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Title: The Man Higher Up
Authors: Edwin Balmer
William B. MacHarg
Release Date: January 31, 2022 [eBook #67292]
Language: English
Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN HIGHER UP ***
The Man Higher Up
[Illustration]
Trant substituted for the photograph 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.
The Man Higher Up
By Edwin Balmer and William B. MacHarg
Authors of “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Hammering Man”
This excellent detective scientifiction story is the
first of a series to appear in AMAZING STORIES. These
romances depict the achievement of Luther Trant,
psychological detective.
While the results of psychic evidence have not as yet
been accepted in our courts, there is no doubt that at
a not-distant date such evidence will be given due
importance in the conviction of our criminals. The
authors of this tale are experts in their science and
the series cannot fail to arouse your interest to the
highest degree. A second story will appear in an early
issue of AMAZING STORIES.
The first real blizzard of the winter had burst upon New York from the
Atlantic. For seventy-two hours—as Rentland, chief 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 chief 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 “Chief 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 scale checkers. 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 chief 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 so 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 a 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 with impressive statuettes, vases, and gaudy bits of
bric-a-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, 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’ 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 on 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 on 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’ 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: The mysterious string-wrapped piece of bent wire.]
“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 instruments 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 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 car
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 ringmaster 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 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 airtight
tube to a little pencil which it lowers and raises. 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 airtight. 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 airtight 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 is 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 is in its normal
position this pencil makes simply a straight line upon the sheet; but
instantly when the key is pressed down, the line breaks downward also.
This third instrument is used merely to record on the sheet, by the
change in the line, the point at which the object that arouses
sensation or emotion is 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, any way?”
“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]
“Ach!” 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
emotions, 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.
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: Record of the reaction when Trant said: “A prisoner in
the _Elizabethan Age_!”]
[Illustration: Record made when Welter saw the photograph of a heap of
coffee sacks.]
[Illustration: Record made when the spring was shown to Welter.]
“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, and,
including for one instant in his now frankly menacing gaze both Trant
and Professor Schmalz, 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
photographed 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!”
He seized his hat and dashed from the room, leaving them in an
astonished group.
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 taxicab. “The American Commodities
Company’s dock 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 custom’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 asked.
“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 his car 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,” Trent 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’ 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 stepfather told 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 fibres 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-rod 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 wrong doing 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 are 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, to capture the man who makes
the millions and pays them the pennies—the man higher up?”
The End
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 1926 issue
of Amazing Stories magazine.]
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