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 a
nd 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!”
“1 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!”
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 busy-bodies, elbowed aside his desk sergeant without a word, and slammed into his private office. The customary pile of morning papers, flaying him in stinging frontpage 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—mu
rdered. 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—”
The Mystery & Suspense Novella Page 20