The Fast Watch
Police Captain Crowley—red-headed, alert, brave—stamped into the North
Side police station an hour later than usual and in a very bad temper.
He glared defiantly at the row of patrolmen, reporters, and
busybodies, elbowed aside his desk sergeant without a word, and
slammed into his private office. The customary pile of morning papers,
flaying him in stinging front-page columns, covered his desk. He
glanced them over, grunting; then swept them to the floor and let
himself drop heavily into his chair.
“He’s _got_ to be guilty!” The big fist struck the table top
desperately. “It’s got to be,” the hoarse voice iterated
determinedly—“_him!_” He had checked the last word as the door swung
open, only to utter it more forcibly as he recognized the desk
sergeant.
“Kanlan, eh, Ed?” the desk sergeant ventured. “You have him at
Harrison Street station again the boys tell me.”
“Yes, we have him.”
“You got nothing out of him yet?”
“No, nothing—yet!”
“But you think it’s him?”
“Who said anything about thinking?” Crowley glanced to see that the
door was shut. “I said it’s _got_ to be him! And—it’s got to, whether
or no, ain’t it?”
A month before, Randolph Bronson—the city prosecuting attorney for
whose unpunished murder Crowley was under fire—had dared to try to
break up and send to the penitentiary the sixteen men who formed the
most notorious and dangerous gambling “ring” in the city. It grew
certain that some of the sixteen would stick at nothing to put the
prosecutor out of the way. The chief of police particularly charged
Crowley, therefore, to see to Bronson’s safety in the North Side
precinct, where the young attorney boarded. But Crowley had failed;
for within twelve days of the warning, early one morning, Bronson had
been found dead a block from his boarding house—murdered. Crowley had
been unable to fix a clew upon a single one of the sixteen. He had
confidently arrested them all at once, but after his stiffest “third
degree” had to release them. Now, in desperation, he had rearrested
Kanlan.
“Sure,” said the desk sergeant, “Kanlan or some one’s got to be guilty
soon—whether or no. But if you ain’t got the goods on Kanlan yet,
maybe you’d want to talk to a lad that’s waiting in front.”
“Who is he? What does he know?”
“Trant’s his name—from the university, he says. And he says he can
pick our man.”
“What is he—student?”
“He says some sort of perfesser.”
“Professor!” Crowley half turned away.
“Not that kind, Ed.” The desk sergeant bent one arm and tapped his
biceps. “He’s got plenty of this; and he’s got hair, too”—the sergeant
glanced at Crowley’s red head—“as red as any, Cap.”
“Send him in.”
Crowley looked up quickly at Trant when he entered. He saw a young man
with hair indeed as thick and red as his own; and with a figure, for
his more medium height, quite as muscular as any police officer’s. He
saw that the young man’s blue-gray eyes were not exact mates—that the
right was quite noticeably more blue than the other, and under it was
a small, pink scar which reddened conspicuously with the slightest
flush of the face.
“Luther Trant, Captain Crowley,” Trant introduced himself. “For two
years I have been conducting experiments in the psychological
laboratory of the university—”
“Psycho—Lord! Another clairvoyant!”
“If the man who killed Bronson is one of the sixteen men you suspect,
and you will let me examine them, properly, I can pick the murderer at
once.”
“Examine them properly! Saints in Heaven, son! Say! that gang needed a
stiff drink all round when we were through examining them; and never a
word or a move gave a man away!”
“Those men—of course not!” Trant returned hotly. “For they can hold
their tongues and their faces, and you looked at nothing else! But
while you were examining them, if I, or any other trained
psychologist, had had a galvanometer contact against the palms of
their hands, or—”
“A palmist, Lord preserve us!” Crowley cried. “Say! don’t ever think
we needed you. We got our man yesterday—Kanlan—and we’ll have a
confession out of him by night. Sergeant!” he called, as the door
opened to admit a man, “do you know what you let in—a palmist!” But it
was not the sergeant who entered. “A-ah! Inspector Walker!”
“Morning, Crowley,” Trant heard the quiet response behind him as he
turned. A giant in the uniform of an inspector of police almost filled
the doorway.
“Come with me, young man,” he said. “Miss Allison was passing with me
outside here and we heard some of what you’ve been saying. We’d like
to hear more.”
Trant looked up at the intelligent face and followed. A young woman
was waiting outside the door. As the inspector pointed Trant toward a
quiet room in the rear of the building, she followed. Inspector Walker
fastened the door behind them. The girl had seated herself beside the
table in the center, and as she turned to Trant she raised her veil
above her brown, curling hair, and pinned it over her hat. He
recognized her at once as the girl to whom Bronson had become engaged
barely a week before he had been killed. On her had fallen all the
horrors as well as the grief of Bronson’s murder, and Trant did not
wonder that the shadow of that event was visible in her sweet face.
But he read there also another look—a look of apprehension and
defiance.
“I was coming in with Inspector Walker to see Captain Crowley,” the
girl explained to Trant, “when I overheard you telling him that you
think this—Kanlan—couldn’t have killed Mr. Bronson. I hope this is
so.”
Trant looked to Walker. “Miss Allison’s father was Judge Allison, the
truest man who ever sat on the bench in this city,” Walker responded.
“His daughter knows she must not try to prevent us from punishing a
man who murders; but neither of us wants to believe Kanlan is the
man—for good reasons. Now, what was that you were telling Crowley?”
“I was trying to tell Captain Crowley of a simple test which must
prove Kanlan’s guilt or innocence at once, and, if necessary, then
find the guilty man. I have been conducting experiments to register
and measure the effects and reactions of emotions. A person under the
influence of fear or the stress of guilt must always betray signs. A
hardened man can control all the signs for which the police ordinarily
look; he can control his features, prevent his face flushing
noticeably. But no man, however hardened or trained to control
himself, can prevent many minute changes which by scientific means are
measurable and betray him hopelessly. No man, however on his guard—to
take the simplest test—can control the sweat glands in the palms of
his hands, which always moisten under emotion.”
“A scared man sweats; that’s so,” Walker assented.
“So psychologists have devised a simple way of registering the
emotions shown through the glands in the palms of the hand,” Trant
continued, “by means of the galvanometer. I have one in the box I left
with the desk sergeant. It is merely a device for measuring the
varying strength of an ordinary electric current. The man tested holds
in each hand a contact metal wired to the battery. When he grasps them
a weak and imperceptible current passes through his body or—if his
hands are very dry—perhaps no current at all. He is then examined and
confronted with circumstances or objects connected with the crime. If
he is innocent, the objects have no significance in his mind, and
cause no emotion. His face betrays none; neither can his hands. But if
he is guilty, though he still manages to control his face, he cannot
prevent the moisture from flowing from the glands in his palms.
Understand me; I do not mean an amount of moisture noticeable to the
eye, but it is _enough to make an electric contact through the metals
which he holds—enough to register very plainly upon the galvanometer,
whose moving needle, traveling in the scale, betrays him pitilessly_!”
The inspector shook his head skeptically.
“I recognize that this is new to you,” said Trant. “But I am telling
you no theory. Using the galvanometer properly, we can this morning
determine—scientifically and irrefutably—whether or not Kanlan killed
Mr. Bronson, and later, if it is not he, which of the others is the
assassin. May I try it?”
Miss Allison, more white than before, had risen, and laid her hand
upon Trant’s sleeve.
“Oh, try it, Mr. Trant!” she cried. “Try—try anything which can stop
them from showing through this gambler, Kanlan, and Mrs. Hawtin that
Mr. Bronson—” She broke off, and turned to the inspector. Walker was
looking Trant over again. The psychologist faced the police officer
eagerly. “I can’t believe it’s Kanlan,” said Walker.
[Illustration: A gentleman, a man in a police uniform, and a
gentlewoman are speaking at a table. The woman is dressed in black,
with an elaborate hat and veil, and is standing up from her chair,
placing one hand on the arm of the police officer as she speaks.]
Caption: “Oh, try it, Mr. Trant!” she cried. “Try—try anything”
Until now Trant had been impressed chiefly by the huge bulk of the
inspector, but as Walker spoke of the gambler whom Crowley, to save
his own face, was trying to “railroad” to execution, Trant saw in the
inspector something approaching sentimentality. For he was that common
anomaly of the police department, an officer born and bred among the
criminals he is set to watch.
“I’ll take you to Kanlan,” the inspector granted at last. “As things
are going with him, you can’t hurt, and maybe you can help. Everyone
knows Kanlan would have put out Bronson; but not—I am certain—that
way. I was born in the basement opposite Kanlan’s. If Mr. Bronson had
been attacked in broad day, with a detective on each side of him and
all of them had been beaten up or killed, I’d have been the first to
step over to Kanlan and say, ‘Jake, you’re wanted.’ But Bronson was
not caught that way. The man that killed him waited till the house was
quiet, until Crowley’s guards were asleep, and then somehow or
other—how is a bigger mystery than the murder itself—got him out alone
in the street at two o’clock in the morning, and struck him dead from
a dark doorway.
“But I’m not taking you to Kanlan only to help save him from Crowley.”
Walker straightened suddenly as his eyes met the girl’s. “It’s to help
Miss Allison, too. For the only clew Crowley or anyone else has to the
man who murdered Bronson is in connection with the means of getting
Bronson out of the house that way. Crowley has discovered that a Mrs.
Hawtin, whom Kanlan can control through her gambling debts to him, is
living a few doors beyond the place where Bronson’s body was found.
Crowley claims he can show Mrs. Hawtin was a friend of Bronson’s,
and—” The inspector hesitated, glancing at the girl.
“Captain Crowley’s case,” said Miss Allison, finishing, “is based on
the charge that after Randolph—Mr. Bronson—had returned to his rooms
from seeing me that evening, he went out again two hours later to
answer a summons from this—this Mrs. Hawtin. So long as Captain
Crowley can convict some one for this crime, they seem to care nothing
how they slander and blacken the name of the man who is killed—as
little as they care for those left who—love him.”
“I see,” said Trant. His eyes rested a moment upon the inspector, then
again upon the girl. It surprised him to feel, as his eyes met hers
that short moment, how suddenly this problem, which he had set himself
to solve, had changed from a scientific examination and selection of a
guilty man to the saving—though through the same science—of the
reputation of a man no longer able to defend himself, and the honor of
a woman devoted to that man’s memory.
“But before I can examine Kanlan, or help you in any other way, Miss
Allison,” he explained gently, “I must be sure of my facts. It is not
too much to ask you to go over them with me? No, Inspector Walker,” he
anticipated the big police officer’s objection as Walker started to
speak, “if I am to help Miss Allison, I cannot spare her now.”
“Please do not, Mr. Trant,” the girl begged bravely.
“Thank you. Mr. Bronson, I believe, was still boarding on Superior
Street at a bachelor’s boarding house?”
“Yes,” the girl replied. “It is kept by Mrs. Mitchell, a very
respectable widow with a little boy. Randolph had boarded with her for
six years. She had once been in great trouble and he was kind to her.
He often spoke of how she gave him motherly care.”
“Motherly?” Trant asked. “How old is she?”
“Twenty-seven or eight, I should think.”
“Thank you. How long had you known Mr. Bronson, Miss Allison?”
“A little over two years.”
“Yes; and intimately, how long?”
“Almost from the first.”
“But you were not engaged to him until just the week before his
death?”
“Yes; our engagement was not made known till just two days before
his—death.”
“Inspector Walker, how long before Mr. Bronson was killed was any of
the ‘ring’ likely to put him out of their way?”
“For two weeks at least.”
“It fits Crowley’s case, of course, as well as—any other,” said Trant,
thoughtfully, “that two days after the announcement of his engagement
was the first time anyone could actually catch him alone. But it is
worth noting, inspector. Mr. Bronson called upon you that evening,
Miss Allison? Everything was as usual between you?”
“Entirely, Mr. Trant. Of course we both recognized the constant danger
he was in. I knew how and why he had to be guarded. His regular man,
from the city detail, had been with him all day downtown; and Captain
Crowley’s man came with him to our house. Mr. Bronson went back to his
boarding house with him precisely at half past ten.”
“He reached the boarding house,” Inspector Walker took up the account,
“a little before eleven and went at once to his room. At twelve-thirty
the last boarder came in. Crowley’s man immediately chained the front
door and made all fast. He went to the kitchen to get something to
eat, he says, and may have fallen asleep, though he denies it.
However, until after Bronson’s body was found, we have made certain,
there was no alarm inside or out.”
“There is no doubt that Mr. Bronson was in the house when it was
locked up?”
“None. The last boarder, as he went to his room, saw Bronson sitting
at his table going over some papers. He was still dressed but said he
was going to bed immediately. An hour and a half later—with no clew as
to how he went out, with no discoverable reason for his going out
except that given by Crowley—a patrolman found Bronson’s body on the
sidewalk a block east of his boarding house. He had been struck in the
forehead and killed instantly by a man who must have waited for him in
the vestibule of a little electro-plating shop.”
“_Must_ have, inspector?” Trant questioned.
“Yes; he chose this shop doorway because it was the darkest place in
the block.”
“At what time was that—exactly?” Trant interrupted. “The papers say
the attack was made ten minutes after two o’clock—that the watch in
his pocket was broken and stopped by his fall at exactly ten minutes
after two. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” the inspector replied. “The watch stopped at 2.10; but, in
spite of that, the exact time of the murder must have been nearer two
than ten minutes later, for Mr. Bronson’s watch was fast.”
“What?” Trant cried. “You say his watch was fast? I had not heard of
that!”
“It was noticed two days ago,” the inspector explained, “that the
record shows that the patrolman who found Bronson’s body rang up from
the nearest patrol box at five minutes after two. If the attack was
made just before, the watch must have been at least ten minutes fast,
so we have the time, after all, only approximately.”
“I see.” Trant turned to the girl. “It is strange, Miss Allison, that
a man like Mr. Bronson carried an incorrect watch.”
“He did not. It was always right.”
“Was it right that evening?”
“Why, yes. I remember that he compared his time with our clock before
leaving.”
Trant leaped up, excitedly. “What? What? But still,” he calmed
himself, “whether at two or ten minutes after two, the main question
is the same. You, too, Miss Allison, can you give no possible reason
why Mr. Bronson might have gone out?”
“I have tried a thousand times in these terrible two weeks to think of
some reason, but I cannot. Our house is in a different direction than
that he took. The car line to the city is another way. He knew no one
in that direction—except Mrs. Hawtin.”
“You knew that he knew her?”
“Of course, Mr. Trant! He had convicted her once for shoplifting, but,
like everyone whom his place had made him punish, he watched her
afterwards, and, when she tried to be honest, he helped her as he had
helped a hundred like her—men and women—though his enemies tried to
discredit and disgrace him by accusing him of untrue motives. Oh, Mr.
Trant, you do not know—you cannot understand—what shadows and pitfalls
surround a man in the position Mr. Bronson held. That is why, though
for two years we had known and loved each other, he waited so long
before asking me to marry him. I am thankful that he spoke in time to
give me the right to defend him now before the world! They took his
life; they shall not take his good name! No! No! They shall not! Help
me, Mr. Trant, if you can—help me!”
“Inspector Walker!” said Trant tensely, “I understand that all of the
sixteen men of the ring claimed alibis. Was Kanlan’s one of the best
or the worst?”
The inspector hesitated. “One of the worst,” he replied, unwillingly.
“I am sorry to say, the very worst.”
To his surprise, Trant’s eyes blazed triumphantly. “Miss Allison,”
said he, quietly and decidedly, “I had not expected till I had tested
Kanlan to be able to assure you that he is not guilty. But now I think
I am safe in promising it—provided you are sure that Mr. Bronson’s
watch was right when he left you that night. And, Inspector Walker, if
you are also certain that the murderer waited in the vestibule of that
electro-plating shop, it will be soon, indeed, that we can give
Crowley a better—or rather a worse—man to send to trial in Kanlan’s
place.”
Again Trant was conscious that the giant inspector was estimating not
the incomprehensible statement he had made, but Trant himself. And
again Walker seemed satisfied.
“When can I go with you to Harrison Street to prove this, inspector?”
“I shall see Miss Allison home, and meet you at Harrison Street in an
hour.”
“You will let me know the result of the test at once, Mr. Trant?”
“At once, Miss Allison.” Trant took his hat and dashed from the
station.
Harrison Street police station, Chicago, is headquarters of the first
police division in the third city of the world. But neither London nor
New York, the two larger cities, nor Paris, whose population of two
million and a half Chicago is now passing, possesses a police division
more complex, diverse, and puzzling in the cosmopolitan diversity of
the persons arrested than this first of Chicago.
But from all the dozen diversities brought to the Harrison Street
station daily, for two weeks none had challenged in interest the case
against Jake Kanlan, the racing man and gambler, rearrested and held
for the murder of Bronson. Trant appreciated this as, with his
galvanometer and batteries in a suit case, he pushed his way among
patrolmen, detectives, reporters, and the curious into the station.
But at once he caught sight of the giant inspector, Walker.
“You’re late.” Walker led him into a side room. “I’ve been putting in
the time telling Sweeny here,” Walker introduced him to one of the two
men within, “and Captain Crowley, how you mean to work your scheme.
We’ve been waiting for you an hour!”
“I’m sorry,” Trant apologized. “I have been going over the files of
the papers just before and after the murder. And I must admit, Captain
Crowley,” Trant conceded, “that Kanlan had as strong a reason as any
for wanting Bronson out of the way. But I found one remarkably
significant thing. You have seen it?” He pulled a folded newspaper
from his pocket and handed it to them. “I mean this paragraph at the
bottom of the front page.”
The captain read it eagerly, then leaned back and laughed. “Sure, I
saw it,” he derided. “It’s that old Johanson fake, Sweeny—and he
thought it was a clew!” The inspector took the paper.
“Threatener of Bronson Breaks Jail” was the heading, and under it was
this short paragraph:
James Johanson, the notorious Stockyards murderer, whom City
Attorney Bronson sent up for life three years ago, escaped from the
penitentiary early this morning and is thought by the officials to
be making his way to this city. His trial will be remembered for the
dramatic and spectacular denunciation of the Prosecuting Attorney by
the convicted man upon his condemnation, and his threat to free
himself and “do for” Bronson.
“You see the date of the paper?” said Trant. “It is the five o’clock
edition of the evening before Bronson was murdered! Johanson is
reported escaped and at once Bronson is killed.”
Crowley snickered patronizingly. “So you thought, before your
palmistry, you could string us with that?” he jeered. “You might
better have kept us waiting a little longer, young man, and you’d have
found out that Johanson couldn’t have done it, for he never escaped.
It was a slip of a sneak thief, Johnson, that escaped, and he was on
his way back to Joliet before night. The _News_ got the name wrong,
that’s all, son.”
“I was quite able to find that out, too, before coming here, Captain
Crowley,” Trant said quietly, “both that Johanson never escaped and
that all evening papers except the _News_ had the name correctly. Even
the _News_ corrected its account in its later edition. And I did not
say that Johanson himself had anything to do with it. But either you
must claim it a strange coincidence that, within eight hours after a
report was current in the city that Johanson had broken out and was
coming to murder Bronson, Bronson was actually murdered, or else you
must admit the practical certainty that the man waiting to murder
Bronson saw this account, and, not knowing it was incorrect, chose
that night to kill the attorney, so as to lay it to Johanson.” He
picked up his suit case. “But come, let us test Kanlan.”
“I haven’t told Jake what you’re going to do to him,” Walker
volunteered, as he led the three to the cells below. Sweeny, at
Crowley’s nod, had brought with him a satchel from the upper office.
Trant had trained himself to avoid definite expectation; yet as he
faced the man within he felt a momentary surprise. For at first he
could see in Kanlan only a portly, quiet man, carelessly dressed in
clothes a knowing tailor had cut. But as his eyes saw clearer he
perceived that the portliness was not of flesh but of huge muscles,
thinly coated with fat, that the plump, olive-skinned cheeks concealed
a square, fighting jaw, and that his quiet was the loll of the
successful, city-bred animal, bound by no laws but his own—but an
animal powerful enough to prefer to fight fair. His heavy lids lifted
to watch listlessly as Trant opened his suit case and took out the
instruments for the test.
The galvanometer consisted merely of a little dial with a needle
arranged to register on a scale an electric current down to hundredths
of a milliampère. Trant attached two wires to the binding posts of the
instrument, the circuit including a single cell battery. Each wire
connected with a simple steel cylinder electrode. With one held in
each hand, and the palms of the hands slightly dampened to perfect the
contact, a light current passed through the body and swung the
delicate needle over the scale to register the change in the current.
Walker, and even Captain Crowley, saw more clearly now how, if it was
a fact that moisture must come from the glands in the palm of the hand
under emotion, the changes in the amount of the current passing
through the person holding the electrodes must register upon the dial,
and the subject be unable to conceal his emotional change when
confronted with guilty objects. Kanlan, comprehending nothing, but
assured by Walker’s nod that the test was fair, put out his hands for
the electrodes.
“You’re wrong, friend,” he said, quietly. “I don’t know your game. But
I ain’t afraid, if it’s on the square. Of course, I ain’t sorry he’s
dead, but—I didn’t do it!”
Trant glanced quickly at the dial. A current, so very slight that he
knew it must be entirely imperceptible to Kanlan, registered upon the
scale; and having registered it, the needle remained steady.
“Watch it!” he commanded; then checked himself. “No; wait.” He felt in
his pocket. Removing the newspaper which he had there, still folded at
the account of the escape of the convict Johanson, he looked about for
some place to put it, and then laid it upon Kanlan’s knee. He took a
little phial from his pocket, uncorked it as if to oil the mechanism
about the galvanometer, but spilled it on the floor. The stifling,
sickening odor of banana oil pervaded the cell; and as Kanlan smiled
at his clumsiness, Trant took his watch from his pocket and—with the
gamester still watching him curiously—slowly set it forward an hour.
The needle of the galvanometer dial, in plain view of all, waited
steady in its place. The young psychologist glanced at it satisfiedly.
“Well, what’s the matter with the show?” Crowley jeered, impatiently.
“Commence.”
“Commence, Captain Crowley?” Trant raised himself triumphantly. “I
have finished it.” They stared at him as though distrusting his
sanity. “You have seen for yourself the needle stand steady in place,”
Trant continued. “Inspector Walker”—he turned to the friendly superior
officer as he recognized the hopelessness of explaining to Crowley—“I
understood, of course, when I asked you to bring me here that, even if
my test should prove conclusive to me, yet I could scarcely hope to
have the police yet accept it. I shall let Miss Allison know that
Kanlan can have had no possible connection with the crime against Mr.
Bronson; but I understand that I can clear Kanlan in the eyes of the
police only by giving Captain Crowley,” Trant bowed to that astounded
officer, “the real murderer in his place.”
“You say you have made the test, Trant?” Walker challenged, in
stupefaction. But before Trant could answer, Crowley pushed him aside,
roughly, and stooped to the satchel which Sweeny had brought.
“Of course he hasn’t, Walker!” he answered, disgustedly. “He don’t
dare to, and is throwing a bluff. But I’ll show him, with his own
machine, too, if there’s anything to it at all!” The captain stooped
and, pulling from the opened valise a photograph of the spot where the
murder was committed, he dashed it before Kanlan’s face. Instantly, as
both the captain and inspector turned to Trant’s galvanometer needle,
the little instrument showed a reaction. Up it crept, higher and
higher, over the scale of the dial, as the sweat, surprised by the
guilty picture from the gambler’s hands, made the contact with the
electrodes in his palms and the current flowed through his body.
“See! So it wasn’t all a lie!” Crowley pointed triumphantly to the
instrument. He stooped again to the satchel and put a photograph of
the body of the murdered attorney before the suspect’s eyes. The
stolid Kanlan still held the muscles of his face firm and no flush
betrayed him; but again, as Crowley, Sweeny, and Walker excitedly
stared at the galvanometer needle it jumped and registered the
stronger current. Crowley, with a victorious grunt, lifted the
blood-stained coat of the murdered attorney and rubbed the sleeve
against Kanlan’s cheek. At this, and again and again with each
presentation of objects connected with the crime, the merciless little
galvanometer showed an ever-increasing reaction. Trant shrugged his
shoulders.
“Jake, we got the goods on you now!” Crowley took the gambler’s chin
roughly between his tough fists and pushed back his head until the
uneasy eyes met his own. “You’d best confess. You killed him!”
“I did not!” Kanlan choked.
“You’re a liar! You killed him. I knew it, anyway. If you were a
nigger you’d have been lynched before this!”
For the first time since Crowley took the test into his own hands,
Trant, watching the galvanometer needle, started in surprise. He gazed
suddenly at Kanlan’s olive face, surmounted by his curly black hair,
and smiled. The needle had jumped up higher again, completing
Crowley’s triumph. They filed out of the cell, and back to the little
office.
“So I proved him on your own machine,” Crowley rejoiced openly, “you
four-flushing patent palmist!”
“You’ve proved, Captain Crowley,” Trant returned quietly, “what I
already knew, that in your previous examinations with Kanlan, and
probably with the rest also, you have ruined the value of those things
you have there for any proper test, by exhibiting them with threats
again and again. That was why I had to make the test I did. I tell you
once more that Kanlan is not the murderer of Bronson. And I am glad to
be able to tell Miss Allison the same thing, as I promised her, at the
very earliest moment.” He picked up the telephone receiver and gave
the Allisons’ number. But suddenly the receiver was wrenched from his
hand.
“Not yet,” Inspector Walker commanded. “You’ll tell Miss Allison
nothing until we know more about this case.”
“I don’t ask you to release Kanlan yet, inspector,” Trant said
quietly. Crowley laughed offensively. “That is, not until I have
proved for you the proper man in his place.” He drew a paper from his
pocket. “I cannot surely name him yet; but picking the most likely of
them from what I read, I advise you to rearrest Caylis.”
Crowley, throwing himself into a chair, burst into loud laughter. “He
chose Caylis, Sweeny, did you hear that?” Crowley gasped. “That’s in
the same class as the rest of your performance, young fellow. Say, I’m
sorry not to be able to oblige you,” he went on, derisively, “but, you
see, Caylis was the only one of the whole sixteen who _couldn’t_ have
killed Bronson; for he was with me—talking to me—in the station, from
half past one that morning, half an hour before the murder, till half
past two, a half hour after!”
Trant sprang to his feet excitedly. “He was?” he cried. “Why didn’t
you tell me that before? Inspector Walker, I said a moment ago that I
could not be sure which of the other fifteen killed Bronson; but now I
say arrest Caylis—Caylis is the murderer!”
Captain Crowley and Sweeny stared at him again, as if believing him
demented.
“I would try to explain, Inspector Walker,” said Trant, “but believe
me, I mean no offense when I say that I think it would be absolutely
useless now. But—” he hesitated, as the inspector turned coldly away.
“Inspector Walker, you said this morning you knew Kanlan from his
birth. How much negro blood is there in him?”
“How did you know that?” cried Walker, staring at Trant in amazement.
“He’s always passed for white. He’s one eighth nigger. But not three
people know it. Who told you?”
“The galvanometer,” Trant replied, quietly, “the same way it told me
that he was innocent and Crowley’s test useless. Now, will you
rearrest Caylis at once and hold him till I can get the galvanometer
on him?”
“I will, young fellow!” Walker promised, still staring at him. “If
only for that nigger blood.”
But Crowley had one more shot to make. “Say, you,” he interrupted,
“you threw a bluff about an hour back that the man who killed Bronson
got the idea from the _News_. Sweeny, here, has been having these
fellows shadowed since weeks before the murder. Sweeny knows what
papers they read.” He turned to the detective. “Sweeny, what paper did
Kanlan always read?”
“The _News_.”
“And Caylis—what did he _never_ read?”
“The _News_,” the detective answered.
“Well, what have you for that now, son?” Crowley swung back.
“Only thanks, Captain Crowley, for that additional help. Inspector
Walker, I am willing to rest my case against Caylis upon the fact that
he was with Crowley at two o’clock. That alone is enough to hang him,
and not as an accessory, but as the principal who himself struck the
blow. But as there obviously was an accessory—and what Crowley has
just said makes it more certain—perhaps I had better make as sure of
that accessory, and also get a better answer for the real mystery,
which is why and how Bronson left his house and went in that direction
at that time in the morning, before I give Miss Allison the news for
which she is waiting.”
He took his hat and left them staring after him.
An hour later Trant jumped from a North Side car and hurried down
Superior Street. Two blocks east of the car line he recognized from
the familiar pictures in the newspapers the frescoed and once
fashionable front of the Mitchell boarding house, where Bronson had
lived. He was seeing it for the first time, but with barely more than
a curious glance, he went on toward the place, a block east, where the
attorney’s body had been found. He noted carefully the character of
the buildings on both sides of the street.
There was a grocery, between two old mansions; beyond the next house a
cigar store; then another boarding house, and the electroplater’s shop
before which the body was found. The little shop, smelling strongly of
the oils and acids used in the electroplater’s trade, was of one
story. Trant noted the convenient vestibule flush with the walk, and
the position of the street lamp which would throw its light on anyone
approaching, while concealing with a dark shadow one waiting in the
vestibule.
The physical arrangement was all as he had seen it a score of times in
the newspapers; but as he stared about, the true key to the mystery of
Bronson’s death came to him magnified a hundred times in its
intensity. Who waited there in that vestibule and struck the blow
which slew Bronson, he had felt from the first would be at once
answerable under scientific investigation. But the other question, how
could the murderer wait so confidently there, knowing that Bronson
would come out of his house alone at that time of the night and pass
that way, was less simple of solution.
He glanced beyond the shop to the house where, Inspector Walker had
told him, the questionable Mrs. Hawtin lived. Beyond that he saw a
sign—that of a Dr. O’Connor. He swung about and returned to the house
where Bronson had boarded.
“Tell Mrs. Mitchell that Mr. Trant, who is working with Inspector
Walker, wishes to speak with her,” he said to the maid, and he had a
moment to estimate the parlor before the mistress of the house
entered.
A white-faced, brown-eyed little boy of seven, with pallid cheeks and
golden hair, had fled between the portières as Trant entered. The room
was not at all typical of the boarding house. Its ornament and its
arrangement showed the imprint of a decided, if not cultivated,
feminine personality. The walls lacked the usual faded family
portraits, and there was an entire absence of ancient knickknacks to
give evidence of a past gentility. So he was not surprised when the
mistress of this house entered, pretty after a spectacular fashion,
impressing him with a quiet reserve of passion and power.
“I am always ready to see anyone who comes to help poor Mr. Bronson,”
she said.
The little boy, who had fled at Trant’s approach, ran to her. But even
as she sat with her arms about the child, Trant tried in vain to cloak
her with that atmosphere of motherliness of which Miss Allison had
spoken.
“I heard so, Mrs. Mitchell,” said Trant. “But as you have had to tell
the painful details so many times to the police and the reporters, I
shall not ask you for them again.”
“Do you mean,” she looked up quickly, “that you bring me news instead
of coming to ask it?”
“No, I want your help, but only in one particular. You must have known
Mr. Bronson’s habits and needs more intimately than any other person.
Recently you may have thought of some possible reason for his going
out in that manner and at that time, other than that held by the
police.”
“Oh, I wish I could, Mr. Trant!” the woman cried. “But I cannot!”
“I saw the sign of a doctor—Doctor O’Connor—just beyond the place
where he was killed. Do you think it possible that he was going to
Doctor O’Connor’s, or have you never thought of that?”
“I thought of that, Mr. Trant,” the woman returned, a little
defiantly. “I tried to hope, at first, that that might be the reason
for his going out. But, as I had to tell the detectives who asked me
of that some time ago, I know that Mr. Bronson so intensely disliked
Doctor O’Connor that he could not have been going to him, no matter
how urgent the need. Besides, Doctor Carmeachal, who always attended
him, lives around this corner, the other way.” She indicated the
direction of the car line.
“I see,” Trant acknowledged, thoughtfully. “Yet, if Mr. Bronson
disliked Doctor O’Connor, he must have met him. Was it here?” He
leaned over and took the hand of the pallid little boy. “Perhaps
Doctor O’Connor comes to see your son?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Trant!” the child put in eagerly. “Doctor O’Connor
always comes to see me. I like Doctor O’Connor.”
“Still, I agree with you, Mrs. Mitchell,” Trant raised his eyes calmly
to meet the woman’s suddenly agitated ones, “that Mr. Bronson could
scarcely have been going to consult Doctor O’Connor for himself in
such a fashion and at—half past one.”
“At two, Mr. Trant,” the woman corrected.
“Ten minutes after, to be exact, if you mean when the watch was
stopped!” The woman arose suddenly, with a motion sinuous as that of a
startled tiger. It was as though in the quiet parlor a note of passion
and alarm had been struck. Trant bowed quietly as she rang for the
maid to show him out. But when he was alone with the maid in the hall
his eyes flashed suddenly.
“Tell me,” he demanded, swiftly, “the night Mr. Bronson was killed,
was there anything the matter with the telephone?”
The girl hesitated and stared at him queerly. “Why, yes, sir,” she
said. “A man had to come next day to fix it.”
“The break was on the inside—I mean, the man worked in the house?”
“Why—yes, sir.” The maid had opened the door. Trant stopped with a
smothered exclamation and picked up a newspaper just delivered. He
spread it open and saw that it was the five o’clock edition of the
_News_.
“This is Mrs. Mitchell’s paper,” he demanded, “the one she always
reads?”
“Why, yes, sir,” the girl answered again.
Trant paused to consider. “Tell Mrs. Mitchell everything I asked you,”
he decided finally, and hurried down the steps and back to the police
station.
In the room where the desk sergeant told him Inspector Walker was
awaiting him Trant found both Crowley and Sweeny with the big officer,
and a fourth man, a stranger to him. The stranger was slight and dark.
He had a weak, vain face, but one of startling beauty, with great,
lazy brown eyes, filled with childlike innocence. He twisted his
mustache and measured Trant curiously, as the blunt, red-headed young
man entered.
“So this is the fellow,” he asked Crowley, derisively, “that made you
think I sent a double to talk with you while I went out to do
Bronson?”
“Will you have Caylis taken out of the room for a few moments,
inspector?” Trant requested, in reply. The inspector motioned to
Sweeny, who led out the prisoner.
“Where’s your accessory?” asked Crowley, grinning.
“I’ll tell you presently,” Trant put him off. “I want to test Caylis
without his knowing anything unusual is being tried. Captain Crowley,
can we have the brass-knobbed chair from your office?”
“What for?” Crowley demanded.
“I will show you when I have it.”
At Walker’s nod Crowley brought in the chair. It was a deep,
high-backed, wooden chair, with high arms; and on each arm was a brass
knob, so placed that a person sitting in the chair would almost
inevitably place his palms over them. As the captain brought in the
chair, Trant opened his suit case and took out his galvanometer,
batteries and wires. Cutting off the cylinder electrodes which Kanlan
had held in his hands during the test of that morning, Trant ran the
wires under each arm of the chair and made a contact with each brass
knob. He connected them with the battery, which he hid under the
chair, and with the galvanometer dial, which he placed behind the
chair upon a table, concealing it behind his hat.
He seated himself in the chair and grasped the knobs in his palms.
With his hands dry no perceptible current passed through his body from
knob to knob to register upon the dial.
“Scare me!” he suddenly commanded the inspector.
“What?” Walker bent his brows.
“Scare me, and watch the needle.”
Walker, half comprehending, fumbled in the drawer of a desk,
straightened suddenly, a cocked revolver in his hand, and snapped it
at Trant’s head. At once the needle of the galvanometer leaped across
the scale, and Crowley and Walker both stared.
“Thank you, inspector,” said Trant as he rose from the chair. “It
works very well; you see, my palms couldn’t help sweating when you
snapped the gun at me before I appreciated that it wasn’t loaded. Now,
we’ll test Caylis as we did Kanlan.”
The inspector went to the door, took Caylis from Sweeny, and led him
to the chair.
“Sit down,” he said. “Mr. Trant wants to talk to you.”
The childlike, brown eyes, covertly alert and watchful, followed
Trant, and Caylis nervously grasped the two inviting knobs on the arms
of his chair. Walker and Crowley, standing where they could watch both
Trant and the galvanometer dial, saw that the needle stood where it
had stood for Trant before Walker put the revolver to his head.
Trant quietly took from his pocket the newspaper containing the false
account of Johanson’s escape, and, looking about as though for a place
to put it—as he had done in his trial of Kanlan—laid it, with the
Johanson paragraph uppermost, in Caylis’s lap. Walker smothered an
exclamation; Crowley looked up startled. The needle—which had remained
so still when the paper was laid upon Kanlan’s knee—had jumped across
the scale.
Caylis gave no sign; his hands still grasped the brass knobs
nervously; his face was quiet and calm. Trant took from his pocket the
little phial refilled with banana oil and emptied its contents on the
floor as he had done that morning. Again Walker and Crowley, with
startled eyes, watched the needle move. Trant took his watch from his
pocket, and, as in the morning, before Caylis’s face he set it an hour
ahead.
“What are all these tricks?” said Caylis, contemptuously.
But Walker and Crowley, with flushed faces bent above the moving
needle, paid no heed. Trant posted himself between Caylis and the
door.
“You see now,” Trant cried, triumphantly, to the police officers, “the
difference between showing the false account of the escape of Johanson
to an innocent man, and showing it to the man whom it sent out to do
murder. You see the difference between loosing the stench of banana
oil before a man who associates nothing with it, and before the
criminal who waited in the vestibule of the electro-plater’s shop and
can never in his life smell banana oil again without its bringing upon
him the fear of the murderer. You see the difference, too, Captain
Crowley, between setting a watch forward in front of a man to whom it
can suggest nothing criminal, and setting it an hour ahead in front of
the man who, after he had murdered Bronson—not at two, but a little
after one—stooped to the body and set the watch at least an hour fast,
then rushed in to talk coolly with you, in order to establish an
incontestable alibi for the time he had so fixed for the murder!”
Police Captain Crowley, livid with the first flash of fear that the
murderer had made of him a tool, swung threateningly toward Caylis.
For a moment, as though stiffened by the strain of following the
accusation, Caylis had sat apparently paralyzed. Now in the sudden
change from his absolute security to complete despair, he faced
Crowley, white as paper; then, as his heart began to pound again, his
skin turned to purple. His handsome, vain face changed to the face of
a demon; his childlike eyes flared; he sprang toward Trant. But when
he had drawn the two police officers together to stop his rush, he
turned and leaped for a window. Before he could dash it open, Walker’s
powerful hand clutched him back.
“This, I think,” Trant gasped, and controlled himself, as he surveyed
the now weak and nerveless prisoner, “should convince even Captain
Crowley. But it was not needed, Caylis. From the time Mrs. Mitchell
showed you the report of Johanson’s escape in the _News_ and you
thought you could kill Bronson safely, and you got her to send him out
to you, until you had struck him down, set his watch forward and
rushed to Crowley for your alibi, my case was complete.”
“She—she”—Caylis’s hands clenched—“peached on me—but you—got her?” he
shouted vengefully.
Walker and Crowley turned to Trant in amazement.
“Mrs. Mitchell?” they demanded.
“Yes—your wife, Caylis?” Trant pressed.
“Yes, my wife, and _mine_,” the man hissed defiantly, “eight years ago
back in St. Louis till, till this cursed Bronson broke up the gang and
sent me over the road for three years, and she got to thinking he must
be stuck on her and might marry her, because he helped her,
until—until she found out!”
“Ah; I thought she had been your wife when I saw you, after the boy;
but, of course—” Trant checked himself as he heard a knock on the
door.
“Miss Allison is in her carriage outside sir,” the officer who had
knocked saluted Inspector Walker. “She has come to see you, sir. She
says you sent no word.” Walker looked from the cringing Caylis to
Trant.
“We do not need Caylis any longer, inspector,” said Trant. “I can tell
Miss Allison all the facts now, if you wish to have her hear them.”
The door, which shut behind Crowley and his prisoner, reopened almost
immediately to admit the inspector, and Miss Allison. With her fair,
sweet face flushed with the hope which had taken the place of the
white fear and defiance of the morning, Trant barely knew her.
“The inspector tells me, Mr. Trant,” she stretched out both her hands
to him, “that you have good news for me—that Kanlan was not guilty—and
so Randolph was not going out as—as they said he was when they killed
him.”
“No; he was not!” Trant returned, triumphantly. “He was going instead
on an errand of mercy, Miss Allison, to summon a doctor for a little
child whom he had been told was suddenly and dangerously ill. The
telephone in the house had been broken, so at the sudden summons he
dashed out, without remembering his danger. I am glad to be able to
tell you of that fine, brave thing when I must tell you, also, the
terrible truth that the woman whom he had helped and protected was the
one who, in a fit of jealousy, when she found he had merely meant to
be kind to her, sent him out to his death.”
“Mrs. Mitchell?” the girl cried in horror. “Oh, not Mrs. Mitchell!”
“Yes, Mrs. Mitchell, for whom he had done so much and whose past he
protected, in the noblest way, even from you. But as she was the wife
of the criminal we have just caught, I am glad to believe this man
played upon her old passions, so that for a while he held his old sway
over her and she did his bidding without counting the consequences.
“I told you this morning, Inspector Walker, that I could not explain
to you my conclusions in the test of Kanlan. But I owe you now a full
explanation. You will recall that I commented upon the fact that the
crime which was puzzling you was committed within so short a time
after the knowledge of Mr. Bronson’s engagement became known, that I
divined a possible connection. But that, at best, was only indirect.
The first direct thing which struck me was the circumstance that the
man waited in the vestibule of the electro-plater’s shop. I was
certain that the very pungent fruit-ether odor of banana oil—the
thinning material used by electro-platers in preparing their
lacquers—must be forever intimately connected with the crime in the
mind of the man who waited in that vestibule. To no one else could
that odor connect itself with crime. So I knew that if I could test
all sixteen men it would be child’s play to pick the murderer. But
such a test was cumbersome. And the next circumstance you gave me made
it unnecessary. I mean the fact of the ‘fast watch’ which, Miss
Allison was able to tell me, could not have been fast at all. I saw
that the watch must therefore have been set forward at least ten
minutes, probably much longer. Who, between half past ten and two,
could have done this, and for what reason? The one convincing
possibility was that the assassin had set it forward, trusting it
would not be found till morning, and his only object could have been
to establish for himself an alibi—for two o’clock.
“I surprised you, therefore, by assuring you, even before I saw
Kanlan, that he was innocent, because Kanlan had no alibi whatever. I
proved his innocence to my own satisfaction by exhibiting before him
without exciting any emotional reaction at all, the report in the
_News_ which, I felt fairly sure, must have had something to do with
the crime; by loosing the smell of banana oil, and setting forward a
watch in his presence. The objects which Crowley used had been so
thoroughly connected with the crime in Kanlan’s mind that—though he is
innocent—they caused reactions to which I paid no attention, except
the one reaction which, at Crowley’s threat, told me of Kanlan’s negro
blood. As for the rest, they merely scared Kanlan as your pistol
scared me, and as they would have scared any innocent man under the
same conditions. My own tests could cause reactions only in the guilty
man.
“That man, I think you understand now,” Trant continued rapidly, “I
was practically sure of when Crowley told me of Caylis’s alibi. You
have just seen the effect upon him of the same tests I tried on
Kanlan, and the conclusive evidence the galvanometer gave. The fact
that Caylis himself never read the _News_ only contributed to my
certainty that another person was concerned, a person who could have
either decoyed or sent Mr. Bronson out. So I went to the place, found
the doctor’s sign just beyond, discovered that that doctor treated,
not Bronson, but the little Mitchell boy, that the telephone had been
broken inside the house that evening to furnish an excuse for sending
Bronson out, and that Mrs. Mitchell reads the _News_.”
“The Mitchell woman sent him out, of course,” Walker checked him
almost irritably. “Six blocks away—Crowley ought to have her by now.”
Miss Allison gathered herself together and arose. She clutched the
inspector’s sleeve. “Inspector Walker, must you—” she faltered.
“None of us is called upon to say how she shall be punished, Miss
Allison,” Trant said, compassionately. “We must trust all to the
twelve men who shall try these two.” But to her eyes, searching his,
Trant seemed to be awaiting something. Suddenly the telephone rang.
Walker took up the receiver. “It’s Crowley,” he cried. “He says Mrs.
Mitchell skipped—cleared. You could have taken her,” he accused Trant,
“but you let her go!”
Trant stood watching the face of Miss Allison, unmoved. The desk
sergeant burst in upon them.
“Mrs. Mitchell’s outside, inspector! She said she’s come to give
herself up!”
“You counted upon that, I suppose,” Walker turned again upon Trant.
“But don’t do it again,” he warned, “for the sake of what’s before
you!”