The Empty Cartridges
Stephen Sheppard, big game shot and all-around sportsman, lay tensely
on his side in bed, watching for the sun to rise out of Lake Michigan.
When the first crest of that yellow rim would push clear of the grim,
gray horizon stretching its great, empty half circle about the Chicago
shore, he was going to make a decision—a decision for the life or for
the death of a young man; and as he personally had always cared for
that man more than for any other man so much younger, and as his
niece, who was the chief person left in the world that Sheppard loved,
also cared for the man so much that she would surely marry him if he
were left alive, Sheppard was not at all anxious for that day to
begin.
The gray on the horizon, which had been becoming alarmingly pale the
last few moments as he stared at it, now undeniably was spread with
purple and pink from behind the water’s edge. Decide he must, he knew,
within a very few minutes or the rising sun would find him as
faltering in his mind as he was the night before when he had given
himself till daybreak to form his decision. The sportsman shut his
teeth determinedly. No matter how fruitless the hours of darkness when
he had matched mercy with vengeance; no matter how hopeless he had
found it during the earlier moments of that slow December dawn to say
whether he would recognize that his young friend had merely taken the
law into his own hands and done bare justice, and therefore the past
could be left buried, or whether he must return retribution upon that
young man and bring back all that hidden and forgotten past—all was no
matter; he must decide now within five minutes. For it was a
sportsman’s compact he had made with himself to rise with the sun and
act one way or the other, and he kept compacts with himself as
obstinately and as unflinchingly as a man must who has lived decently
a long life alone, without any employment or outside discipline.
Now the great, crimson aurora shooting up into the sky warned him that
day was close upon him; now the semi-circle of gray waters was
bisected by a broad and blood red pathway; now white darts at the
aurora’s center foretold the coming of the sun. He swung his feet out
of bed and sat up—a stalwart, rosy, obstinate old man, his thick,
white, wiry hair tousled in his indecision—and, reaching over swiftly,
snatched up a loose coin which lay with his watch and keys upon the
table beside his bed.
“I’ll give him equal chances anyway,” he satisfied himself as he sat
on the edge of the bed with the coin in his hands. “Tails, he goes
free, but heads, he—hangs!”
Then waiting for the first direct gleam of the sun to give him his
signal, he spun it and put his bare foot upon it as it twirled upon
the floor.
“Heads!” He removed his foot and looked at it without stooping. He
pushed his feet into the slippers beside his bed, threw his
dressing-gown over his shoulders, went directly to the telephone and
called up the North Side Police Station.
“I want you to arrest Jim Tyler—James Tyler at the Alden Club at
once!” he commanded abruptly. “Yes; that’s it. What charge? What do I
care what charge you arrest him on—auto speeding—anything you
want—only get him!” The old sportsman spoke with even sharper brevity
than usual. “Look him up and I’ll come with my charges against him
soon enough. See here; do you know who this is, speaking? This is
Steve Sheppard. Ask your Captain Crowley whether I have to swear to a
warrant at this time in the morning to have a man arrested. All right!
“That starts it!” he recognized grimly to himself, as he slammed down
the receiver. The opposition at the police station had given the
needed drive to his determination. “Now I’ll follow it through.
Beginning with that fellow—Trant,” he recollected, as he found upon
his desk the memorandum which he had made the night before, in case he
should decide this way.
“Mr. Trant; you got my note of last night?” he said, a little less
sharply, after he had called the number noted as Trant’s room address
at his club. “I am Stephen Sheppard—brother of the late Neal Sheppard.
I have a criminal case and—as I wrote you I might—I want your help at
once. If you leave your rooms immediately, I will call for you at your
office before eight; I want you to meet a train with me at
eight-thirty. Very well!”
He rang for his man, then, to order his motor and to tell him to bring
coffee and rolls to his room, which he gulped down while he dressed.
Fifteen minutes later he jumped onto the front seat of his car,
displacing the chauffeur, and himself drove the car rapidly down town.
A crisp, sharp breeze blew in upon them from the lake, scattering dry,
rare flakes of snow. It was a clear, perfect day for the first of
December in Chicago. But Stephen Sheppard was oblivious to it. In the
northern woods beyond the Canada boundary line the breeze would be
sharper and cleaner that day and smell less of the streets and—it was
the very height of his hunting season for big game in those woods! Up
there he would still have been shooting, but as the papers had put it,
“the woods had taken their toll” again this year, and his brother’s
life had been part of that toll.
“Neal Sheppard’s Body Found in the Woods!” He read the headlines in
the paper which the boy thrust into his face, and he slowed the car at
the Rush Street bridge. “Victim of Stray Shot Being Brought to
Chicago.” Well! That was the way it was known! Stephen Sheppard
released his brake, with a jerk; crossed the bridge and, eight minutes
later, brought up the car with a sharper shock before the First
National Bank Building.
He had never met the man he had come to see—had heard of him only
through startling successes in the psychological detection of crime
with which this comparative youth, fresh from the laboratory of a
university and using methods new to the criminals and their pursuers
alike, had startled the public and the wiser heads of the police. But
finding the door to Trant’s office on the twelfth floor standing open,
and the psychologist himself taking off his things, Sheppard first
stared over the stocky, red-haired youth, and then clicked his tongue
with satisfaction.
“It’s lucky you’re early, Mr. Trant,” he approved bluffly. “There is
short enough time as it is, before we meet the train.” He had glanced
at the clock as he spoke, and pulled off his gloves without ceremony.
“You look like what I expected—what I’d heard you were. Now—you know
me?”
“By reputation, at least, Mr. Sheppard,” Trant replied. “There has
been enough in the papers these last two weeks, and as you spoke of
yourself over the telephone just now as the brother of the late Neal
Sheppard, I suppose this morning’s report is correct. That is, your
brother has finally been found in the woods—dead?”
“So you’ve been following it, have you?”
“Only in the papers. I saw, of course, that Mr. Neal Sheppard was
missing from your hunting party in Northern Ontario two weeks ago,”
Trant replied. “I saw that you had been unable to find him and had
given him up for drowned in one of the lakes or dead in the woods, and
therefore you had come home the first of the week to tell his
daughter. Then this morning I saw Mr. Chapin and your guide, whom you
had left to keep up the search, had reported they found him—killed,
apparently, by a stray shot.”
“I see. I told Chapin to give that out till he saw me, no matter how
he found him.” Sheppard tossed his fur cap upon Trant’s flat-topped
desk before him and slapped his heavy gloves, one after the other,
beside it.
“You mean that you have private information that your brother was not
shot accidentally?” Trant leaned over his desk intently.
“Exactly. But I’ve not come to mince matters with you, Trant. He was
murdered, man,—murdered!”
“Murdered? I understand then!” Trant straightened back.
“No, you don’t,” his client contradicted bluntly. “I haven’t come to
ask you to find the murderer for me. I named him to the police and
ordered his arrest before I called you this morning. He is Jim Tyler;
and, as I know he was at his club, they must have him by this time.
There’s mighty little psychology in this case, Trant. But if I’m going
to hang young Jim, I’m going to hang him quick—for it’s not a pleasant
job; and I have called for you merely to hear the proofs that Chapin
and the Indian are bringing—they’ve sent word only that it is murder,
as I suspected—so that when we put those proofs into the hands of the
state’s attorney, they can finish Jim quick—and be done with it!”
“Tyler?” Trant leaned quickly toward his client again, not trying now
to conceal his surprise. “Young Tyler, your shooting-mate and your
partner in the new Sheppard-Tyler Gun Company?”
“Yes, Tyler,” the other returned brusquely, but rising as he spoke,
and turning his back upon the pretext of closing the transom. “My
shooting-mate for the last three years and I guess he’s rather more
than my partner in the gun company; for, to tell the truth, it was for
him I put up the money to start the business. And there are more
reasons than that for making me want to let him go—though he shot my
brother. But those reasons—I decided this morning—are not enough this
late in the day! So I decided also to hold back nothing—to keep back
nothing of what’s behind this crime, whoever it hurts! I said I
haven’t come to mince matters with you, Trant. Well—I shan’t!”
He turned back from the transom, and glanced once more swiftly at the
clock.
“I shall be very glad to go over the evidence for you, Mr. Sheppard,”
Trant acquiesced, following the older man’s glance; “and as you have
come here half an hour before we need start to meet the train—”
“Just so,” the other interrupted bluntly. “I am here to tell you as
much as I am able before we meet the others. That’s why I asked you if
you knew me. So now—exactly how much do you know about me, Trant?”
“I know you are a wealthy man—a large holder of real estate, the
papers say, which has advanced greatly in value; and I know—this is
from the papers too—that you belong to a coterie of men who have grown
up with the city,—old settlers of thirty years’ standing.”
“Quite right. Neal and I came here broke—without a cent, to pick up
what we could in Chicago after the fire. And we made our fortunes
then, easy—or easily, as I’ve learned to say now,” he smiled to
himself grimly, “by buying up lots about the city when they were cheap
and everybody scared and selling them for a song, and we had only to
hold them until they made us rich. I am now a rich old bachelor,
Trant, hunting in season and trap-shooting out, and setting up Jim
Tyler in the gun business between times. The worst that was said about
Neal was his drinking and bad temper; for Leigh, his daughter, goes as
well as anybody else in her circle; and even young Jim Tyler has the
run of a dozen clubs. That’s all good, respectable and satisfactory,
isn’t it? And is that all you know?”
“That’s all,” replied Trant curtly.
“Never heard of Sheppard’s White Palace, did you? Don’t know that when
you speak to one of those old boys of thirty years ago—the coterie,
you called them—about Mr. Stephen Sheppard, the thought that comes
into his head is, ‘Oh! you mean Steve Sheppard, the gambler!’ Thirty
years ago, more or less, we were making our money to buy those lots in
a liquor palace and gambling hell—Neal and I and Jim Tyler’s
father—old Jim.”
“There were more than just Neal and old Tyler and me, though,” he
burst on, pacing the length of the rug beside Trant’s desk and not
looking at his consultant at all. “There were the Findlays
besides—Enoch, who was up in the woods with us, he gets his picture in
the paper every six months or so for paying a thousand dollars for a
thousand-year-old cent piece; and Enoch’s brother, and Chapin, whom
we’re going to meet in a few minutes. We ran a square game—as square
as any; understand that! But we had every other devilment that comes
even to a square gambling house in a wide open town—fights, suicide,
and—murder.”
He broke off, meeting Trant’s quick and questioning glance for a
fraction of an instant with a steely glitter of his gray-green eyes.
“Sure—murder!” he repeated with rougher defiance. “Men shot themselves
and, a good deal oftener, shot each other in our house or somewhere
else, on account of what went on there. But we got things passed up a
deal easier in those days, and we seldom bothered ourselves about a
little shooting till—well, the habit spread to us. I mean, one night
one of us—Len Findlay it was—was shot under conditions that made it
certain that one of us other five—Tyler, or Chapin, or Enoch Findlay,
his brother, or Neal, or I, must have shot him. You see, a pleasant
thing to drop into our happy family! Made it certain only to us, of
course; we got it passed up as a suicide with the police. And that
wasn’t all; for as soon afterward as it was safe to have another
‘suicide,’ old Jim Tyler was shot; and this time we knew it was either
Enoch Findlay or—I told you I wouldn’t mince matters—or Neal. That
broke up the game and the partnership—”
“Wait, wait!” Trant interrupted. “Do you mean me to understand that
your brother shot Tyler?”
“I mean you to understand just what I said,” the old man’s straight
lips closed tightly under his short white mustache; “for I’ve seen too
much trouble come out of just words to be careless with them. Either
Enoch or Neal shot Jim; I don’t know which.”
“In retaliation, because he thought Tyler had shot Len Findlay?”
“Perhaps; but I never thought so, and I don’t think so now,” Sheppard
returned decisively. “For old Jim Tyler was the least up to that sort
of thing of any of us—a tongue-tied, inoffensive old fellow—and he was
dealer in our games; but outside of that Jim didn’t have nerve enough
to handle his own money. But for some reason Neal seemed sure it was
old Jim who had shot Len, and he made Enoch Findlay believe it, too.
So, no matter who actually fired the bullet, it was Neal. Well, it was
up to me to look after old Jim’s widow and his boy. That was
necessary; for after Jim was dead, I found a funny thing. He had taken
his share with the rest of us in the profits of the game; and the rest
of us were getting rich by that time—for we weren’t any of us
gamblers; not in the way of playing it back into the game, that is;
but though I had always supposed that Jim was buying his land like the
rest—and his widow told me so, too—I found nothing when he was dead!”
“But you implied just now,” Trant put in again quickly, “that Tyler
might have had someone else investing for him. Did you look into that
at the time?”
“Yes; I asked them all, but no one knew anything. But we’re coming to
that,” the old man answered impatiently. “I wanted you to see how it
was that I began to look after young Jim and take an interest in him
and do things for him till—till he became what he was to me. Neal
never liked my looking after the boy from the first; we quarreled
about it time and again, and especially after young Jim began growing
up and Neal’s girl was growing up, too; and a year or so ago, when he
began seeing that Leigh was caring for young Jim more than for anyone
else, in spite of what he said, Neal hated the boy worse. He forbade
him his house; and he did a good many other things against him, and
the reason for all of it even I couldn’t make out until this last
hunt.”
The old sportsman stood still now, picked up his fur cap and
thoughtfully began drawing on his big gloves.
“We had gone up this year, as of course you know from the papers, into
the Ontario reserve, just north of the Temagami region, for deer and
moose. The season is good there, but short, closing the middle of
November. Then we were going to cross into Quebec where the season
stays till January. Young Jim Tyler wasn’t with us, for this hunt was
a sort of exclusive fixture just for the old ones, Neal and I, Findlay
and Chapin. But this time, the second day in camp, young Jim Tyler
comes running in upon us—or rather, in on me, for I was the only one
in camp that day, laid up with a bad ankle. He had his gun with him,
one of our new Sheppard-Tylers which we were all trying out for the
first time this year. But he hadn’t followed us for moose. He’d come
to see Neal. For the people that had bought his father’s old house had
been tearing it down to make room for a business building, and they’d
found some papers between the floors which they’d given to young Jim,
and that was what sent him after us, hot after Neal. He showed them to
me; and I understood.
“You see, the only real objection that Neal had been able to keep
against young Jim was that he was a pauper—penniless but for me. And
these papers Jim had were notes and memorandum which showed why Jim
was a pauper and who had made him that, and how Neal himself had got
the better half of old Jim’s best properties. For the papers were
private notes and memoranda of money that old Jim Tyler had given Neal
to invest in land for him; among them a paper in Neal’s writing
acknowledging old Jim’s half interest in Neal’s best lots. Then there
were some personal memorandum of Tyler’s stuck with these, part of
which we couldn’t make out, except that it had to do with the shooting
of Len Findlay; but the rest was clear—showed clear that, just before
he was shot, old Jim Tyler had become afraid of Neal and was trying to
make him convert his papers into regular titles and take his things
out of Neal’s hands.
“I saw, of course, that young Jim must know everything then; so the
only thing I could do was to stop him from hunting up Neal that
morning and in that mood with a gun in his hand. But he laughed at me;
said I ought to know he hadn’t come to kill Leigh’s father, but only
to force a different understanding then and there; and his gun might
come in handy—but he would keep his head as well as his gun. But he
didn’t. For though he didn’t find Neal then, he came across Findlay
and Chapin and blurted it all out to them, so that they stayed with
him till he promised to go home, which he didn’t do either; for one of
our Indians, coming up the trail early next morning with supplies, met
him only half a dozen miles from camp. Jim said he’d laid up over
night because of the snowstorm, but didn’t come back to camp because
he didn’t want to see Neal after the promise he’d made. And there
_had_ been a big snow that night. Chapin and Findlay didn’t get in
till all hours because of it; Chapin about eleven, Findlay not till
near two, dead beat out from tramping through the new snow; and
Neal—he never got in at all.
“I stayed four days after that looking for Neal; but we couldn’t find
him. Then I left Chapin with the Indians to keep on searching, while I
came down, more to see Jim, you understand, than to break the news to
Leigh. Jim admitted he’d stayed near camp till the next morning but
denied he’d even seen Neal, and denied it so strongly that he fooled
me into giving him the benefit of the doubt until last night; and then
Chapin wired me they had found Neal’s body, and to meet them with a
detective, as they have plain evidence against young Jim that he
murdered my brother!”
The old man stopped suddenly, and his eyes shifted from Trant to the
clock. “That’s all,” he concluded abruptly. “Not much psychology in
that, is there? My car is waiting down stairs.”
He pulled the fur cap down upon his ears, and Trant had time only to
throw on his coat and catch his client in the hall, as Sheppard walked
toward the elevators. The chauffeur, at sight of them, opened the
limousine body of the car, and Sheppard got in with Trant, leaving the
man this time to guide the car through the streets.
“There’s where the Palace stood; Neal owns the lot still, and has made
two re-buildings on it,” he motioned toward a towering office
structure as the car slowed at the Clark Street crossing. Then, as
they stopped a moment later at the Polk Street Station, he laid a
muscular hand upon the door, drove it open and sprang out, leaving
Trant inside. The clock in the tower showed just half past eight, and
he hurried into the train shed. Ten minutes later he reappeared,
leading a plump, almost roly-poly man, with a round face, fiery red
from exposure to the weather, who was buttoned from chin to shoe tops
in an ulster and wore a fur cap like his own. Behind them with
noiseless, woodland tread glided a full-blooded Indian, in corduroy
trousers and coat blotched with many forest stains, carrying carefully
a long leather gun-case and cartridge belt.
“This is Chapin, Trant,” Sheppard introduced them, having evidently
spoken briefly of the psychologist to Chapin in the station; “and
McLain,” he motioned toward the Indian.
He stepped after them into the limousine, and as the car jerked and
halted through the crowded city streets back toward his home, he
lifted his eyes to the round-faced man opposite him.
“Where was it, Chapin?” he asked abruptly.
“In Bowton’s mining shack, Steve.”
“What! what!”
“You say the body was found in a miner’s cabin, Mr. Chapin,” the
psychologist broke in, in crisp tones. “Do you mean the miners live in
the cabin and carried him in there after he was shot?”
“No, it is an abandoned mine, Mr. Trant. He was in the deserted cabin
when shot down—shot like a dog, Steve!”
“For God’s sake, let’s drop this till we get to the house!” Sheppard
burst out suddenly, and Trant fell back, still keenly observant and
attentive, while the big car swept swiftly through the less crowded
streets. Only twice Sheppard leaned forward, with forced calmness and
laconic comment, to point out some sight to the Indian; and once he
nodded absently when, passing a meat shop with deer hung beside its
doors, the Indian—finding this the first object on which he dared to
comment—remarked that the skins were being badly torn. Then the motor
stopped before twin, stately, gray-stone houses facing the lake, where
a single broad flight of steps led to two entrance doors which bore
ornate door plates, one the name of Stephen, the other Neal, Sheppard.
Sheppard led the way through the hall into a wide, high trophy and
smoking-room which occupied a bay of the first floor back of the
dining-room, and himself shut the door firmly, after Chapin and Trant
and the Indian, still carefully carrying the gun-case, had entered.
“Now tell me,” he commanded Chapin and the Indian equally, “exactly
how you found him.”
“Neal had plainly taken refuge in the cabin from the snowstorm,
Steve,” Chapin replied almost compassionately. “He was in his stocking
feet, and his shooting-coat and cartridge-belt still lay on the straw
in one of the bunks where he had been sleeping. The man, it seems
clear, entered through the outer door of the mess cabin, which opens
into the bunk-room through a door at its other end. Neal heard him, we
suppose, and picking up his shoes and gun, went to see who it was; and
the man, standing near the outer door, shot him down as he came
through the other—four shots, Steve; two missed.”
“Four shots, and in the cabin!” Sheppard turned to the Indian almost
in appeal; but at McLain’s nod his square chin set firmly. “You were
right in telegraphing me it was murder!”
“Two hit—one here; one here,” the Indian touched his right shoulder
and then the center of his forehead.
“How do you know the man who shot him stood by the outer door?” Trant
interrupted.
“McLain found the shells ejected from his rifle,” Chapin answered; and
the Indian took from his pocket five cartridges—four empty, one still
loaded. “Man shooting kill with four shots and throw last from
magazine there beside it,” he explained. “Not have need it. I find on
floor with empty shells.”
“I see.” Sheppard took the shells and examined them tensely. He went
to his drawer and took out a single fresh cartridge and compared it
carefully with the empty shells and the unfired cartridge the Indian
had found with them, before he handed them, still more tensely, to
Trant. “They are all Sheppard-Tyler’s, Trant, which we were just
trying out for the first time ourselves. No one else had them, no one
else could possibly have them, besides ourselves, but Jim! But the
gun-case, Chapin,” he turned toward the burden the Indian had carried.
“Why have you brought that?”
“It’s just Neal’s gun that we found in his hand, Steve,” Chapin
replied sympathetically, “and his cartridge-belt that was in the
bunk.”
The Indian unstrapped the case and took out the gun. Then he took from
another pocket a single empty shell, this time, and four full ones,
three of which he put into the magazine of the rifle, and extended it
to Chapin.
“Neal had time to try twice for Ji—for the other fellow, Steve,”
Chapin explained, “for he wasn’t killed till the fourth shot. But
Neal’s first shell,” he pointed to the pierced primer of the cartridge
he had taken from the Indian, “missed fire, you see; and he was hit so
hard before he could shoot the other,” he handed over the shell, “that
it must have gone wild. Its recoil threw the next cartridge in place
all right, as McLain has it now,” he handed over the gun, “but Neal
couldn’t ever pull the trigger on it then.”
“I see.” Sheppard’s teeth clenched tight again, as he examined the
faulty cartridge his brother had tried to shoot, the empty shell, and
the three cartridges left intact in the rifle. He handed them after
the others to Trant. And for an instant more his green-gray eyes,
growing steadily colder and more merciless, watched the silent young
psychologist as he weighed again and again and sorted over, without
comment, the shells that had slain Neal Sheppard; and weighed again in
his fingers the one the murderer had not needed to use. Then Trant
turned suddenly to the cartridge-belt the Indian held, and taking out
one shell compared it with the others.
“They are different?” he said inquiringly.
“Only that these are full metal-patched bullets, like the one I showed
you from the drawer, while those in Neal’s belt are soft-nosed,”
Sheppard answered immediately. “We had both kinds in camp, for we were
making the first real trial of the new gun; but we used only the
soft-nosed in hunting. They are Sheppard-Tyler’s, Trant—all of them;
and that is the one important thing and enough of itself to settle the
murderer!”
“But can you understand, Mr. Sheppard, even if the man who shot the
four shells found he didn’t need the fifth,”—the young psychologist
held up the single, unshot shell which the Indian had found near the
door—“why he should throw it there? And more particularly I can’t make
out why—” He checked himself and swung from his client to the Indian
as the perplexity which had filled his face when he first handled the
shells gave way to the quick flush of energetic action.
“Suppose this were the mess-room of the cabin, McLain,” he gestured to
the trophy-room, as he shot out his question; “can you show me how it
was arranged and what you found there?”
“Yes, yes;” the Indian turned to the end wall and pointed, “there the
door to outside; on floor near it, four empty shells, one full one.”
He stalked to a corner at the opposite end. “Here door to bunk-room.
Here,” he stopped and touched his fingers to the floor, “Neal
Sheppard’s shoes where he drop them. Here,” he rose and touched the
wall in two spots about the height of a man’s head above the floor,
“bullet hole, and bullet hole, when he miss.”
“What! what!” cried Trant, “two bullet holes above the shoes?”
“Yes; so.”
“And the body—that lay near the shoes?”
“Oh, no; the body here!” the Indian moved along the end wall almost to
the other corner. “One shell beside it that miss fire, one empty
shell. Neal Sheppard’s matchbox—that empty, too—on floor. Around body
burned matches.”
“Burned matches around the body?” Trant echoed in still greater
excitement.
“Yes; and on body.”
“On it?”
“Yes; man, after he shot, go to him and burn matches—I think—to see
him dead.”
“Then they must have shot in the dark!” Trant’s excited face flushed
red with sudden and complete comprehension. “Of course, dolt that I
was! With these shells in my hand, I should have guessed it! That is
as plain a reason for this peculiar distribution of the shells as it
is for the matches which, as the Indian says, the man must have taken
from your brother’s match-box to look at him and make sure he was
dead.” He had whirled to face his client. “It was all shot in the
dark.”
“Shot in the dark!” Sheppard echoed. He seemed to have caught none of
the spirit of his young adviser’s new comprehension; but, merely
echoing his words, had turned from him and stared steadily out of the
window to the street; and as he stared, thinking of his brother shot
down in darkness by an unseen enemy, his eyes, cold and merciless
before, began to glow madly with his slow but—once aroused—obstinate
and pitiless anger.
“Mr. Trant;” he turned back suddenly, “I do not deny that when I
called for you this morning, instead of getting a detective from the
city police as Chapin expected, it was not to hang Jim Tyler, as I
pretended, but with a determination to give him every chance that was
coming to him after I had to go against him. But he gave Neal
none—none!—and it’s no matter what Neal did to his father; I’m keeping
you here now to help me hang him! And Chapin! when I ordered Tyler’s
arrest, I told the police I’d prefer charges against him this morning,
but he seems impatient. He’s coming here with Captain Crowley from the
station now,” he continued with short, sharp distinctness. “So let him
in, Chapin—I don’t care to trust myself at the door—Jim’s come for it,
and—I’ll let him have it!”
“You mean you are going to charge him with murder now, before that
officer, Mr. Sheppard?” Trant moved quickly before his client, as
Chapin obediently went toward the door. “Don’t,” he warned tersely.
“Don’t? Why?”
“The first bullet in your brother’s gun that failed—the other
three—the one which the other fellow did not even try to shoot,” Trant
enumerated almost breathlessly, as he heard the front door open. “Do
they mean nothing to you?”
And putting between his strong even teeth the cartridge with its
primer pierced which had failed in Neal Sheppard’s gun, he tore out
the bullet with a single wrench and held the shell down. “See! it was
empty, Mr. Sheppard! That was the first one in your brother’s gun!
That was why it didn’t go off! And this—the last one the other man
had, the one he didn’t even try to shoot,” Trant jerked out the bullet
from it too with another wrench of his teeth—“was empty as well. See!
And the other man knew it; that was why he didn’t even try to shoot
it, but ejected it on the floor as it was!”
“How did you guess that? And how did you know that the other
cartridge, the one Jim—the other fellow—didn’t even try to fire—wasn’t
loaded, too?” Sheppard now checked short in surprise, stupefied and
amazed, gazed, with the other white-haired man and the Indian, at the
empty shells.
But Trant went on swiftly: “Are Sheppard-Tyler shells so poorly
loaded, Mr. Sheppard, that two out of ten of them are bad? And not
only two, but this—and this—and this,” at each word he dropped on the
table another shell, “the three left in your brother’s rifle. For
these others are bad—unloaded, too! So that even if he had been able
to pull the trigger on them, they would have failed like the first;
and I know that for the same reason that I know about the first ones.
Five out of ten shells of Sheppard-Tyler loading ‘accidentally’ with
no powder in them. That is too much for you—for anyone—to believe, Mr.
Sheppard! And that was why I said to you a moment ago, as I say again,
don’t charge that young man out there with murder!”
“You mean,” Sheppard gasped, “that Jim did not kill Neal?”
“I didn’t say that,” Trant returned sharply. “But your brother was not
shot down in cold-blooded murder; I’m sure of that! Whether Jim Tyler,
or another, shot him, I can not yet say; but I hope soon to prove. For
there were only four men in the woods who had Sheppard-Tyler guns; and
he must have been shot either by Tyler, or Findlay, or Chapin, or—to
open all the possibilities—by yourself, Mr. Sheppard!” the
psychologist continued boldly.
“Who? Me?” roared Chapin in fiery indignation.
“What—what’s that you’re saying?” The old sportsman stood staring at
his young adviser, half in outrage, half in astonishment.
Then, staring at the startling display of the empty shells—whose
meaning was as yet as incomprehensible to him as the means by which
the psychologist had so suddenly detected them—and dazed by Trant’s
sudden and equally incomprehensible defense of young Tyler after he
had detected them, he weakened. “I—I’m afraid. I don’t understand what
you mean, Mr. Trant!” he said helplessly; then, irritated by his own
weakness, he turned testily toward the door: “I wonder what is keeping
them out there?”
“Mr. Trant says,” Chapin burst out angrily, “that either you or I is
as likely to have shot Neal as young Jim! But Mr. Trant is crazy;
we’ll have young Jim in here and prove it!” and he threw open the
door.
But it was not young Tyler, but a girl, tall and blond, with a lithe,
straight figure almost like a boy’s, but with her fine, clear-cut
features deadly pale, and with her gray eyes—straight and frank, like
Sheppard’s, but much deeper and softer—full of grief and terror, who
stood first in the doorway.
“Leigh! So it was you keeping them out there! Leigh,” her uncle’s
voice trembled as he spoke to the girl, “what are you doing here?”
“No; what are you doing, uncle?” the girl asked in clear, fearless
tones. “Or rather, I mean, what have Mr. Chapin and this guide and
this—this gentleman,” she looked toward Trant and the gun Sheppard had
handed him, “come here for this morning? And why have they brought Jim
here—this way?” She moved aside a little, as though to let Trant see
behind her the set and firm, but also very pale, features of young
Tyler and the coarser face of the red-haired police officer. “I know,”
she continued, as her uncle still stood speechless, “that it must have
something to do with my father; for Jim could not deny it. But
what—what is it,” she appealed again, with the terror gleaming in her
eyes which told, even to Trant, that she must half suspect, “that
brings you all here this way this morning, and Jim too?”
“Run over home again, my dear,” the uncle stooped and kissed her
clumsily. “Run back home now, for you can’t come in.”
“Yes; you’ll go back home now, won’t you, Leigh?” Tyler touched her
hand.
“Perhaps you had better let Miss Sheppard in for a moment first, Mr.
Tyler,” Trant suggested. “For, in regard to what she seems to fear, I
have only encouragement for her.”
“You mean you—” Tyler’s pale, defiant lips parted impulsively, but he
quickly checked himself.
“I am not afraid to ask it, Jim,” the girl this time sought his
fingers with her own. “Do you mean you—are not here to try to connect
Jim with the—disappearance of my father?”
“No, Miss Sheppard,” Trant replied steadily, while the eyes of the two
older men were fixed upon him scarcely less intently than the girl’s;
“and I have asked you to come in a moment, because I feel safe in
assuring you that Mr. Tyler can not have been connected with the
disappearance of your father in the way they have made you fear. And
more than that, it is quite possible that within a few moments I will
be able to prove that he is clear of any connection with it
whatever—quite possible, Miss Sheppard. That was all I wanted to tell
you.”
“Who are you?” the girl cried. “And can you make my uncle believe
that, too? Do you think I haven’t known, uncle, what you thought when
Jim went up there after you and—father was lost? I know that what you
suspect is impossible; but,” she turned to Trant again, “can you make
my uncle believe that, too?”
“Your uncle, though he seemed to forget the fact a moment ago, has
retained me precisely to clear Mr. Tyler from the circumstantial
evidence that seemed so conclusive against him,” said Trant, with a
warning glance at the amazed Sheppard, “and I strongly hope that I
will be able to do so.”
“Oh, I did not understand! I will wait upstairs, then,” the girl
turned from Trant to Sheppard in bewilderment, touched Tyler’s arm as
she brushed by him in the door, and left them.
“Thank you for your intention in making it easier for her—whoever you
are—even if you have to take it back later,” Tyler said grimly to the
psychologist. “But since Crowley has told me,” he turned now to
Sheppard, “that it was you who ordered him to arrest me at the club
this morning, I suppose, now that Leigh is gone, that means that you
have found your brother shot as he deserved and as you expected
and—you think I did it!”
“Morning, Mr. Sheppard,” the red-haired police captain nodded.
“Morning, Mr. Trant; giving us some more of the psycho-palmistry?
Considerable water’s gone past the mill since you put an electric
battery on Caylis, the Bronson murderer, and proved him guilty just as
we were getting ready to send Kanlan up for the crime. As for this
young man,” he motioned with his thumb toward Tyler, “I took him in
because Mr. Sheppard asked it; but as Mr. Sheppard didn’t make any
charge against him, and this Tyler wanted to come up here, I brought
him on myself, not hearing from Mr. Sheppard. I suppose now it’s Mr.
Neal Sheppard’s death, after seeing the morning papers and hearing the
young lady.”
“Just so, Captain Crowley,” said Trant brusquely, “but we’ll let Mr.
Sheppard make his charge or not make it, just as he sees fit, after we
get through with the little test we’re going to carry out. And I am
greatly mistaken, if, after we are through, he will bring any such
charge as you have suggested. But come in, Captain; I am glad that you
are here. The test I am going to make may seem so trivial to these
gentlemen that I am glad to have a practical man like yourself here
who has seen more in such a test as the one I am going to make now,
than can appear on the surface.”
“‘More than appears on the surface’ is the word, Mr. Trant,” the
captain cried impulsively. “Mr. Sheppard, it’s myself has told you
about Mr. Trant before; and I’ll back anything he does to the limit,
since I see him catch the Bronson murderer, as I just told you, by a
one-cell battery that would not ring a door bell.”
“I shall ask you to bear that in mind, if you will, Mr. Sheppard and
Mr. Chapin,” the psychologist smiled slightly as he looked about the
room, and then crossed over to the mantel and took from it five of the
six small stone steins with silver tops which stood there.
“Particularly as I have not here even the regular apparatus for the
test, but must rather improvise. If I had you in my offices or in the
psychological laboratory fitted with that regular apparatus I could
prove in an instant which of you, if any, was the one who shot these
four cartridges to kill Neal Sheppard, and discarded this fifth,” he
touched again the shells on the table. “But, as I said, I hope we can
manage here.”
“Which of us?” Chapin echoed. “So you’re going to try me, too?” He
raised a plump fist and shook it angrily under Trant’s nose. “You
think I did it?”
“I didn’t say so, Mr. Chapin,” Trant replied pacificatingly. “I said
there were excellent chances that Mr. Tyler was not the one who did
the shooting; so if that is so, it must have been done by one of the
other men who carried Sheppard-Tyler rifles. I thought of you merely
as one of those; and as the test I am about to try upon Mr. Tyler
would be as simple and efficient a test to determine your
connection—or lack of connection—with this shooting, I shall ask you
to take it after Mr. Tyler, if necessary.”
He raised the tops of the steins, as he spoke, peered into them to see
they were empty; then put into his pocket the good shell which he had
taken from the belt the Indian had given him, and picked up the five
little covered cups again.
“As I have a stop second hand to my watch, Mr. Sheppard,” he
continued, “all I need now is some shot—ordinary bird shot, or small
shot of any size.”
“Shot?” Sheppard stared at the steins crazily, but catching Captain
Crowley’s equally uncomprehending but admiringly confident eyes, he
nodded, “of course. You will find all the shot you can want in the gun
cabinet in the corner.”
Trant crossed to the cabinet and opened the drawer. He returned in
less than a minute, as they stood exchanging curious glances, and
placed five steins in a row on the table before him.
“Please take up the middle one now, Mr. Tyler,” he requested, as he
took out his watch. “Thank you. Now the one to the right of it; and
tell me, is it the same weight as the other, or heavier, or lighter?”
“The same weight or lighter—perhaps a little lighter,” Tyler answered
readily. “But what of it? What is this?” he asked curiously.
“Take up the middle stein again.” Trant, disregarding his question,
glanced at the time interval on his watch; “the first stein you picked
up, Mr. Tyler; and then take up the remaining three in any order, and
tell me, as quickly as you can, whether they seem the same weight,
lighter or heavier to you. Thank you,” he acknowledged noncommittally
again, as Tyler acquiesced, his wonder at so extraordinary a test
increasing.
The psychologist glanced over the list of answers he had noted on a
slip of paper with the time taken for each. Then he gathered up the
five steins without comment and redistributed them on the table.
“It looks bright for you, Mr. Tyler,” he commented calmly; “but I will
ask you to go over the steins again;” and a second, and then a third
time, he made Tyler take up all five steins in turn and tell him
whether each seemed the same weight, lighter or heavier than the first
he handled.
“What’s all this tomfoolery with steins got to do with who shot Neal
Sheppard?” Chapin blurted out contemptuously. But when he turned for
concurrence to Stephen Sheppard, he found the old sportsman’s anxious
gaze again fixed on the intent face of the police captain who once
before, by his own admission, had seen Trant pick a murderer by
incomprehensible work, and his own contempt as well gave place to
apprehensive wonder at what might lurk behind this apparently childish
experiment.
[Illustration: In a trophy-room three men stand around a small round
table, one writing in a notebook. On the table are several large
lidded steins and a small pile of shotgun shells. The man on the
right is carefully lifting two of the steins. Several men stand
further back and watch over the proceedings.]
Caption: “What’s all this tomfoolery with steins got to do with who
shot Neal Sheppard?” Chapin blurted out contemptuously
“You ask what this means, Mr. Chapin?” Trant looked up as he finished
his notes. “It has made me certain that Mr. Tyler, at least, is
guiltless of the crime of which he has been suspected. As to who shot
Neal Sheppard, if you will kindly take up those steins just as you
have seen him do, perhaps I can tell you.”
For the fraction of an instant Chapin halted; then, as under direct
gaze of the psychologist, he reached out to pick up the first stein in
the test, whose very seeming triviality made it the more
incomprehensible to him, the sweat broke out on the backs of his
hands; but he answered stoutly:
“That’s heavier; the same; this lighter; and this the same again.”
And again: “The same; heavier; lighter; the same! Now, what’s the
answer?”
“That my feeling which you forced upon me to make me choose you—I
admit it—for the rôle you were so willing to assign to Tyler, Mr.
Chapin, would probably have made me waste valuable time, if I had not
been able to correct it, scientifically, as easily as I confirmed my
other feeling in Tyler’s favor. For there can be no question now that
you had no more to do with the shooting of Neal Sheppard than he had.
I must make still another test to determine the man who fired these
shots.”
“You mean you want to try _me_?” Sheppard demanded, uneasy and
astounded.
“I would rather test the other man first, Mr. Sheppard; the fourth man
who was in the woods with you,” Trant corrected calmly.
“_Findlay?_”
The psychologist, as he looked around, saw in the faces of Sheppard,
Chapin, and young Tyler alike, indignant astonishment.
“You don’t know Findlay, Mr. Trant,” Sheppard said roughly, losing
confidence again in spite of Crowley; “or you would understand that he
is the last man among us who could be suspected. Enoch is a regular
hermit—what they call a ‘recluse’! Only once a year are we able to get
him to tear himself away from his musty old house and his collections
of coins, and then only for old sake’s sake, to go to the north woods
with us. Your crazy test with the steins has led you a long way off
the track if you think it’s Findlay.”
“It has led me inevitably to the conclusion that, if it was one of you
four men, it was either Findlay or yourself, Mr. Sheppard,” Trant
asserted firmly. “You yourself know best whether it is necessary to
test him.”
Sheppard stared at the obstinate young psychologist for a full minute.
“At least,” he said finally with the same roughness, “we can keep
young Jim still in custody.” He looked at the police officer, who
nodded. Then he went to the house telephone on the wall, spoke shortly
into it, and turned:
“I’ll take you to Findlay, Trant. I’ve called the motor.”
Five minutes later the little party in the trophy-room broke up—Tyler,
under the watch of Captain Crowley, going to the police station, but
as yet without charge against him; Chapin going about his own
business; Trant and his client speeding swiftly down the boulevard in
the big motor.
“You want to stop at your office, I suppose,” Sheppard asked, “for you
haven’t brought the steins you used in your test with us?”
“Yes—but no,” Trant suddenly recollected; “you have mentioned once or
twice that Findlay is a collector of coins—a numismatist.”
“The craziest in Chicago.”
“Then if you’ll drop me for a minute at Swift and Walton’s curio shop
in Randolph Street that will be enough.”
Sheppard glanced at his young adviser wonderingly; and looked more
wonderingly still when Trant came out from the curio shop jingling a
handful of silver coins, which he showed quietly.
“They’re silver florins of one of the early Swiss states,” he
exclaimed; “borrowed of Swift and Walton, by means of a deposit, and
guaranteed to make a collector sit up and take notice. They’ll get me
an interview with Mr. Findlay, I hope, without the need of an
introduction. So if you will point out the house to me and let me out
a block or so from it, I will go in first.”
“And what do you want me to do?” asked Sheppard, startled.
“Come in a few minutes later; meet him as you would naturally. Your
brother’s body has been found; tell him about it. You suspect young
Tyler; tell him that also. Maybe he can help you. You need not
recognize me until I see I want you; but my work, I trust, will be
done before you get there.”
“Enoch Findlay help me?” queried Sheppard in perplexity. “You mean
help me to trace Neal’s murderer. But it is you who said because,
against all reason, you suspect Enoch, Mr. Trant, that we have come
here! For there’s the house,” he pointed. And Trant, not making any
answer, leaped out as the car was slowing, and left him.
The big old Michigan avenue dwelling, Trant saw at a glance, was in
disrepair; but from inattention, the psychologist guessed, not from
lack of money. The maid who opened the door was a slattern. The hall,
with its mingled aroma of dust and cooking, spoke eloquently of the
indifference of the house’s chief occupant; and the musty front room,
with its coin cases and curios, was as unlike the great light and airy
“den” where Stephen Sheppard hung his guns and skins and antlers, as
the man whom Trant rose to greet was unlike his friend, the hale and
ruddy old sportsman.
As Trant looked over this man, whose great height—six feet four or
five inches—was reduced at least three inches by the studious stoop of
his shoulders; as he took note of his worn and careless clothing and
his feet forced into bulging slippers; as he saw the parchment skin,
and met the eyes, so light in color that the iris could scarcely be
detected from the whites, like the unpainted eyes of a statue, he
appreciated the surprise that Findlay’s former partners, Sheppard and
Chapin, had experienced at the suggestion that this might be the
murderer.
“I shall ask only a little of your time, Mr. Findlay,” Trant put his
hand into his pocket for his coins, as though the proffered hand of
the other had been extended for them. “I have come to ask your
estimate, as an expert, upon a few coins which I have recently picked
up. I have been informed that you can better advise me as to their
value than any other collector in Chicago. My coins seem to be of the
early Swiss states.”
“Early Swiss coins are almost as rare as Swiss ships in the present
day, sir.” Findlay took the round bits of silver with the collector’s
intense absorption, which made him forget that he had not even asked
his visitor’s name. “And these are exceptionally rare and interesting
pieces. I have never seen but one other of these which I am fortunate
enough to possess. They are all the same, I see,” he sifted them
swiftly one after the other into his palm. “But—what’s this—what’s
this?” he cried with sudden disappointment as he took the top ones up
separately for more individual examination. “I hope you have not paid
too great a price for these.” He went to one of his cases and, opening
it, took out an exact duplicate of Trant’s coin. “For see!” he weighed
the two accurately in his fingers; “this first one of yours compares
most favorably with this specimen of mine, which is unquestionably
genuine. But this—this—this and this; ah, yes; and this, too”—he
sorted over the others swiftly and picked out five—“are certainly
lighter and I’m afraid they are counterfeit. But where are my scales?”
“Lighter?” Trant repeated, in apparent bewilderment.
“The correct coin, you see,” the collector replied, tossing his own
silver pieces into his scales, “should be over 400 grains—almost an
ounce. But these,” he placed the ten pieces one after the other on the
balance, too absorbed to notice the ringing of the door bell, “the
five I feared for, are quite light—twenty grains at least, you see?”
He reweighed them once more, carefully.
“That is certainly most interesting.” Trant grimly looked up at the
expert as though trying to deny a disappointment. “But it is quite
worth having the five coins light, to witness the facility with which
an expert like yourself can pick them out, unerringly, without
fail—barely twenty grains difference in four hundred.”
He looked up, still betraying only astonishment. But Findlay’s face,
after the first flush of his collector’s absorption, had suddenly
grown less cordial.
“I did not get your name, sir,” he started; then turned, at the
opening of the door behind him, to face Stephen Sheppard.
“Findlay!” the sportsman cried, scarcely waiting for the servant who
had admitted him to vanish, and not appearing to notice Trant at all.
“They’ve found Neal’s body! In Bowton’s mining shack—murdered, Enoch,
murdered! We’ll have young Jim Tyler up for it! Unless,” he hesitated,
and looked at Trant, and added, as though the compelling glance of the
psychologist constrained him to it, “unless you know something that
will help him, Enoch!”
“Hush, Steve! Hush!” the coin collector fell back upon the chair,
beside his desk, with an anxious glance at the psychologist. “I have a
man here.” He gathered himself together. “And what is it possible that
I could tell to save young Jim?”
“You might tell _why_, Mr. Findlay,” Trant said sharply, nerving
himself for the coming struggle, “for I know already _how_ you shot
Neal Sheppard yourself!”
But no struggle came.
“What—you?” Findlay burst from his pale lips; then caught the
recognition of this stranger in Sheppard’s face and fell back—trapped.
He clasped his hands convulsively together and stretched them out
before him on the desk. In his cheek something beat and beat with
ceaseless pulse.
“Murdered, Steve?” the latent fire seemed fanned in Findlay at last.
“But first”—he seemed to check something short on his lips—“who are
you? And why,” he turned to Trant, “why did you come to me with those
coins? I mean—how much do you know?”
“I am retained by Mr. Sheppard in this case,” Trant replied, “and only
turned coin collector to prove how you picked out those shells with
which you shot Neal Sheppard. And I know enough more to know that you
could not have murdered him in any right sense, and enough to assure
you that, if you tell how you shot him to save young Tyler, you can
count on me for competent confirmation that it was not murder.”
But the tall, gaunt man, bent in his chair, seemed scarcely to hear
the psychologist’s words or even to be conscious, longer, of his
presence. When he lifted his eyes, they gave no sign as they swept by
Trant’s figure. Findlay saw only his old partner and friend.
“But you shot him, Enoch? How and why?”
“How?” the Adam’s apple worked in Findlay’s throat, and the words
seemed wrenched from his lips as though their weight were a burden too
heavy for him longer to bear. “How, Steve? I shot him as he shot Len,
my brother, thirty years ago!”
“Then it was Neal that shot Len and—and started the murder among us?”
the old sportsman in his turn sought tremblingly for a seat. “For all
these years I have known in my heart that it was done by Neal; but,
Enoch, you didn’t shoot him now because he shot Len—thirty years ago!”
“No, not because he shot Len; but because he made me kill—made me
murder old Jim Tyler for it! Now do you understand? Neal shot Len, my
brother; and for that, perhaps I should not have shot Neal when, at
last, I found it out thirty years later. But for that murder he did
himself, _he made me murder poor old Jim Tyler_, my best friend! So I
shot him as he made me shoot Jim Tyler. It was both or none! Neal
would be alive to-day, if Jim was!”
“Neal shot Len and made you shoot old Jim Tyler for it?”
“Yes; I shot him, Steve! I shot old Jim—old Jim, who was the truest
friend to me of you all! I shot old Jim, whose bed I’d shared—and for
these thirty years old Jim has never left me. There are men like that,
Steve, who do a thing in haste, and then can’t forget. For I’m one of
them. I was no kind of a man for a murderer, Steve; I was no man for
the business we were in. Len led me—led me where I ought never to have
gone, for I hadn’t nerve like he and you and Neal had! Then Len was
shot, and Neal came to me and told me old Jim had done it. I was wild,
Steve—wild, for I’d had a difference with Jim and I knew Jim had had a
difference with Len—over me. So I believed it! But I had no gun. I
never carried one, you know. Neal gave me one and told me to go and
shoot him, or Jim’d shoot me, too. And I shot old Jim—shot him in the
back; that’s the kind of man I was—no nerve. I couldn’t face him when
I did it. But I’ve faced him often enough since, God knows! By night
and by day; by foul weather or by fair weather; for old Jim and I have
got up and gone to bed together ever since—thirty years. And it’s made
me what I am—you see, I never had the nerve. I told you!”
“But Neal, Enoch? How did you come to shoot Neal two weeks ago—how did
all that make you?” Sheppard urged excitedly.
“I’m telling you! Those two weeks ago—two weeks ago to-day, young Jim
came up into the woods red hot; for he had the papers he showed you
showing Neal had cheated him out of money. He met Chapin and me, too,
and told us and showed us the papers. There was one paper there that
didn’t mean anything to young Jim or to you or to Chapin, or to anyone
else that didn’t know old Jim intimately—old Jim had his own way of
putting things—but it meant a lot to me. For all these years I’ve been
telling you about—all these years I’ve been carrying old Jim with me,
getting up and lying down with him, and whenever he came to me, I’d
been saying to him, ‘I know, Jim, I killed you; but it was justice;
you killed my brother!’ But that paper made me know different. It made
me know it wasn’t old Jim that killed Len, Steve; it was Neal—and Jim
knew it; and that was why Neal set me on Jim and made me kill him;
because Jim knew it! That was like Neal, wasn’t it, Steve? Never do
anything straight, Neal wouldn’t, when he could do it crooked! He
wanted to get rid of old Jim—he owed him money and was afraid of him
now, for Jim knew he’d killed Len—and he saw a safe way to make me do
it. So then at last I knew why old Jim had never left me, but had been
following me all these years—always with me; and I never let on to
Chapin. I just went to look for Neal. ‘This time,’ said I to myself,
‘it’s justice!’ And—I found him sitting on a log, with his gun behind
him, a little drunk—for he always carried a flask with him, you
know—and whistling. I couldn’t face him any more than I could Jim, and
I came up behind him. Three times I took a bead on Neal’s back, and
three times I couldn’t pull the trigger—for he never stopped
whistling, and I knew if I shot him then I’d hear that whistling all
my life—and the third time he turned and saw me. He must have seen the
whole thing on my face; I can’t keep anything. But he had nerve, Neal
did. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘it’s Enoch Findlay, the murderer, shooting in the
back as usual.’ ‘I’m what you made me,’ says I, ‘but you’ll never make
any difference to another man!’ ‘Give me a chance,’ says Neal. ‘Don’t
shoot me sitting!’ Neal had nerve, I tell you—I never had any; but
that time for once in my life, I got it. ‘Get up,’ says I, ‘and take
your gun; you’ll have as fair a chance as I will.’ But that wasn’t
quite true. I never had Neal’s nerve—I didn’t have it even then. But
I’ve always been a better shot than him; I’ve never drunk; and he
hasn’t been steady for years. So I knew I still had the advantage; and
Neal knew it, too; but he doesn’t let on.
“‘Thank you, Enoch,’ he says. ‘Now I’ll kill you, of course; but while
I’m doing it, maybe you’ll hit me—no knowing; and I don’t care to have
a soft-nose bullet mushroom inside of me. Besides, wouldn’t you rather
have a clean hole—you’ve seen what the soft-noses do to the deer!’
‘It’s all we’ve got,’ says I; but I guess he had me on that then. For
I had seen the game hit by soft-nose bullets; and if I had to have him
around with a bullet hole in him after I’d killed him, I wanted a
clean bullet hole anyway—not the other kind. ‘Have you got the other
kind?’ I said. ‘I’ll go to camp and get some,’ he answered. I don’t
know what was in me; I had my nerve that day—for the first and only
time in my life. I guess it was that, Steve, and it was a new feeling
and I wanted to enjoy it. I knew there was some devilment in what he
said; but I wanted to give him every chance—yes, I enjoyed giving the
chance for more crookedness to him before I finished him; for I knew I
was going to finish him then.
“‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll wait for you in the clearing by Bowton’s
mining shack’; for I saw in his eyes that he was afraid not to come
back to me; and I watched him go, and went over to Bowton’s and sat
down with my back against the shanty, so he couldn’t come up and shoot
me from behind, and waited. It was dark and cloudy; he was gone four
hours, and before he got back it began to snow. It got so that you
couldn’t see ten feet in that blizzard; but I sat outside in the snow
till Neal came back; then we went into the shack together and agreed
to wait till it was over—no man on earth could have done any shooting
in that storm then, and we knew we couldn’t get back to camp till it
was over. We sat there in the shack, and looked at each other. Night
came, and we were still looking; only now we couldn’t see each other
any longer, but sat waiting to hear the other moving—only neither of
us moved. Then we did—slowly and carefully. Sometimes I sat in one
place, sometimes in another, for I didn’t want him to know just where
I was for fear he’d shoot. But he was afraid to shoot first; for if he
missed, I’d see him by the flash and get him, sure. It kept on
snowing. Once Neal said, ‘We’ll settle this thing in the morning.’
‘All right,’ says I—but moved again, for I thought he would surely
shoot then.
“I kept wondering when my nerve would go, but it stayed by me, and I
tell you I enjoyed it; he moved more often than I did. For the first
time in my life I wasn’t afraid of Neal Sheppard; and he was afraid of
me. He laid down in one of the bunks and I could hear him turning from
side to side; but he didn’t dare to sleep any, and I didn’t either.
Then he said, ‘This is hell, ain’t it!’ ‘If it is,’ I said, ‘it’s a
taste of what you’re going to get after!’ After I’d shot him, I meant.
Then he said, ‘I want to sleep, and I can’t sleep while you’re living;
let’s settle this thing now!’
“‘In the dark?’ I asked. ‘Not if I can find a light,’ he says, and I
promised not to shoot him while he lit a match—I had none. He lit one
and looked for a piece of candle, but couldn’t find any. Then I said,
‘If you want to do it in the dark, I’m agreeable’; for I’d been
thinking that maybe it was only because of the dark, now, that I had
my nerve, and maybe when daylight came and I could see him, I might be
afraid of him. So we agreed to it.
“He felt for me in the dark, and held out five shells. We’d
agreed in the afternoon to fight at fifty paces with five shells
each—steel-patched bullets—and shoot till one killed. So he counted
out five in his hand and offered them to me, keeping the other five
for himself. I felt the five he gave me. They were full metal-patched,
all right; the kind for men to fight with; they’d either kill or make
a clean wound. But something about him—and I knew I had to be looking
for devilment—made me suspicious of him. ‘What are your five,’ I said
at a venture; ‘soft-nose? Are you going to use sporting lead on me?’
‘They’re the same as yours,’ he said; but I got more suspicious.
‘Let’s trade, then,’ I said. ‘Feel the steel on them, then,’ he handed
me one. I felt; and it was metal-patched, all right; but then I knew
what was the bottom of his whole objection to the bullets; his shell
was heavier than mine. Mine were lighter; they were unloaded; I mean
they had no powder. He knew the powder we use was so little compared
to the weight of the case and bullet it could easily pass all right;
no one could spot the difference—no one, except one trained like me;
and I was sure he never thought I could. It all flashed across me ten
times quicker than that as soon as I felt his cartridges; but I said
nothing. I told you I had my nerve that night. For the same second my
plan flashed to me, too; my plan to turn his own trick against him and
not let him know! So I gave him back his shell; let him think it was
all right; but I knocked all ten, his and mine, on the floor.
“Then we had to get down and look for them on the floor. I knew I
could pick out the good from the bad easy; but he—well, whenever I
found a light one, I left it; but when I found a heavy one, I kept it.
I got four good ones so easy and quick that he never guessed I was
picking them; he was fumbling—I could almost feel him sweat—trying to
be sure he was getting good shells. He got one, by accident, before I
found it; so I had to take one bad one; but I knew he had four bad,
though he himself couldn’t know anything about that. Then we loaded
the guns, and went out into the big room of the cabin, and backed away
from each other.
“I backed as quick as I could, but he went slower. I did that so I
could hear his footsteps, and I listened and knew just about where he
was. We didn’t either one of us want to fire first, for the other one
would see his flash and fire at it. But after I had waited as long as
I could and knew that he hadn’t moved because I heard no footsteps, I
fired twice—as fast as I could pull the trigger—where I heard him
last; and from just the opposite corner from where I last heard him, I
heard the click of his rifle—the hammer falling on one of his bad
shells, or it might have been the last for me. I didn’t see how he
could have got there without my knowing it; but I didn’t stop to think
of that. I just swung and gave it to him quick—two shots again, but
not so quick but that—between them—his hammer struck his good shell
and the bullet banged through the wall behind me. But then I gave him
my fourth shot—straight; for his hammer didn’t even click again.
Besides, I heard him fall. I waited a long time to see if he moved;
but he didn’t. I threw the bad cartridge out of my gun, and went over
and felt for him. I got the matchbox and lit matches and saw he was
dead; and I saw, too, how he had got in that corner without me
hearing. He was in his stockings; he had taken off his shoes and
sneaked from the corner where I first shot for him, so he would have
killed me if I hadn’t seen to it that he had the bad shells he fixed
for me. It struck a sort of a shiver to me to see that—to see him
tricky and fighting foul to the end. But that was like Neal, wasn’t
it, Steve? That was like him, clear to the last, looking for any
unfair advantage he could take? That’s how and why I killed Neal,
Steve—and this time it was justice, Steve! For Neal had it coming!
Steve, Steve! didn’t Neal have it coming?”
He stretched out his hands to his old friend, the brother of the man
he had killed, in pitiable appeal; and as the other rose, with his
face working with indecision and emotion, Trant saw that the question
he had asked and the answer that was to be given were for those two
alone, and he went out and left them.
The psychologist waited at the top of the high stone entrance steps
for several minutes before Sheppard joined him and stood drinking in
great breaths of the cold December air as though by its freshness to
restore his nervous balance.
“I do not know what your decision is, Mr. Sheppard,” said the younger
man finally, “as to what will be done in the matter. I may tell you
that the case had already given me independent confirmation of Mr.
Findlay’s remarkable statement in the important last particulars. So
it will be no surprise to me, and I shall not mention it, if I am
never called on by you to bear witness to the very full confession we
have just heard.”
“Confession?” Sheppard started. “Findlay does not regard it a
confession, Mr. Trant, but as his defense; and I—I rather think that
during the last few minutes I have been looking at it in that light.”
He led the way toward the automobile, and as they stepped into it, he
continued: “You have proved completely, Mr. Trant, all the assertions
you made at my house this morning, but I am still guessing how the
means you used could have made you think of Findlay as the man who
killed Neal—the one whom I would have least suspected.”
“You know already,” Trant answered, “what led me to the conclusion
that your brother was killed in the dark; and that it was certainly
not a murder, but a duel, or, at least, some sort of a formal fight
between two men, had occurred to me with compelling suggestiveness as
soon as the Indian showed to me the intact shells—all with full
metal-patched bullets, though these were not carried by you for game
and no other such shells were found in your brother’s belt. And not
only were the intact shells with steel-patched bullets, but the shots
fired were also steel-patched bullets, as the Indian noticed from
their holes through the logs. So here were two men with five
metal-patched shells apiece firing at each other.
“It still more strongly suggested some sort of a duel to me,” the
psychologist continued, “when they told us the singularly curious fact
that two of the bullets had pierced the wall directly above the place
where your brother’s shoes stood. This could reasonably be explained
if I held my suspicion that the men had fought a duel in the
dark—shooting by sound; but I could not even guess at any other
explanation which was not entirely fantastic. And when I discovered
immediately afterwards that, of the ten special shells which these men
seemed to have chosen to fire at each other, five had been unloaded,
it made the fact final to me; for it was utterly absurd to suppose
that of the ten shells to be shot under such circumstances, five—just
one half—would have been without powder by accident. But I am free to
confess,” Trant continued frankly, “that I did not even guess at the
true explanation of that—for I have accepted Mr. Findlay’s statement
as correct. I had accounted for it by supposing that, in this duel,
the men more consciously chose their cartridges and that the duel was
a sort of repeating rifle adaptation of two men dueling with one
loaded and one unloaded pistol. In the essential fact, however, I was
correct and that was that the men did choose the shells; so, granting
that, it was perfectly plain that one of the men had been able to
clearly discriminate between the loaded and the unloaded shells, and
the other had not. For not only did the one have four good shells to
the other’s one—in itself an almost convincing figure—but the man with
four did not even try to shoot his bad shell, while it appeared that
the other had tried to shoot his bad one first. Now as there was not
the slightest difference to the eye between the bad and good shells
and—that which made it final—the duel was fought in the dark, the
discrimination which one man had and your brother did not, could only
have been an ability for fine discrimination in weight.”
“I see!” Comprehension dawned curiously upon Sheppard’s face.
“For the bullet and the case of those special shells of yours, Mr.
Sheppard,” the psychologist continued rapidly, “were so heavy—weighing
together over three hundred grains, as I weighed them at your gun
cabinet—and the smokeless powder you were trying was of such
exceptional power that you had barely twenty grains in a cartridge; so
the difference in weight between one of those full shells and an empty
one was scarcely one-fifteenth—an extremely difficult difference for
one without special deftness to detect in such delicate weights. It
was entirely indistinguishable to you; and also apparently so to Mr.
Chapin, though I was not at first convinced whether it was really so
or not. However, as I have trained myself in laboratory work to fine
differences—a man may work up to discriminations as fine as
one-fortieth—I was able to make out this essential difference at once.
“This reduced my case to a single and extremely elementary
consideration: _could_ young Tyler have picked out those shells in the
dark and shot Neal Sheppard with them. If he could, then I could take
up the circumstantial evidence against him, which certainly seemed
strong. But if he could not, then I had merely to test the other men
who carried Sheppard-Tyler rifles and were gone from camp the night
your brother was shot, as well as young Tyler—though that circumstance
seemed to have been forgotten in the case against Tyler.”
“I see!” Sheppard cried again. “So that was what you were doing with
the steins and shot! But how could you tell that from the steins?”
“I was making a test, as you understand now, Mr. Sheppard,” Trant
explained, “to determine whether or not Tyler—and after him, Mr.
Chapin—could have distinguished easily between a loaded shell weighing
something over 320 grains and one without the 20 odd grains of
smokeless powder; that is, to find if either could discriminate
differences of no more than one-fifteenth in such a small weight. To
test for this in the laboratory and with the proper series of
experiment weights, I should have a number of rubber blocks of
precisely the same size and appearance, but graded in weight from 300
grains to something over 320 grains. If I had the subject take up the
300 grain weight and then the others in succession, asking him to call
them heavier or lighter or the same weight, and then made him go over
all the weights again in a different order, I could have as accurately
proved his sense of weight discrimination as an oculist can prove the
power of sight of the eyes, and with as little possibility of anyone
fooling me. But I could not arrange a proper series of experiment
weights of only 300 grains without a great deal of trouble; and it was
not necessary for me to do so. For under the operation of a well-known
psychological principle called Weber’s Law, I knew that the same ratio
of discrimination between weights holds pretty nearly constant for
each individual, whether the experiment is made with grains, or
ounces, or pounds. In other words, if a person’s ‘threshold of
difference’—as his power of weight discrimination is called—is only
one-tenth in grains, it is the same in drams or ounces; and if he can
not accurately determine whether one stein weighs one-fifteenth more
than another, neither can he pick out the heavier shell if the
difference is only one-fifteenth. So I merely had to take five of your
steins, fill the one I used as a standard with shot till it weighed
about six ounces, or 100 drams. The other steins I weighted to 105,
107, 108, 110 drams respectively; and by mixing them up and timing
both Tyler’s and Chapin’s answers so as to be sure they were answering
their honest, first impressions of the weights of the steins and were
not trying to trick me, I found that neither could consistently tell
whether the steins that weighed one-twentieth, one-fifteenth or even
the steins which weighed one-twelfth more were heavier, lighter or the
same as the standard stein; and it was only when they got the one
which weighed 110 drams and was one-tenth heavier that they were
always right. So I knew.”
“I see! I see!” Sheppard cried eagerly. “Then the coins you took to
Findlay were—”
“Weights to try him in precisely the same sense,” Trant continued.
“Only they approximated much more closely the weights of the bullets
and had, indeed, even finer differences in weight. Five were genuine
old florins weighing 400 grains, while the other five were light
twenty grains or only one-twentieth; yet Findlay picked them out at
once from the others, as soon as he compared them, without a moment’s
hesitation.”
“Simple as you make it out now, young man,” Sheppard said to his young
adviser admiringly, “it was a wonderful bit of work. And whether or
not it would have proved that you were needed to save Tyler’s life,
you have certainly saved me from making the most serious criminal
charge against him; and you have spared him and my niece from starting
their lives together under the shame and shadow of the public
knowledge of my brother’s past. I am going now, of course, to see that
Jim is freed and that even the suspicion that my brother was not
killed accidentally in the woods, gets no further than Captain
Crowley. I can see to that! And you, Mr. Trant—”
“I have retained the privilege, fortunately, Mr. Sheppard,” Trant
interrupted, “since I am unofficial, of judging for myself when
justice has been done. And I told you that the story we have just
heard satisfied me as the truth. My office is in the next block. You
will leave me there?”