!” He showed by the flickering light the
double, sharp little semi-circles of a woman’s high heels cut into the
ice; and, as Trant dropped down beside him, the police detective
followed the sharp little heel marks to the side door of the house,
where they turned and led into the kitchen entry.

“Premature, was I—eh?” Siler triumphed laconically. “We are used to
these cases, Mr. Trant; we know what to expect in ’em.”

Trant stood for an instant studying the sheet of ice. In this
sheltered spot, freezing had not progressed so fast as in the open
streets. Here, as an hour before on Michigan Avenue, he saw that his
heels and those of the police officer at every step cut through the
crust, while their toes left no mark. But except for the marks they
themselves had made and the crescent stamp of the woman’s high heels
leading in sharp, clear outline from the window to the side steps of
the house, there were no other imprints. Then he followed the
detective into the side door of the house.

In the passage they met the patrolman. “She came down stairs just
now,” said that officer briskly, “and went in here.”

Siler laid his hand on the door of the little sitting-room the
patrolman indicated, but turned to speak a terse command to the man
over his shoulder; “Go back to that room and see that things are kept
as they are. Look for the fifth shell. We got four; find the other!”

Then, with a warning glance at Trant, he pushed the door open.

The girl faced the two calmly as they entered; but the whiteness of
her lips showed Trant, with swift appreciation, that she could bear no
more and was reaching the end of her restraint.

“You’ve had a little while to think this over, Mrs. Newberry,” the
plain-clothes man said, not unkindly, “and I guess you’ve seen it’s
best to make a clean breast of it. Mr. Walter Newberry has been in
that room quite a while—the room shows it—though his father and mother
seem not to have known about it.”

“He”—she hesitated, then answered suddenly and collectively, “he had
been there six days.”

“You started to tell us about it,” Trant helped her. “You said ‘Walter
came home’—but, what brought him here? Did he come to see you?”

“No;” the girl’s pale cheeks suddenly burned blood red and went white
again, as she made her decision. “It was fear—deadly fear that drove
him here; but I do not know of what.”

“You are going to tell us all you know, are you not, Mrs. Newberry?”
the psychologist urged quietly—“how he came here; and particularly how
both he and you could so foresee his death that you summoned me as you
did!”

“Yes; yes—I will tell you,” the girl clenched and unclenched her
hands, as she gathered herself together. “Six nights ago, Monday
night, Mr. Trant, Walter came here. It was after midnight, and he did
not ring the bell, but waked me by throwing pieces of ice and frozen
sod against my window. I saw at once that something was the matter
with him; so I went down and talked to him through the closed door—the
side door here; for I was afraid at first to let him in, in spite of
his promises not to hurt me. He told me his very life was in
danger—and he had no other place to go; and he must hide here—hide;
and I must not let anyone—even his mother or father—know he had come
back; that I was the only one he could trust! So—he was my husband—and
I let him in!

“I started to run from him, when I had opened the door; for I was
afraid—afraid; but he ran at once into the old billiard-room—the store
room there—and tried the locks of the door and the window gratings,”
the sensitive voice ran on rapidly, “and then threw himself all
sweating cold on the lounge there, and went to sleep in a stupor. I
thought at first it was another frenzy from whiskey or—or opium. And I
stayed there. But just at morning when he woke up, I saw it wasn’t
that—but it was fear—fear—fear, such as I’d never seen before. He
rolled off the couch and half hid under it till I’d pasted brown paper
over the window panes—there were no curtains. But he wouldn’t tell me
what he was afraid of.

“He got so much worse as the days went by that he couldn’t sleep at
all; he walked the floor all the time and he smoked continually, so
that nearly every day I had to slip out and get him cigarettes. He got
more and more afraid of every noise outside and of every little sound
within; and it made him so much worse when I told him I had to tell
someone else—even his mother—that I didn’t dare to. He said other
people were sure to find out that he was there, then, and they would
kill him—kill him! He was always worst at eleven—eleven o’clock at
night; and he dreaded especially eleven o’clock Sunday night—though I
couldn’t find out what or why!

“I gave him my pistol—the one—the one you saw on the floor in _there_.
It was Friday then; and he had been getting worse and worse all the
time. Eleven o’clock every night I managed to be with him; and no one
found us out. I was glad I gave him the pistol until this—until this
morning. I never thought till then that he might use it to kill
himself; but this morning—Sunday morning, when I came to him, he was
talking about it—denying it; but I saw it was in his mind! ‘I shan’t
shoot myself!’ I heard him saying over and over again, when I came to
the door. ‘They can’t make me shoot myself! I shan’t! I shan’t!’—over
and over, like that. And when he had let me in and I saw him, then I
knew—I knew he meant to do it! He asked me if it wasn’t Sunday; and
went whiter when I told him it was! So then I told him he had to trust
someone now; this couldn’t go on; and I spoke to him about Mr. Trant;
and he said he’d try him; and he wrote the letter I mailed you—special
delivery—so you could come when his father and mother were out—but he
never once let go my pistol; he was wild—wild with fear. Every time I
could get away to the telephone, I tried to get Mr. Trant; and the
last time I got back—it was awful! It was hardly ten, but he was
walking up and down with my pistol in his hand, whispering strange
things over and over to himself, saying most of anything, ‘No one can
make me do it! No one can make me do it—even when it’s eleven—even
when it’s eleven!’—and staring—staring at his watch which he’d taken
out and laid on the table; staring and staring so—so that I knew I
must get someone before eleven—and at last I was running next door for
help—for anyone—for anything—when—when I heard the shots—I heard the
shots!”

She sank forward and buried her face in her hands; rent by tearless
sobs. Her fingers, white from the pressure, made long marks on her
cheeks, showing livid even in the pallor of her face. But Siler pursed
his lips toward Trant, and laid his hand upon her arm, sternly.

“Steady, steady, Mrs. Newberry!” the plain-clothes man warned. “You
can not do that now! You say you were with your husband a moment
before the shooting, but you were not in the room when he was killed?”

“Yes; yes!” the woman cried.

“You went out the door the last time?”

“The door? Yes; yes; of course the door! Why not the door?”

“Because, Mrs. Newberry,” the detective replied impressively, “just
at, or a moment after, the time of the shooting, a woman left that
room by the window—unlocked the grating and went out the window. We
have seen her marks. And you were that woman, Mrs. Newberry!”

The girl gasped and her eyes wavered to Trant; but seeing no help
there now, she recovered herself quickly.

“Of course! Why, of course!” she cried. “The last time I went out, I
did go out the window! It was to get the neighbors—didn’t I tell you?
So I went out the window!”

“Yes; we know you went out the window, Mrs. Newberry,” Siler responded
mercilessly. “But we know, too, you did not even start for the
neighbors. We have traced your tracks on the ice straight to the side
door and into the house! Now, Mrs. Newberry, you’ve tried to make us
believe that your husband killed himself. But that won’t do! Isn’t it
a little too strange, if you left by the window while your husband was
still alive, that he let the window stay open and the grating
unlocked? Yes; it’s altogether too strange. You left him dead; and
what we want to know—and I’m asking you straight out—is how you did
it?”

“How I did it?” the girl repeated mechanically; then with sharp agony
and starting eyes: “How _I_ did it! Oh, no, no, I did not do it! I was
there—I have not told all the truth! But when I saw you,” her
horrified gaze resting on Siler, “and remembered you had been here
before when he—he threatened me, my only thought was to hide for his
sake and for theirs,” she indicated the room above, where she had
taken her husband’s parents, “that he had tried to carry out his
threat. For before he killed himself, he tried to kill me! That’s how
he fired those first four shots. He tried to kill me first!”

“Well, we’re getting nearer to it,” Siler approved.

“Yes; now I have told you all!” the girl cried. “Oh, I have now—I
have! The last time he let me in, it was almost eleven—eleven! He had
my pistol in his hand, waiting—waiting! And at last he cried out it
was eleven; and he raised the pistol and shot straight at me—with the
face—the face of a demon with fear. It was no use to try to speak to
him, or to get away; I fell on my knees before him, just as he shot at
me again and again—aiming straight, not at my eyes, but at my hair;
and he shot again! But again he missed me; and his face—his face was
so terrible that—that I covered my own face as he aimed at me again,
staring always at my hair. And that time, when he shot, I heard him
fall and saw—saw that he had shot himself and he was dead!

“Then I heard your footsteps coming to the door; and I saw for the
first time that Walter had opened the window before I came in. And—all
without thinking of anything except that if I was found there
everybody would know he’d tried to kill me, I took up the key of the
grating from the table where he had laid it, and went out!”

“I can’t force you to confess, if you will not, Mrs. Newberry,” Siler
said meaningly, “though no jury, after they learned how he had
threatened you, would convict you if you pleaded self-defense. We know
he didn’t kill himself; for he couldn’t have fired that shot! And the
case is complete, I think,” the detective shot a finally triumphant
glance at Trant, “unless Mr. Trant wants to ask you something more.”

“I do!” Trant quietly spoke for the first time. “I want to ask Mrs.
Newberry—since she did not actually see her husband fire the last shot
that killed him—whether she was directly facing him as she knelt. It
is most essential to know whether or not her head was turned to one
side.”

“Why, what do you mean, Mr. Trant?” the girl looked up wonderingly;
for his tone seemed to promise he was coming to her defense.

“Suppose he might have shot himself before her, as she says—what’s the
difference whether she heard him with her head straight or her head
turned?” the police detective demanded sneeringly.

“A fundamental difference in this case, Siler,” Trant replied, “if
taken in connection with that other most important factor of all—that
Walter Newberry foretold the hour of his own death. But answer me,
Mrs. Newberry—if you can be certain.”

“I—certainly I can never forget how I crouched there with every muscle
strained. I was directly facing him,” the girl answered.

“That is very important!” The psychologist took a rapid turn or two up
and down the room. “Now you told us that your husband, during the days
he was shut up in that room, talked to himself almost continuously.
Toward the end, you say, he repeated over and over again such
sentences as ‘No one can make me do it!’ Can you remember any others?”

“I couldn’t make much out of anything else, Mr. Trant,” the girl
replied, after thinking an instant. “He seemed to have hallucinations
so much of the time.”

“Hallucinations?”

“Yes; he seemed to think I was singing to him—as I used to sing to
him, you know, when we were first married—and he would catch hold of
me and say, ‘Don’t—don’t—don’t sing!’ Or at other times he would
clutch me and tell me to sing low—sing low!”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing else even so sensible as that,” the girl responded. “Many
things he said made me think he had lost his mind. He would often
stare at me in an absorbed way, looking me over from head to foot, and
say, ‘Look here; if anyone asks you—anyone at all—whether your mother
had large or small feet, say small—never admit she had large feet, or
you’ll never get in. Do you understand?’”

“What?” The psychologist stood for several moments in deep thought;
then his eyes flashed suddenly with excitement. “What!” he cried
again, clutching the chair-back as he leaned toward her. “He said that
to you when he was absorbed?”

“A dozen times at least, Mr. Trant,” the girl replied, staring at him
in startled wonder.

“Remarkable! Yes; this is extraordinary!” Trant strode up and down
excitedly. “Nobody could have hoped for so fortunate a confirmation of
the evidence in this remarkable case. We knew that Walter Newberry
foresaw his own death; now we actually get from him himself, the
key—the possibly complete explanation of his danger—”

“Explanation!” shouted the police detective. “I’ve heard no
explanation! You’re throwing an impressive bluff, Mr. Trant; but I’ve
heard nothing yet to make me doubt that Newberry met his death at the
hands of his wife; and I’ll arrest her for his murder!”

“I can’t prevent your arresting Mrs. Newberry,” Trant swung to look
the police officer between the eyes hotly. “But I can tell you—if you
care to hear it—how Walter Newberry died! He was not shot by his wife;
he did not die by his own hand, as she believes and has told you. The
fifth shot—you have not found the fifth shell yet, Siler; and you will
not find it, for it was not fired either by Walter Newberry or his
wife. As she knelt, blinding her eyes as she faced her husband, Mrs.
Newberry could not know whether the fifth shot sounded in front or
behind her. If her head was not turned to one side, as she says it was
not, then—and this is a simple psychological fact, Siler, though it
seems to be unknown to you—it would be impossible for her to
distinguish between sounds directly ahead and directly behind. It was
not at her—at her hair—that her husband fired the four shots whose
empty shells we found, but over her head at the window directly behind
her. And it was through this just opened window that the fifth shot
came and killed him—the shot at eleven o’clock—which he had foreseen
and dreaded!”

“You must think I’m easy, Mr. Trant,” said the police officer
derisively. “You can’t clear her by dragging into this business some
third person who never existed. For there were no marks, and marks
would have been left by anybody who came to the window!”

“Marks!” Trant echoed. “If you mean marks on the window-sill and
floor, I cannot show you any. But the murderer did leave, of course,
one mark which in the end will probably prove final, even to you,
Siler. The shell of the fifth shot is missing because he carried it
away in his revolver. But the bullet—it will be a most remarkable
coincidence, Siler, if you find that the bullet which killed young
Newberry was the same as the four we know were shot from his wife’s
little automatic revolver!”

“But the ice—the ice under the window!” shouted the detective. “You
saw for yourself how her heels and ours cut through the crust; and you
saw that there were no other heel marks, as there must have been if
anyone had stood outside the window to look through it, or to fire
through it, as you say!”

“When you have reached the point, Siler,” said Trant, more quietly,
“where you can think of some class of men who would have left no heel
marks but who could have produced the effect on young Newberry’s mind
which his wife has described, you will have gone far toward the
discovery of the real murderer of Walter Newberry. In the meantime, I
have clews enough; and I hope to find help, which cannot be given me
by the city police, to enable me to bring the murderer to justice. I
will ask you, Mrs. Newberry,” he glanced toward the girl, “to let me
have a photograph of your husband, or”—he hesitated, unable to tell
from her manner whether she had heard him—“I will stop on my way out
to ask his photograph from his father.”

He glanced once more from the detective to the pale girl, who, since
she received notice of her arrest, had stood as though cut from
marble, with small hands tightly clenched and blind eyes fixed on
vacancy; then he left them.

The next morning’s papers, which carried startling headlines of the
murder of Walter Newberry, brought Police Detective Siler a feeling of
satisfaction with his own work. The detective, it is true, had been
made a little doubtful of his own assumptions by Trant’s confident
suggestion of a third person as the murderer. But he was reassured by
the newspaper accounts, though they contained merely an elaboration of
his own theory of an attack by the missionary’s dissipated son on his
wife and her shooting him in self-defense, which Siler had
successfully impressed not only on the police but on the reporters as
well.

Even the discovery on the second morning that the bullet which had now
been taken from young Newberry’s body was of .38 calibre and, as Trant
had predicted, not at all similar to the steel .32 calibre bullets
shot by the little automatic pistol which had belonged to young Mrs.
Newberry, did not disturb the police officer’s self-confidence, though
it obviously weakened the case against the wife. And when, on the day
following, Siler received orders to report at an hour when he was not
ordinarily on duty at the West End Police Station, where Mrs. Newberry
was still held under arrest, he pushed open, with an air of
importance, the door of the captain’s room, to which the sharp nod of
the desk sergeant had directed him.

The detective’s first glance showed him the room’s three occupants—the
huge figure of Division Inspector of Police Walker, lolling in the
chair before the captain’s desk; a slight, dark man—unknown to
Siler—near the window; and Luther Trant at the end of the room busy
arranging a somewhat complicated apparatus.

Trant, with a short nod of greeting, at once called Siler to his aid.

With the detective’s half-suspicious, half-respectful assistance, the
psychologist stretched across the end of the room a white sheet about
ten feet long, three feet high, and divided into ten rectangles by
nine vertical lines. Opposite this, and upon a table about ten feet
away, he set up a small electrical contrivance, consisting of two
magnets and wire coils supporting a small, round mirror about an inch
in diameter and so delicately set upon an axis that it turned at the
slightest current coming to the coils below it. In front of this
little mirror Trant placed a shaded electric lamp in such a position
that its light was reflected from the mirror upon the sheet at the end
of the room. Then he put down a carbon plate and a zinc plate at the
edge of the table; set a single cell battery under the table;
connected the battery with the coils controlling the mirror, and
connected them also with the zinc and carbon plates.

“I suppose,” Siler burst out finally with growing curiosity which even
the presence of the inspector could not restrain, “I haven’t got any
business to ask what all this machinery is for?”

“I was about to explain,” Trant answered.

The psychologist rested his hands lightly on the plates upon the
table; and, as he did so, a slight and, in fact, imperceptible current
passed through him from the battery; but it was enough to slightly
move the light reflected upon the screen.

“This apparatus,” the psychologist continued, as he saw even Walker
stare strangely at this result, “is the newest electric psychometer—or
‘the soul machine,’ as it is already becoming popularly known. It is
made after the models of Dr. Peterson, of Columbia University, and of
the Swiss psychologist Jung, of Zurich, and is probably the most
delicate and efficient instrument there is for detecting and
registering human emotion—such as anxiety, fear, and the sense of
guilt. Like the galvanometer which you saw me use to catch Caylis, the
Bronson murderer, in the first case where I worked with the police,
Inspector Walker,” the psychologist turned to his tall friend, “this
psychometer—which is really an improved and much more spectacular
galvanometer—is already in use by physicians to get the truth from
patients when they don’t want to tell it. No man can control the
automatic reflexes which this apparatus was particularly designed to
register when the subject is examined with his hands merely resting
upon these two plates! As you see,” he placed his hands in the test
position again, “these are arranged so that the very slight current
passing through my arms—so slight that I cannot feel it at all—moves
that mirror and swings the reflected light upon the screen according
to the amount of current coming through me. As you see now, the light
stays almost steady in the center of the screen, because the amount of
current coming through me is very slight, as I am not under any stress
or emotion of any sort. But if I were confronted suddenly with an
object to arouse fear—if, for instance, it reminded me of a crime I
was trying to conceal—I might be able to control every other evidence
of my fright, but I could not control the involuntary sweating of my
glands and the automatic changes in the blood pressure which allow the
electric current to flow more freely through me. The light would then
register immediately the amount of my emotion by the distance it swung
along the screen. But I will give you a much more perfect
demonstration of the instrument,” the psychologist concluded, while
all three examined it with varying degrees of interest and respect,
“during the next half hour while I am making the test that I have
planned to determine the murderer of Walter Newberry.”

“You mean,” cried Siler, “you are going to test the woman?”

“I might have thought it necessary to test Mrs. Newberry,” Trant
answered, “if the evidence at the house of the presence of a third
person who was the murderer had not been so plain as to make any test
of her useless.”

“Then you—you still stick to that?” Siler demanded derisively.

“Thanks to Mr. Ferris, who is a special agent of the United States
government,” Trant motioned to the slight, dark man who was the fourth
member of the party, “I have been able to fix upon four men, one of
whom, I feel absolutely certain, shot and killed young Newberry
through the window of the billiard-room that night. Inspector Walker
has had all four arrested and brought here. Mr. Ferris’s experience
and thorough knowledge enabled me to lay my hands on them much more
easily than I had feared, though I was able to go to him with
information which would have made their detection almost certain
sooner or later.”

“You mean information you got at the house?” asked Siler, less
derisively, as he caught the attentive attitude of the inspector.

“Just so, Siler; and it was as much at your disposal as mine,” Trant
replied. “It seemed to mean nothing to you that Walter Newberry knew
the hour at which he was to die—which made it seem more like an
execution than a murder; or that in his terror he raved that ‘he would
not do it—that they could not make him do it’—plainly meaning commit
suicide. Perhaps you don’t know that it is an Oriental custom, under
certain conditions, to allow a man who has been sentenced to death,
the alternative of carrying out the decree upon himself before a
certain day and hour that has been decided upon. But certainly his
ravings, as told us by his wife, ought to have given you a clew, if
you had heard only that sentence which she believed an injunction not
to sing loudly, but which was in reality a name—Sing lo!”

“Then—it was a Chinaman!” cried Siler, astounded.

“It could hardly have been any other sort of man, Siler. For there is
no other to whom it could be commended as a matter of such vital
importance whether his mother had small feet or large, as was shown in
the other sentence Mrs. Newberry repeated to us. But to a Chinaman
that fact is of prime importance; for it indicates whether he is of
low birth, when his mother would have had large feet, or of high, in
which case his women of the last generation would have had their feet
bound and made artificially smaller. It was that sentence that sent me
to Mr. Ferris.”

“I see—I see!” exclaimed the crest-fallen detective. “But if it was a
Chinaman, then, even with that thing,” he pointed to the instrument
Trant had just finished arranging, “you’ll never get the truth out of
him. You can’t get anything out of a Chinaman! Inspector Walker will
tell you that!”

“I know, Siler,” Trant answered, “that it is absolutely hopeless to
expect a confession from a Chinaman; they are so accustomed to control
the obvious signs of fear, guilt, the slightest trace or hint of
emotion, even under the most rigid examination, that it had come to be
regarded as a characteristic of the race. But the new psychology does
not deal with those obvious signs; it deals with the involuntary
reactions in the blood and glands which are common to all men
alike—even to Chinamen! We have in here,” the psychologist looked to
the door of an inner room, “the four Chinamen—Wong Bo, Billy Lee, Sing
Lo, and Sin Chung Ming.

“My first test is to see which of them—if any—were acquainted with
Walter Newberry; and next who, if any of them, knew where he lived.
For this purpose I have brought here Newberry’s photograph and a view
of his father’s house, which I had taken yesterday.” He stooped to one
of his suit-cases, and took out first a dozen photographs of young
men, among them Newberry’s; and about twenty views of different
houses, among which he mixed the one of the Newberry house. “If you
are ready, inspector, I will go ahead with the test.”

The psychologist threw open the door of the inner room, showing the
four Celestials in a stolid group, and summoned first Wong Bo, who
spoke English.

Trant, pushing a chair to the table, ordered the Oriental to sit down
and place his hands upon the plates at the table’s edge before him.
The Chinaman obeyed passively, as if expecting some sort of torture.
Immediately the light moved to the center of the screen, where it had
moved when Trant was touching the plates, then kept on toward the next
line beyond. But as Wong Bo’s first suspicious excitement—which the
movement of the light betrayed—subsided as he felt nothing, the light
returned to the center of the screen.

“You know why you have been brought here, Wong Bo?” Trant demanded of
the Chinaman.

“No,” the Chinaman answered shortly, the light moving six inches as he
did so.

“You know no reason at all why you should be brought here?”

“No,” the Chinaman answered calmly again, while the light moved about
six inches. Trant waited till it returned to its normal position in
the center of the screen.

“Do you know an American named Paul Tobin, Wong Bo?”

“No,” the Chinaman answered. This time the light remained stationary.

“Nor one named Ralph Murray?”

“No.” Still the light stayed stationary.

“Hugh Larkin, Wong Bo?”

“No.” Calmly again, and with the light quiet in the center of the
screen.

“Walter Newberry?” the psychologist asked in precisely the same tone
as he had put the preceding question.

“No,” the Chinaman answered laconically again; but before he answered
and almost before the name was off Trant’s lips, the light—which had
stayed almost still at the recital of the other names—jumped quickly
to one side across the screen, crossed the first division line and
moved on toward the second and stayed there. It had moved over a foot!
But the face of the Oriental was as quiet, patient, and impassive as
before. The psychologist made no comment; but waited for the light
slowly to return to its normal position. Then he took up his pile of
portrait photographs.

“You say you do not know any of these men, Wong Bo,” Trant said
quietly, but with the effect of sending the light swinging half the
distance again, “You may know them, but not by name, so I want you to
look at these pictures.” Trant showed him the first. “Do you know that
man, Wong Bo?”

“No,” the Chinaman answered patiently. Trant glanced quickly to see
that the light stayed steady; then showed him four more pictures of
young men, getting the same answer and precisely the same effect. He
showed the sixth picture—the photograph of Walter Newberry.

“You know him?” Trant asked precisely in the same tone as the others.

“No,” Wong Bo answered with precisely the same patient impassiveness.
Not a muscle of his face changed nor an eyelash quivered; but as soon
as Trant had displayed this picture and the Chinaman’s eyes fell upon
it, the light on the screen again jumped a space and settled near the
second line to the left!

Trant put aside the portraits and took up the pictures of the houses.
He waited again till the light slowly resumed its central position on
the screen.

“You have never gone to this house, Wong Bo?” he showed a large, stone
mansion, not at all like the Newberry’s.

“No,” the Chinaman replied, impassive as ever. The light remained
steady.

“Nor to this—or this—or this?” Trant showed three more with the same
result. “Nor this?” he displayed now a rear view of the Newberry
house.

“No,” quietly again; but, as when Newberry’s name was mentioned and
his picture shown, the light swung swiftly to one side and stood
trembling, again a foot and a half to the left of its normal position
when shown the other pictures!

“That will do for the present,” Trant dismissed Wong Bo. “Send him
back to his cell, away from the others,” he said to Walker, with
flashing eyes. “We will try the rest—in turn!”

And rapidly, and with precisely the same questions and test he
examined Billy Lee and Sing Lo. Each man made precisely the same
denials and in the same manner as Wong Bo, but to the increasing
wonder and surprise of Walker and the utter astonishment of Siler, for
each man the light stayed steady when they were asked if they knew the
other Americans named; while for each the light swung suddenly wide
and trembling when Walter Newberry’s name was mentioned and when his
picture was shown. And for Sing Lo also—precisely as for Wong Bo—the
light wavered suddenly and swung, quivering, a foot and a half to the
left when they were shown the Newberry home.

“Bring in Sin Chung Ming!” the psychologist commanded with subdued
fire shining in his eyes; but he hid all signs of excitement himself,
as the government agent handed the last Oriental over to him. Trant
set the yellow hands over the plates and started his questions in the
same quiet tone as before. For the first two questions the light moved
three times, as it had done with the others—and as even Ferris and
Siler now seemed to be expecting it to move—only this time it seemed
even to the police officers to swing a little wider. And at Walter
Newberry’s name, for the first time in any of the tests, it crossed
the second dividing line at the first impulse; moved toward the third
and stayed there.

Even Siler now waited with bated breath, as Trant took up his pile of
pictures; and, as he came to the picture of the murdered man and the
house where he had lived, for the second and third time in that single
test the light—stationary when Sin Chung Ming glanced at the other
photographs—trembled across the screen to the third dividing line. For
the others it had moved hardly eighteen inches, but when Sin Chung
Ming saw the pictured face of the murdered man it had swung almost
three feet.

“Inspector Walker,” Trant drew the giant officer aside, “this is the
man, I think, for the final test. You will carry it out as I arranged
with you?”

“Sin Chung Ming,” the psychologist turned back to the Chinaman
swiftly, as the inspector, without comment, left the room, “you have
been watching the little light, have you not? You saw it move? It
moved when you lied, Sin Chung Ming! It will always move when you lie.
It moved when you said you did not know Walter Newberry; it moved when
you saw his picture, and pretended not to know it; it moved when you
saw the picture of his house, which you said you did not know! Look
how it is moving now, as you grow afraid that you have betrayed your
secret to us now, Sin Chung Ming—as you have and will,” Trant pointed
to the swinging light in triumph.

A low knock sounded on the door; but Trant, watching the light now
slowly returning to its normal place, waited an instant more. Then he
himself rapped gently on the table. The door to the next room—directly
opposite the Chinaman’s eyes—swung slowly open; and through it they
could see the scene which Trant and the inspector had prepared. In the
middle of the floor knelt young Mrs. Newberry, her back toward them,
her hands pressed against her face; and six feet beyond a man stood,
facing her. Ferris and Siler looked in astonishment at Trant, for
there was no meaning in this scene to them at first. Then Siler
remembered suddenly, and Ferris guessed, that such must have been the
scene in the billiard room that night at the Newberry’s; thus it must
have been seen by the man who fired through the window at young
Newberry that night—and to him, but to that man only—it would bring a
shock of terror. And appreciating this, they stared swiftly, first at
the Chinaman’s passionless and immobile face; then at the light upon
the screen and saw it leap across bar after bar. And, as the Chinaman
saw it, and knew that it was betraying him, it leaped and leaped
again; swung wider and wider; until at last the impassiveness of the
Celestial’s attitude was for an instant broken, and Sin Chung Ming
snatched his hands from the metal plates.

  [Illustration: In a darkened room a man in a silk Tang suit sits at
  a table. Wires lead from the fingers on one hand to a small
  electrical machine. A table lamp is pointed at the top of the
  machine where a mirror is mounted, reflecting light onto a screen at
  the right. A young man stands by and watches the seated man. Through
  an open doorway can be seen two people: a woman, seated, holding her
  face in her hands, and a man, standing, pointing a gun at the
  woman.]

  Caption: The Chinaman saw it and knew that it was betraying him, but
  it leaped and leaped again

“I had guessed that anyway, Sin Chung Ming,” Trant swiftly closed the
door, as Walker returned to the room, “for your feeling at sound of
Walter Newberry’s name and the sight of his picture was so much deeper
than any of the rest. So, it was you that fired the shot, after
watching the house with Sing Lo and Wong Bo, as their fright when they
saw the picture of the house showed, while Billy Lee was not needed at
the house that night and has never seen it, though he knew what was to
be done. That is all I need of you now, Sin Chung Ming; for I have
learned what I wanted to know.”

As the fourth of the Chinamen was led away to his cell, Trant turned
back to Inspector Walker and Siler.

“I must acknowledge my debt to Mr. Ferris,” he said with a glance
toward the man of whom he spoke, “for help in solving this case,
without which I could not have brought it to a conclusion without
giving much more time to the investigation. Mr. Ferris, as you already
know, Inspector Walker, as special agent for the Government, has for
years been engaged in the enforcement of the Chinese exclusion laws.
The sentence repeated to us by Mrs. Newberry, in which her husband,
delirious with fright, seemed warning some one that to acknowledge
that his mother had large feet would prevent him from ‘getting in,’
seemed to me to establish a connection between young Newberry’s terror
and an evasion of the exclusion laws. I went at once to Mr. Ferris to
test this idea, and he recognized its application at once.

“As the exclusion laws against all but a very small class of Chinese
are being more strictly enforced than ever before, there has been a
large and increasing traffic among the Chinese in bogus papers to
procure entry into this country of Chinese belonging to the excluded
classes. And in addition to being supplied with forged official papers
for entry, as Ferris can tell you, the applicants of the classes
excluded are supplied with regular ‘coaching papers’ so that they can
correctly answer the questions asked them at San Francisco or Seattle.
The injunction to ‘say your mother had small feet’ was recognized at
once by Ferris as one of the instructions of the ‘coaching paper’ to
get a laborer entered as a man of the merchant class.

“Mr. Ferris and I together investigated the career of Walter Newberry
after his return from China, where he had spent nearly the whole of
his life, and we were able to establish, as we expected we might, a
connection between him and the Sing Lo Trading Company—a Chinese
company which Mr. Ferris had long suspected of dealing in fraudulent
admission papers, though he had never been able to bring home to them
any proof. We found, also, that young Newberry had spent and gambled
away much more money in the last few months than he had legitimately
received. And we were able to make certain that this money had come to
him through the Sing Lo Company, though obviously not for such uses.
As it is not an uncommon thing for Chinese engaged in the fraudulent
bringing in of their countrymen to confide part of the business to
unprincipled Americans—especially as all papers have to be viséd by
American consuls and disputes settled in American courts—we became
certain that young Newberry had been serving the Sing Lo Company in
this capacity. It was plain that he had diverted a large amount of
money from the ends for which the members of the Sing Lo Company had
intended it to be used and his actions as described by his wife, made
it equally certain that he had been sentenced by the members of the
Company to death, and given the Oriental alternative of committing
suicide before eleven o’clock on Sunday night, or else the company
would take the carrying out of the sentence into their own hands. Now
whether it will be possible to convict all four of the Chinamen we had
here for complicity in his murder, or whether Sin Chung Ming, who
fired the shot will be the only one tried, I do not know. But the
others, in any case, will be turned over to Mr. Ferris for prosecution
for their evasions of the exclusion laws.”

“Exclusion laws!” exclaimed the giant inspector—“Mr. Ferris can look
after his exclusion laws if he wants. What we want, Trant, is to
convict these men for the murder of Walter Newberry; and knowing what
we do now, we will get a confession out of them some way!”

“I doubt whether, under the circumstances, any force could be brought
to bear that would extort any formal confession from these Chinamen,”
the Government agent shook his head. “They would lose their ‘face’ and
with it all reputation among their countrymen.”

But at this instant the door of the room was dashed open and the
flushed face of the desk sergeant appeared before them.

“Inspector!” he cried sharply, “the chink’s dead! The last one, Sin
Chung Ming, choked himself as soon as he was alone in his cell!”

The inspector turned to Trant who looked to Ferris, first, in his
surprise.

“What? Ah—I see!” the immigration officer comprehended after an
instant. “He considered what we found from him here confession
enough—especially since he implicated the others with him—so that his
‘face’ was lost. To him, it was unpardonable weakness to let us find
what we did. I think, then, Mr. Trant,” he concluded quietly, “that
you can safely consider your case proved. His suicide is the surest
proof that this Chinaman considered that he had confessed.”


  The End



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

This transcription is made from the edition published in 1910 by
Small, Maynard & Company. The following alterations have been made to
correct what are believed to be unambiguous errors in the text:

 * “42$=80” was changed to “43$=80”, as per the surrounding context
   (Chapter IV).
 * “straighened” was changed to “straightened” (Chapter V).
 * “chachihuitl” was changed to “chalchihuitl” (Chapter VI).
 * “neice” was changed to “niece” (Chapter VII).
 * “touseled” was changed to “tousled” (Chapter VII).
 * “mysterous” was changed to “mysterious” (Chapter VIII).
 * Three occurrences of mismatched quotation marks have been repaired.





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