The Mystery & Suspense Novella

by Fletcher Flora

  “Well, Trant, what is it?” the trustee asked. He had opened the door of the limousine and was preparing to descend.

  “Mr. Branower,” Trant replied, “Dr. Lawrie was found this morning dead in his office.”

  “Dead? This morning?” A muddy grayness appeared under the flush of Branower’s cheeks. “Why! I was coming to see him—even before I heard from Joslyn. What was the cause?”

  “The room was filled with gas.”

  “Asphyxiation!”

  “An accident?” the woman asked, leaning forward. Even as she whitened with the horror of this news, Trant found himself wondering at her beauty. Every feature was so perfect, so flawless, and her manner so sweet and full of charm that, at this first close sight of her, Trant found himself excusing and approving Branower’s marriage. She was an unknown American girl, whom Branower had met in Paris and had brought back to reign socially over this proud university suburb where his father’s friends and associates had had to accept her and—criticise.

  “Dr. Lawrie asphyxiated,” she repeated, “accidentally, Mr. Trant?”

  “We—hope so, Mrs. Branower.”

  “There is no clew to the perpetrator?”

  “Why, if it was an accident, Mrs. Branower, there was no perpetrator.”

  “Cora!” Branower ejaculated.

  “How silly of me!” She flushed prettily. “But Dr. Lawrie’s lovely daughter; what a shock to her!”

  Branower touched Trant upon the arm. After his first personal shock, he had become at once a trustee—the trustee of the university whose treasurer lay dead in his office just as his accounts were to be submitted to the board. He dismissed his wife hurriedly. “Now, Trant, let us go up.”

  President Joslyn met Branower’s grasp mechanically and acquainted the president of the trustees, almost curtly, with the facts as he had found them. Then the eyes of the two men met significantly.

  “It seems, Joslyn,” Branower used almost the same words that Joslyn had used just before his arrival, “like a—confession! It is suicide?” the president of the trustees was revolting at the charge.

  “I can see no other solution,” the president replied, “though Mr. Trant—”

  “And I might have saved this, at least!” The trustee’s face had grown white as he looked down at the man on the couch. “Oh, Lawrie, why did I put you off to the last moment?”

  He turned, fumbling in his pocket for a letter. “He sent this Saturday,” he confessed, pitifully. “I should have come to him at once, but I could not suspect this.”

  Joslyn read the letter through with a look of increased conviction. It was in the clear hand of the dead treasurer. “This settles all,” he said, decidedly, and he re-read it aloud:

  DEAR BRANOWER:

  I pray you, as you have pity for a man with sixty years of probity behind him facing dishonor and disgrace, to come to me at the earliest possible hour. Do not, I pray, delay later than Monday, I implore you.

  JAMES LAWRIE.

  Dr. Reiland buried his face in his hands, and Joslyn turned to Trant. On the young man’s face was a look of deep perplexity.

  “When did you get that, Mr. Branower?” Trant asked, finally.

  “He wrote it Saturday morning. It was delivered to my house Saturday afternoon. But I was motoring with my wife. I did not get it until I returned late Sunday afternoon.”

  “Then you could not have come much sooner.”

  “No; yet I might have done something if I had suspected that behind this letter was hidden his determination to commit suicide.”

  “Not suicide, Mr. Branower!” Trant interrupted curtly.

  “What?”

  “Look at his face. It is white and drawn. If asphyxiated, it would be blue, swollen. Before the gas was turned on he was dead—struck dead—”

  “Struck dead? By whom?”

  “By the man in this room last night! By the man who burned those notes, plugged the keyhole, turned on the gas, arranged the rest of these theatricals, and went away to leave Dr. Lawrie a thief and a suicide to—protect himself! Two men had access to the university funds, handled these notes! One lies before us; and the man in this room last night, I should say, was the other—” he glanced at the clock—“the man who at the hour of nine has not yet appeared at his office!”

  “Harrison?” cried Joslyn and Reiland together.

  “Yes, Harrison,” Trant answered, stoutly. “I certainly prefer him for the man in the room last night.”

  “Harrison?” Branower repeated, contemptuously. “Impossible.”

  “How impossible?” Trant asked, defiantly.

  “Because Harrison, Mr. Trant,” the president of the trustees rejoined, “was struck senseless at Elgin in an automobile accident Saturday noon. He has been in the Elgin hospital, scarcely conscious, ever since.”

  “How did you learn that, Mr. Branower?”

  “I have helped many young men to positions here. Harrison was one. Because of that, I suppose, he filled in my name on the ‘whom to notify’ line of a personal identification card he carried. The hospital doctors notified me just as I was leaving home in my car. I saw him at the Elgin hospital that afternoon.”

  Young Trant stared into the steady eyes of the president of the trustees. “Then Harrison could not have been the man in the room last night. Do you realize what that implies?” he asked, whitening. “I preferred, I said, to fix him as Harrison. That would keep both Dr. Lawrie from being the thief and any close personal intimate of his from being the man who struck him dead here last night. But with Harrison not here, the treasurer himself must have known all the particulars of this crime,” he struck the canceled note in his hand, “and been concealing it for—that close friend of his who came here with him. You see how very terribly it simplifies our problem? It was some one close enough to Lawrie to cause him to conceal the thing as long as he could, and some one intimate enough to know of the treasurer’s tinkering habits, so that, even in great haste, he could think at once of the gas nippers in Lawrie’s private tool drawer. Gentlemen,” the young assistant tensely added, “I must ask you which of you three was the one in this room with Dr. Lawrie last night?”

  “What!” The word in three different cadences burst from their lips—amazement, anger, threat.

  He lifted a shaking hand to stop them.

  “I realize,” he went on more quickly, “that, after having suggested one charge and having it shown false, I am now making a far more serious one, which, if I cannot prove it, must cost me my position here. But I make it now again, directly. One of you three was in this room with Dr. Lawrie last night. Which one? I could tell within the hour if I could take you successively to the psychological laboratory and submit you to a test. But, perhaps I need not. Even without that, I hope soon to be able to tell the other two, for which of you Dr. Lawrie concerned himself with this crime, and who it was that in return struck him dead Sunday night and left him to bear a double disgrace as a suicide.”

  The young psychologist stood an instant gazing into their startled faces, half frightened at his own temerity in charging thus the three most respected men in the university; then, as President Joslyn eyed him sternly, he caught again the enthusiasm of his reasoning, and flushed and paled.

  “One of you, at least, knows that I speak the truth,” he said, determinedly; and without a backward look he burst from the room and, running down the steps, left the campus. It was five o’clock that afternoon, when Trant rang the bell at Dr. Joslyn’s door. He saw that Mr. Branower and Dr. Reiland had been taken into the president’s private study before him; and that the manner of all three was less stern toward him than he had expected.

  “Dr. Reiland and Mr. Branower have come to hear the coroner’s report to me,” Joslyn explained. “The physicians say Lawrie did not die from asphyxiation. An autopsy to-morrow will show the cause of his death.
But, at least, Trant—you made accusations this morning which can have no foundation in truth, but in part of what you said you must have been correct; for obviously some other person was in the room.”

  “But not Harrison,” Trant replied. “I have just come from Elgin, where, though I was not allowed to speak with him, I saw him in the hospital.”

  “You doubted he was there?” Branower asked.

  “I wanted to make sure, Mr. Branower. And I have traced the notes, too,” the young man continued. “All were made out as usual, signed regularly by Dr. Lawrie and paid by him personally, upon maturity, from the university reserve. So I have made only more certain that the man in the room must have been one of Dr. Lawrie’s closest friends. I came back and saw Margaret Lawrie.”

  Reiland’s eyes filled with tears. “This terrible thing, with her unfortunate presence with us at the finding of her father’s body, has prostrated poor Margaret,” he said.

  “I found it so,” Trant rejoined. “Her memory is temporarily destroyed. I could make her comprehend little. Yet she knows only of her father’s death; nothing at all has been said to her of the suspicions against him. Does his death alone seem cause enough for her prostration? More likely, I think, it points to some guilty knowledge of her father’s trouble and whom he was protecting. If so, her very condition makes it impossible for her to conceal those guilty associations under examination.”

  “Guilty associations?” Dr. Reiland rose nervously. “Do you mean, Trant, that you think Margaret knows anything of the loss of this money? Oh, no, no; it is impossible!”

  “It would at any rate account for her prostration,” the assistant repeated quietly, “and I have determined to make a test of her for association with her father’s guilt. I will use in this case, Dr. Reiland, only the simple association of words—Freud’s method.”

  “How? What do you mean?” Branower and Joslyn exclaimed.

  “It is a method for getting at the concealed causes of mental disturbance. It is especially useful in diagnosing cases of insanity or mental breakdown from insufficiently known causes.

  “We have a machine, the chronoscope,” Trant continued, as the others waited, interrogatively, “which registers the time to a thousandth part of a second, if necessary. The German physicians merely speak a series of words which may arouse in the patient ideas that are at the bottom of his insanity. Those words which are connected with the trouble cause deeper feeling in the subject and are marked by longer intervals of time before the word in reply can be spoken. The nature of the word spoken by the patient often clears the causes for his mental agitation or prostration.

  “In this case, if Margaret Lawrie had reason to believe that any one of you were closely associated with her father’s trouble, the speaking of that one’s name or the mentioning of anything connected with that one, must betray an easily registered and decidedly measurable disturbance.”

  “I have heard of this,” Joslyn commented.

  “Excellent,” the president of the trustees agreed, “if Margaret’s physician does not object.”

  “I have already spoken with him,” Trant replied. “Can I expect you all at Dr. Lawrie’s to-morrow morning when I test Margaret to discover the identity of the intimate friend who caused the crime charged to her father?”

  Dr. Lawrie’s three dearest friends nodded in turn. Trant came early the next morning to the dead treasurer’s house to set up the chronoscope in the spare bedroom next to Margaret Lawrie’s.

  The instrument he had decided to use was the pendulum chronoscope, as adapted by Professor Fitz of Harvard University. It somewhat resembled a brass dumb-bell very delicately poised upon an axle so that the lower part, which was heavier, could swing slowly back and forth like a pendulum. A light, sharp pointer paralleled this pendulum. The weight, when started, swung to and fro in the arc of a circle; the pointer swung beside it. But the pointer, after starting to swing, could be instantaneously stopped by an electro-magnet. This magnet was connected with a battery and wires led from it to the two instruments used in the test. The first pair of wires connected with two bits of steel which Trant, in conducting the test, would hold between his lips. The least motion of his lips to enunciate a word would break the electric circuit and start swinging the pendulum and the pointer beside it. The second pair of wires led to a sort of telephone receiver. When Margaret would reply into this, it would close the circuit and instantaneously the electro-magnet clamped and held the pointer. A scale along which the pointer traveled gave, down to thousandths of a second, the time between the speaking of the suggesting word and the first associated word replied.

  Trant had this instrument set up and tested before he had to turn and admit Dr. Reiland. Mr. Branower and President Joslyn soon joined them, and a moment after a nurse entered supporting Margaret Lawrie. Dr. Reiland himself scarcely recognized her as the same girl who had come running across the campus to them only the morning before. Her whole life had been centered on the father so suddenly taken away.

  Trant nodded to the nurse, who withdrew. He looked to Dr. Reiland.

  “Please be sure that she understands,” he said, softly. The older man bent over the girl, who had been placed upon the bed.

  “Margaret,” he said tenderly, “we know you cannot speak well this morning, my dear, and that you cannot think very clearly. We shall not ask you to do much. Mr. Trant is merely going to say some words to you slowly, one word at a time; and we want you to answer—you need only speak very gently—anything at all, any word at all, my dear, which you think of first. I will hold this little horn over you to speak into. Do you understand, my dear?”

  The big eyes closed in assent. The others drew nervously nearer. Reiland took the receiving drum at the end of the second set of wires and held it before the girl’s lips. Trant picked up the mouth metals attached to the starting wires.

  “We may as well begin at once,” Trant said, as he seated himself beside the table which held the chronoscope and took a pencil to write upon a pad of paper the words he suggested, the words associated and the time elapsing. Then he put his mouthpiece between his lips.

  “Dress!” he enunciated clearly. The pendulum, released by the magnet, started to swing. The pointer swung beside it in an arc along the scale. “Skirt!” Miss Lawrie answered, feebly, into the drum at her lips. The current caught the pointer instantaneously, and Trant noted the result thus:

  Dress—2.7 seconds—skirt.

  “Dog!” Trant spoke, and started the pointer again.

  “Cat!” the girl answered and stopped it.

  Trant wrote:

  Dog—2.6 seconds—cat.

  A faint smile appeared on the faces of Mr. Branower and Dr. Joslyn, but Reiland knew that his young assistant was merely establishing the normal time of Margaret’s associations through words without probable connection with any disturbance in her mind.

  “Home,” Trant said; and it was five and two-tenths seconds before he could write “father.” Reiland moved, sympathetically, but the other men still watched without seeing any significance in the time extension. Trant waited a moment. “Money!” he said, suddenly. Dr. Reiland watched the swinging pointer tremblingly. But “purse” from Margaret stopped it before it had registered more than her established normal time for innocent associations.

  Money—2.7 seconds—purse.

  “Note!” Trant said, suddenly; and “letter” he wrote again in two and six-tenths seconds. Dr. Joslyn moved impatiently; and Trant brusquely pulled his chair nearer the table. The chair legs rasped on the hard-wood floor. Margaret shivered and, when Trant tried her with the next words, she merely repeated them. President Joslyn moved again.

  “Cannot you proceed, Trant?” he asked.

  “Not unless we can make her understand again, sir,” the young man answered. “But I think, Dr. Joslyn, if you would show her what we mean—not merely try to explain again—we mi
ght go on. I mean, when I say the next word, will you take the mouthpiece from Dr. Reiland and speak into it some different one?”

  “Very well,” the president agreed, impatiently, “if you think it will do any good.”

  “Thank you!” Trant replaced his mouthpieces. “October!” He named the month just ended. The pointer started. “Recitations!” the president of the university answered in one and nine-tenths seconds.

  “Thank you. Now for Miss Lawrie, Dr. Reiland!”

  “Steal!” he tried; and the girl associated “iron “in two and seven-tenths seconds.

  “Good!” Trant exclaimed. “If you will show her again, I think we can go ahead. Fourteenth!” he said to the president. Joslyn replied “fifteenth” in precisely two seconds and passed the drum back. All watched Miss Lawrie. But again Trant rasped carelessly his chair upon the floor and the girl merely repeated the next words. Reiland was unable to make her understand. Joslyn tried to help. Branower shook his head skeptically. But Trant turned to him.

  “Mr. Branower, you can help me, I believe, if you will take Dr. Joslyn’s place. I beg your pardon, Dr. Joslyn, but I am sure your nervousness prevents you from helping now.”

  Branower hesitated a moment, skeptically; then, smiling, acquiesced and took up the drum. Trant replaced his mouthpieces. “Blow!” he said. “Wind!” Branower answered, quietly. Trant mechanically noted the time, two seconds, for all were intent upon the next trial with the girl.

  “Books!” Trant said. “Library!” said the girl, now able to associate the different words and in her minimum time of two and a half seconds.

  “I think we are going again,” said Trant. “If you will keep on, Mr. Branower. Strike!” he exclaimed, to start the pointer. “Labor trouble,” Branower returned in just under two seconds; and again he guided the girl. For “conceal” she answered “hide “at once. Then Trant tested rapidly this series: