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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #67292 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67292)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Man Higher Up, by Edwin Balmer
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-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.]
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN HIGHER UP ***
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-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Man Higher Up, by Edwin Balmer</p>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Man Higher Up</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Authors: Edwin Balmer</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em;'>William B. MacHarg</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 31, 2022 [eBook #67292]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
- <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN HIGHER UP ***</div>
-
-<div class='section'>
-
-<div class='ce'>
-<h1>The Man Higher Up </h1>
-</div>
-<div id='i001' class='mt01 mb01 wi001'>
- <img src='images/img-001.jpg' alt='' style='width:100%' />
-</div>
-<div style='font-size:0.9em'>
-<blockquote>
-<p style='text-indent:0'>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.</p>
-
-</blockquote>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='section'>
-
-<div class='ce'>
-<div style='font-size:1.25em;margin-bottom:0em;'>The Man Higher Up </div>
-<div style='font-size:1.1em;'>By Edwin Balmer and William B. MacHarg </div>
-<div style='font-size:0.9em;margin-bottom:2em;'>Authors of “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Hammering Man” </div>
-</div>
-<div style="margin-bottom:2em; margin-left:20%; width:60%; border:1px solid black; padding:0.3em 0.5em; font-size:0.9em;">
-
-<p style='text-indent:0; margin-bottom:0.7em;'>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.</p>
-
-<p style='text-indent:0'>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.</p>
-
-</div>
-<p>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 <i>Elizabethan Age</i>, which had cleared the Narrows
-on Monday night.</p>
-
-<p>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, <i>Elizabethan Age</i>,
-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.</p>
-
-<p>“The seven o’clock train from Chicago?” the clerk asked in a guarded
-voice.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“They’ve wired that the <i>Elizabethan Age</i> couldn’t get beyond Boston,
-Rowan,” he cried curiously.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“You are Mr. Trant?”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes.”</p>
-
-<p>“I am Rentland. This way, please.” He led the psychologist to the
-little room behind the files, where he had telephoned the moment
-before.</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>“No,” said Rentland, as he waved Trant to a seat. “President Welter is
-certainly not troubling himself to that extent over an investigation.”</p>
-
-<p>“Then the company, or some other officer?” Trant questioned, with
-increasing curiosity.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“As a secret agent for the Government?” Trant repeated, with rapidly
-rising interest.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“To steal? How?”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“Welter thinks it policy, for some reason, to see her a moment every
-morning. But she always comes out almost at once—crying.”</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“‘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.”</p>
-
-<p>“And remember,” Trant interposed, “that I know very little about the
-American Commodities Company.”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“Including the weighing?”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“And Landers?”</p>
-
-<p>“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 <i>Covallo</i>. 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.</p>
-
-<p>“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!”</p>
-
-<p>“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 <i>Covallo</i>. But on the night
-after which the body was found—was it occupied that night?”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“Then it was a very unlikely supposition. You do not believe in that
-accident, Miss Rowan?” Trant said, brusquely.</p>
-
-<p>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—”</p>
-
-<p>“You say the circumstances of Morse’s disappearance were the same?”
-Trant pressed quietly when she was able to proceed.</p>
-
-<p>“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 <i>Elizabethan Age</i>. 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.”</p>
-
-<p>“What did you find in Morse’s bureau?” asked Trant.</p>
-
-<p>“I found nothing.”</p>
-
-<p>“Nothing?” Trant repeated. “That is impossible, Miss Rowan! Think
-again! Remember he warned you that what you found might seem trivial
-and useless.”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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:</p>
-
-<div id='i002' class='mt01 mb01 wi002'>
- <img src='images/img-002.png' alt='' style='width:100%' />
-<p class='caption'>The mysterious string-wrapped piece of bent wire.</p>
-</div>
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>Trant and Rentland stared disappointedly at this strange implement,
-which the girl handed to the psychologist.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>Trant’s eyes returned, with more intelligent scrutiny, to the
-mysterious implement in his hand.</p>
-
-<p>“What salary do checkers receive, Rentland?” he asked, in a low tone.</p>
-
-<p>“One hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.”</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“Three thousand a year,” Rentland replied.</p>
-
-<p>“Tell me, Miss Rowan,” said Trant, “this implement—have you by any
-chance mentioned it to President Welter?”</p>
-
-<p>“Why, no, Mr. Trant.”</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“If he comes this morning,” Trant glanced quickly at his watch, “you
-and I, Rentland, might much better be waiting for him over there.”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“That’s him—see!” she exclaimed.</p>
-
-<p>“That the man with the scar!” cried Rentland. “Well! I know him.”</p>
-
-<p>He made for the door, caught at the ulster and pulled the little man
-into the house by main force.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>“Exactly,” said Rentland, brusquely. “What were you calling to see
-Landers for?”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“So you got nothing at all out of them?” Rentland interposed.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“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!”</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>“We must take those we can get,” said Dickey sharply.</p>
-
-<p>Trant laid his hand on the little officer’s arm.</p>
-
-<p>“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!”</p>
-
-<p>“But what else can we do?” said Rentland, doubtfully.</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“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!”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>“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!”</p>
-
-<p>“But he would be interested in them?”</p>
-
-<p>“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!”</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>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!”</p>
-
-<p>“And you will have two or three scientists present to watch the
-experiments? And you will allow me to be there also and assist?”</p>
-
-<p>“With great pleasure.”</p>
-
-<p>“But, Professor Schmalz, you need not introduce me to Mr. Welter, who
-will think I am one of your assistants.”</p>
-
-<p>“As you wish about that, pupil of my dear old friend.”</p>
-
-<p>“Excellent!” Trant leaped to his feet. “Provided it is possible to
-arrange this with Mr. Welter, how soon can you let me know?”</p>
-
-<p>“Ach! it is as good as arranged, I tell you. His vanity will arrange
-it if I assure the greatest publicity—”</p>
-
-<p>“The more publicity the better.”</p>
-
-<p>“Wait! It shall be fixed before you leave here.”</p>
-
-<p>The professor led the way into his private study, telephoned to the
-president of the American Commodities Company, and made the
-appointment without trouble.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>The instant’s silence which followed Schmalz’s rapid explanation was
-broken by one of Welter’s companions with the query:</p>
-
-<p>“Well, what’s the use of all this stuff, any way?”</p>
-
-<p>“Ach!” said Schmalz, bluntly, “it is interesting, curious! I will show
-you.”</p>
-
-<p>“Will one of you gentlemen,” said Trant, quickly, “permit us to make
-use of him in the demonstration?”</p>
-
-<p>“Try it, Jim,” Welter laughed, noisily.</p>
-
-<p>“Not I,” said the other. “This is your circus.”</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“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!</p>
-
-<div id='i003' class='mt01 mb01 wi003'>
- <img src='images/img-003.png' alt='' style='width:100%' />
-</div>
-<p>“Ach!” exclaimed Schmalz, “you do not like caviar.”</p>
-
-<p>“How do you know that?” demanded Welter.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“By the Lord! Welter, what do you think of that?” cried one of his
-companions; “Your finger gets smaller when you taste caviar!”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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—“<i>a prisoner in the Elizabethan Age!</i>”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>President Welter rose abruptly, but not too hurriedly. “That’s about
-enough of this tomfoolery,” he said, with perfect self-possession.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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:</p>
-
-<div id='i004' class='mt01 mb01 wi004'>
- <img src='images/img-004.png' alt='' style='width:100%' />
-<p class='caption'>Record of the reaction when Trant said: “A prisoner in the <i>Elizabethan Age</i>!”</p>
-</div>
-<div id='i005' class='mt01 mb01 wi005'>
- <img src='images/img-005.png' alt='' style='width:100%' />
-<p class='caption'>Record made when Welter saw the photograph of a heap of coffee sacks.</p>
-</div>
-<div id='i006' class='mt01 mb01 wi006'>
- <img src='images/img-006.png' alt='' style='width:100%' />
-<p class='caption'>Record made when the spring was shown to Welter.</p>
-</div>
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>By immense self-control, the president of the American Commodities
-Company met his eyes fairly. “None,” he answered.</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>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!”</p>
-
-<p>“As they stopped Landers?” Trant inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“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!”</p>
-
-<p>He seized his hat and dashed from the room, leaving them in an
-astonished group.</p>
-
-<p>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!”</p>
-
-<p>Rentland and the chauffeur, awaiting him in the machine, galvanized at
-his coming.</p>
-
-<p>“Hot work?” the custom’s agent asked.</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“Not at all,” said Trant, “for I have him already. He will deny
-everything, of course, but it’s too late now!”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“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:</p>
-
-<p><i>Police have taken your friend out of our hands; look out for trouble.
-Wilson.</i></p>
-
-<p>“Who is Wilson?” Trant demanded.</p>
-
-<p>“I am not sure it is the man, but the captain of the <i>Elizabethan Age</i>
-is a friend of father’s named Wilson!”</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“Now,” the secret agent volunteered, “it is up to me to find Dickey’s
-ladder!”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“Rowan, the dock superintendent!” Dickey whispered.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“Wait!” Rentland, behind them, motioned.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“The black,” Rentland explained, “is Rowan’s bodyguard. He needs him.”</p>
-
-<p>“I see,” Trant replied. “And for Miss Rowan’s sake I am glad it was
-that way,” he added, enigmatically.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah! Mr. Welter, you got here quickly,” said Trant, meeting calmly his
-outraged astonishment at the scene. “But a little too late.”</p>
-
-<p>“What is the matter here?” Welter governed his voice commandingly.
-“And what has brought <i>you</i> here, from your phrenology?” he demanded,
-contemptuously, of Trant.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“What raving idiocy is this?” Welter replied, still with excellent
-moderation. “I came here to sign some necessary papers for ships
-clearing, and you—”</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.”</p>
-
-<p>“My complicity in the death of Landers and the disappearance of
-Morse?” Welter roared.</p>
-
-<p>“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 <i>Elizabethan Age</i> 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
-<i>Elizabethan Age</i>. 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 <i>Elizabethan Age</i>.’</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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!”</p>
-
-<p>“—— —— 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.</p>
-
-<p>“Let him go, if he wants to!” Trant called to the officer. “He can
-neither escape nor hide. His money holds him under bond!”</p>
-
-<p>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!</p>
-
-<p>“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 <i>Elizabethan
-Age</i>; 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.”</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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?”</p>
-
-<div class='ce'>
-<div style='font-size:0.9em;font-variant:small-caps;'>The End </div>
-</div>
-<div class="tn">
- <p style='text-indent:0'>Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in
- the December 1926 issue of <i>Amazing Stories</i> magazine.</p>
-</div>
-</div>
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