A dozen idlers leaned against the bar or sat in chairs tilted against
the wall. Trant examined these idlers one after another closely. The
only man at whom he did not seem to look was one who, as the only
red-headed man in the place, must plainly be Meyan. “Red-headed” was the
only description they had of him, but meager as it was, with the
landlady’s statement that he was in the saloon, Trant resolved to test
him.
The psychologist took an envelope from his pocket and wrote rapidly upon
the back of it. “I am going to try something,” he whispered, as he
flicked the envelope along the bar to Edwards. “It may not succeed, but
if I am able to get Meyan into a test, then go into that back room and
speak aloud what I have written on the envelope, as if you had just come
in with somebody.” Then, as Edwards nodded his comprehension, the
psychologist turned easily to the man nearest him at the bar--a pallid
Lithuanian sweatshop worker.
“I suppose you can stand a lot of that?” Trant nodded at the glass of
pungent whisky. “Still--it has its effect on you. Sends your heart action
up--quickens your pulse.”
“What are you?” asked the man, grinning. “Temperance lecturer?”
“Something like that,” the psychologist answered. “At least, I can show
you the effect whisky has upon your heart.”
He picked up the instrument case and opened it. The loungers gathered
about him, and Trant saw with satisfaction that they thought him an
itinerant temperance advocate. They stared curiously at the instrument
he had taken from its case.
“It goes on the arm,” he explained. The Lithuanian, with a grin toward
his companions, began to turn up his sleeve. “Not you,” Trant said; “you
just had a drink.”
“Is there a drink in this? I ain’t had a drink since breakfast!” said
another who pushed up to the table and bared his blue-veined forearm for
Trant to fasten the instrument to it.
Young Winton Edwards, watching as curiously as the others, saw Trant
fasten the sphygmograph on the mechanic’s arm. and the pencil point
commence to trace on the sooty surface a wavy line, the normal record of
the mechanic’s pulse.
“You see it!” Trant pointed out to the others the record, as it unwound
slowly from the drum. “Every thought you have, every feeling, every
sensation--taste, touch, smell--changes the beating of your heart and
shows upon this little record. I could show through that whether you had
a secret you were trying to conceal, as readily as I will show the
effect whisky has on you, or as I can learn whether this man likes the
smell of onion.” He took from the free lunch on the bar a slice of
onion, which he held under the man’s nose. “Ah! You don’t like onion!
But the whisky will make you forget its smell, I suspect.”
As the odor of the whisky reached the man’s nostrils, the record
line--which when he smelled the onion had become suddenly flattened with
elevations nearer together, as the pulse beat weakly but more
quickly--began to return to the shape it bad had at first. He tossed off
the liquor, rolling it upon his tongue, and all saw the record regain
its first appearance; then, as the stimulant began to take effect, the
pencil point lifted higher at each rise and the elevations became
farther apart. They stared and laughed.
“Whisky effects you about normally, I should say.” Trant began to
unfasten the sphygmograph from the man’s wrist. “I have heard it said
that black-haired men, like you, feel its effect least of all;
light-haired men more; men with red hair like mine feel the greatest
effect, it’s said. We red-haired men have to be careful with whisky.”
“Hey! There’s a red-headed man,” one of the crowd cried suddenly,
pointing. “Try it on him.”
Two enthusiasts at once broke from the group and rushed eagerly to
Meyan. He had continued, inattentive through all, to read his newspaper,
but now he laid it down. Trant and young Edwards, as he rose and
slouched half curiously toward them, could see plainly for the first
time his strongly boned, coarsely powerful face, and heavy-lidded eyes,
and the grossly muscular strength of his big-framed body.
“Pah! your watered whisky,” he jeered in a strangely thick and heavy
voice, when the test had been explained to him. “I am used to stronger
drinks!” He grinned derisively at the surrounding faces, kicked a chair
up to the table, and sat down. Trant glanced toward Edwards, and Edwards
moved silently back from the group and disappeared unnoticed through the
partition door. Then the psychologist swiftly adjusted the sphygmograph
upon the outstretched arm and watched intently an instant until the
pencil point had caught up the strong and even pulse which set it rising
and falling in perfect rhythm.
As he turned to the bar for the whisky, the rear door slammed and the
voice Trant was expecting spoke: “Yes, it was at Warsaw the police took
him. He was taken without warning from his friend’s house. What next?
The prisons are full, but they keep on filling them; the graveyards will
be full next!”
“Look! Look!” cried the Lithuanian beside Trant at the table, “he
bragged about watered whisky, but just the sight of it makes his heart
beat bigger and stronger!”
Trant bent eagerly over the smoked paper, watching the stronger, slower
pulse beat which the record showed.
“Yes; before he takes the whisky his pulse is strengthened,” Trant
answered; “for that is how the pulse acts when a man is pleased and
exults!”
He waited now, almost inattentively, while Meyan drank the whisky and
the others grew silent in defeat as the giant’s pulse, true to his
boast, showed almost no variation under the fiery liquor.
“Fall, such child foolishness!” Meyan, with steady hand, set the glass
back on the table. Then, as Trant unclasped the straps around his arm,
he rose, yawned in their faces, and lounged out of the place.
The psychologist turned to meet young Edwards as he hurried in, and
together they went out to join the father at the motor.
“We can do nothing sooner than tonight,” Trant said shortly, an
expression of keen anxiety on his face. “I must learn more about this
man, but my inquiries must be conducted alone. If you will meet me here
again at seven o’clock to-night, say at the pawnbroker’s shop we passed
upon the corner, I hope to be able to solve the mystery of the hammering
man, and the influence he is undoubtedly exerting on Miss Silber. I may
say,” he added, after a moment, “that I would not attach too much weight
to the child’s statement that Miss Silber is Meyan’s wife. It is
understood, then, that you will meet me here to-night, as I have
suggested.”
He nodded to his clients, and ran to catch a passing street car.