The Mystery & Suspense Novella

by Fletcher Flora

  “A palmist, Lord preserve us!” Crowley cried. “Say! don’t ever think we needed you. We got our man yesterday—Kanlan—and we’ll have a confession out of him by night. Sergeant!” he called, as the door opened to admit a man, “do you know what you let in—a palmist!” But it was not the sergeant who entered. “A-ah! Inspector Walker!”

  “Morning, Crowley,” Trant heard the quiet response behind him as he turned. A giant in the uniform of an inspector of police almost filled the doorway.

  “Come with me, young man,” he said. “Miss Allison was passing with me outside here and we heard some of what you’ve been saying. We’d like to hear more.”

  Trant looked up at the intelligent face and followed. A young woman was waiting outside the door. As the inspector pointed Trant toward a quiet room in the rear of the building, she followed. Inspector Walker fastened the door behind them. The girl had seated herself beside the table in the center, and as she turned to Trant she raised her veil above her brown, curling hair, and pinned it over her hat. He recognized her at once as the girl to whom Bronson had become engaged barely a week before he had been killed. On her had fallen all the horrors as well as the grief of Bronson’s murder, and Trant did not wonder that the shadow of that event was visible in her sweet face. But he read there also another look—a look of apprehension and defiance.

  “I was coming in with Inspector Walker to see Captain Crowley,” the girl explained to Trant, “when I overheard you telling him that you think this—Kanlan—couldn’t have killed Mr. Bronson. I hope this is so.”

  Trant looked to Walker. “Miss Allison’s father was Judge Allison, the truest man who ever sat on the bench in this city,” Walker responded. “His daughter knows she must not try to prevent us from punishing a man who murders; but neither of us wants to believe Kanlan is the man—for good reasons. Now, what was that you were telling Crowley?”

  “I was trying to tell Captain Crowley of a simple test which must prove Kanlan’s guilt or innocence at once, and, if necessary, then find the guilty man. I have been conducting experiments to register and measure the effects and reactions of emotions. A person under the influence of fear or the stress of guilt must always betray signs. A hardened man can control all the signs for which the police ordinarily look; he can control his features, prevent his face flushing noticeably. But no man, however hardened or trained to control himself, can prevent many minute changes which by scientific means are measurable and betray him hopelessly. No man, however on his guard—to take the simplest test—can control the sweat glands in the palms of his hands, which always moisten under emotion.”

  “A scared man sweats; that’s so,” Walker assented.

  “So psychologists have devised a simple way of registering the emotions shown through the glands in the palms of the hand,” Trant continued, “by means of the galvanometer. I have one in the box I left with the desk sergeant. It is merely a device for measuring the varying strength of an ordinary electric current. The man tested holds in each hand a contact metal wired to the battery. When he grasps them a weak and imperceptible current passes through his body or—if his hands are very dry—perhaps no current at all. He is then examined and confronted with circumstances or objects connected with the crime. If he is innocent, the objects have no significance in his mind, and cause no emotion. His face betrays none; neither can his hands. But if he is guilty, though he still manages to control his face, he cannot prevent the moisture from flowing from the glands in his palms. Understand me; I do not mean an amount of moisture noticeable to the eye, but it is enough to make an electric contact through the metals which he holds—enough to register very plainly upon the galvanometer, whose moving needle, traveling in the scale, betrays him pitilessly!”

  The inspector shook his head skeptically.

  “I recognize that this is new to you,” said Trant. “But I am telling you no theory. Using the galvanometer properly, we can this morning determine—scientifically and irrefutably—whether or not Kanlan killed Mr. Bronson, and later, if it is not he, which of the others is the assassin. May I try it?”

  Miss Allison, more white than before, had risen, and laid her hand upon Trant’s sleeve.

  “Oh, try it, Mr. Trant!” she cried. “Try—try anything which can stop them from showing through this gambler, Kanlan, and Mrs. Hawtin that Mr. Bronson—” She broke off, and turned to the inspector. Walker was looking Trant over again. The psychologist faced the police officer eagerly. “I can’t believe it’s Kanlan,” said Walker.

  Until now Trant had been impressed chiefly by the huge bulk of the inspector, but as Walker spoke of the gambler whom Crowley, to save his own face, was trying to “railroad “to execution, Trant saw in the inspector something approaching sentimentality. For he was that common anomaly of the police department, an officer born and bred among the criminals he is set to watch.

  “I’ll take you to Kanlan,” the inspector granted at last. “As things are going with him, you can’t hurt, and maybe you can help. Everyone knows Kanlan would have put out Bronson; but not—I am certain—that way. I was born in the basement opposite Kanlan’s. If Mr. Bronson had been attacked in broad day, with a detective on each side of him and all of them had been beaten up or killed, I’d have been the first to step over to Kanlan and say, ‘Jake, you’re wanted.’ But Bronson was not caught that way. The man that killed him waited till the house was quiet, until Crowley’s guards were asleep, and then somehow or other—how is a bigger mystery than the murder itself—got him out alone in the street at two o’clock in the morning, and struck him dead from a dark doorway.

  “But I’m not taking you to Kanlan only to help save him from Crowley.” Walker straightened suddenly as his eyes met the girl’s. “It’s to help Miss Allison, too. For the only clew Crowley or anyone else has to the man who murdered Bronson is in connection with the means of getting Bronson out of the house that way. Crowley has discovered that a Mrs. Hawtin, whom Kanlan can control through her gambling debts to him, is living a few doors beyond the place where Bronson’s body was found. Crowley claims he can show Mrs. Hawtin was a friend of Bronson’s, and—” The inspector hesitated, glancing at the girl.

  “Captain Crowley’s case,” said Miss Allison, finishing, “is based on the charge that after Randolph—Mr. Bronson—had returned to his rooms from seeing me that evening, he went out again two hours later to answer a summons from this—this Mrs. Hawtin. So long as Captain Crowley can convict some one for this crime, they seem to care nothing how they slander and blacken the name of the man who is killed—as little as they care for those left who—love him.”

  “I see,” said Trant. His eyes rested a moment upon the inspector, then again upon the girl. It surprised him to feel, as his eyes met hers that short moment, how suddenly this problem, which he had set himself to solve, had changed from a scientific examination and selection of a guilty man to the saving—though through the same science—of the reputation of a man no longer able to defend himself, and the honor of a woman devoted to that man’s memory.

  “But before I can examine Kanlan, or help you in any other way, Miss Allison,” he explained gently, “I must be sure of my facts. It is not too much to ask you to go over them with me? No, Inspector Walker,” he anticipated the big police officer’s objection as Walker started to speak, “if I am to help Miss Allison, I cannot spare her now.”

  “Please do not, Mr. Trant,” the girl begged bravely.

  “Thank you. Mr. Bronson, I believe, was still boarding on Superior Street at a bachelor’s boarding house?”

  “Yes,” the girl replied. “It is kept by Mrs. Mitchell, a very respectable widow with a little boy. Randolph had boarded with her for six years. She had once been in great trouble and he was kind to her. He often spoke of how she gave him motherly care.”

  “Motherly?” Trant asked. “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-seven or eight, I should think.�
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  “Thank you. How long had you known Mr. Bronson, Miss Allison?”

  “A little over two years.”

  “Yes; and intimately, how long?”

  “Almost from the first.”

  “But you were not engaged to him until just the week before his death?”

  “Yes; our engagement was not made known till just two days before his—death.”

  “Inspector Walker, how long before Mr. Bronson was killed was any of the ‘ring’ likely to put him out of their way?”

  “For two weeks at least.”

  “It fits Crowley’s case, of course, as well as—any other,” said Trant, thoughtfully, “that two days after the announcement of his engagement was the first time anyone could actually catch him alone. But it is worth noting, inspector. Mr. Bronson called upon you that evening, Miss Allison? Everything was as usual between you?”

  “Entirely, Mr. Trant. Of course we both recognized the constant danger he was in. I knew how and why he had to be guarded. His regular man, from the city detail, had been with him all day downtown; and Captain Crowley’s man came with him to our house. Mr. Bronson went back to his boarding house with him precisely at half past ten.”

  “He reached the boarding house,” Inspector Walker took up the account, “a little before eleven and went at once to his room. At twelve-thirty the last boarder came in. Crowley’s man immediately chained the front door and made all fast. He went to the kitchen to get something to eat, he says, and may have fallen asleep, though he denies it. However, until after Bronson’s body was found, we have made certain, there was no alarm inside or out.”

  “There is no doubt that Mr. Bronson was in the house when it was locked up?”

  “None. The last boarder, as he went to his room, saw Bronson sitting at his table going over some papers. He was still dressed but said he was going to bed immediately. An hour and a half later—with no clew as to how he went out, with no discoverable reason for his going out except that given by Crowley—a patrolman found Bronson’s body on the sidewalk a block east of his boarding house. He had been struck in the forehead and killed instantly by a man who must have waited for him in the vestibule of a little electro-plating shop.”

  “Must have, inspector?” Trant questioned.

  “Yes; he chose this shop doorway because it was the darkest place in the block.”

  “At what time was that—exactly?” Trant interrupted. “The papers say the attack was made ten minutes after two o’clock—that the watch in his pocket was broken and stopped by his fall at exactly ten minutes after two. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” the inspector replied. “The watch stopped at 2.10; but, in spite of that, the exact time of the murder must have been nearer two than ten minutes later, for Mr. Bronson’s watch was fast.”

  “What?” Trant cried. “You say his watch was fast? I had not heard of that!”

  “It was noticed two days ago,” the inspector explained, “that the record shows that the patrolman who found Bronson’s body rang up from the nearest patrol box at five minutes after two. If the attack was made just before, the watch must have been at least ten minutes fast, so we have the time, after all, only approximately.”

  “I see.” Trant turned to the girl. “It is strange, Miss Allison, that a man like Mr. Bronson carried an incorrect watch.”

  “He did not. It was always right.”

  “Was it right that evening?”

  “Why, yes. I remember that he compared his time with our clock before leaving.”

  Trant leaped up, excitedly. “What? What? But still,” he calmed himself, “whether at two or ten minutes after two, the main question is the same. You, too, Miss Allison, can you give no possible reason why Mr. Bronson might have gone out?”

  “I have tried a thousand times in these terrible two weeks to think of some reason, but I cannot. Our house is in a different direction than that he took. The car line to the city is another way. He knew no one in that direction—except Mrs. Hawtin.”

  “You knew that he knew her?”

  “Of course, Mr. Trant! He had convicted her once for shoplifting, but, like everyone whom his place had made him punish, he watched her afterwards, and, when she tried to be honest, he helped her as he had helped a hundred like her—men and women—though his enemies tried to discredit and disgrace him by accusing him of untrue motives. Oh, Mr. Trant, you do not know—you cannot understand—what shadows and pitfalls surround a man in the position Mr. Bronson held. That is why, though for two years we had known and loved each other, he waited so long before asking me to marry him. I am thankful that he spoke in time to give me the right to defend him now before the world! They took his life; they shall not take his good name! No! No! They shall not! Help me, Mr. Trant, if you can—help me!”

  “Inspector Walker!” said Trant tensely, “I understand that all of the sixteen men of the ring claimed alibis. Was Kanlan’s one of the best or the worst?”

  The inspector hesitated. “One of the worst,” he replied, unwillingly. “I am sorry to say, the very worst.”

  To his surprise, Trant’s eyes blazed triumphantly. “Miss Allison,” said he, quietly and decidedly, “I had not expected till I had tested Kanlan to be able to assure you that he is not guilty. But now I think I am safe in promising it—provided you are sure that Mr. Bronson’s watch was right when he left you that night. And, Inspector Walker, if you are also certain that the murderer waited in the vestibule of that electroplating shop, it will be soon, indeed, that we can give Crowley a better—or rather a worse—man to send to trial in Kanlan’s place.”

  Again Trant was conscious that the giant inspector was estimating not the incomprehensible statement he had made, but Trant himself. And again Walker seemed satisfied.

  “When can I go with you to Harrison Street to prove this, inspector?”

  “I shall see Miss Allison home, and meet you at Harrison Street in an hour.”

  “You will let me know the result of the test at once, Mr. Trant?”

  “At once, Miss Allison.” Trant took his hat and dashed from the station.

  Harrison Street police station, Chicago, is headquarters of the first police division in the third city of the world. But neither London nor New York, the two larger cities, nor Paris, whose population of two million and a half Chicago is now passing, possesses a police division more complex, diverse, and puzzling in the cosmopolitan diversity of the persons arrested than this first of Chicago.

  But from all the dozen diversities brought to the Harrison Street station daily, for two weeks none had challenged in interest the case against Jake Kanlan, the racing man and gambler, rearrested and held for the murder of Bronson. Trant appreciated this as, with his galvanometer and batteries in a suit case, he pushed his way among patrolmen, detectives, reporters, and the curious into the station. But at once he caught sight of the giant inspector, Walker.

  “You’re late.” Walker led him into a side room. “I’ve been putting in the time telling Sweeny here,” Walker introduced him to one of the two men within, “and Captain Crowley, how you mean to work your scheme. We’ve been waiting for you an hour!”

  “I’m sorry,” Trant apologized. “I have been going over the files of the papers just before and after the murder. And I must admit, Captain Crowley,” Trant conceded, “that Kanlan had as strong a reason as any for wanting Bronson out of the way. But I found one remarkably significant thing. You have seen it?” He pulled a folded newspaper from his pocket and handed it to them. “I mean this paragraph at the bottom of the front page.”

  The captain read it eagerly, then leaned back and laughed. “Sure, I saw it,” he derided. “It’s that old Johanson fake, Sweeny—and he thought it was a clew!” The inspector took the paper.

  “Threatener of Bronson Breaks Jail” was the heading, and under it was this short paragraph: James Johanson, the
notorious Stockyards murderer, whom City Attorney Bronson sent up for life three years ago, escaped from the penitentiary early this morning and is thought by the officials to be making his way to this city. His trial will be remembered for the dramatic and spectacular denunciation of the Prosecuting Attorney by the convicted man upon his condemnation, and his threat to free himself and “do for” Bronson.

  “You see the date of the paper?” said Trant. “It is the five o’clock edition of the evening before Bronson was murdered! Johanson is reported escaped and at once Bronson is killed.”

  Crowley snickered patronizingly. “So you thought, before your palmistry, you could string us with that?” he jeered. “You might better have kept us waiting a little longer, young man, and you’d have found out that Johanson couldn’t have done it, for he never escaped. It was a slip of a sneak thief, Johnson, that escaped, and he was on his way back to Joliet before night. The News got the name wrong, that’s all, son.”

  “I was quite able to find that out, too, before coming here, Captain Crowley,” Trant said quietly, “both that Johanson never escaped and that all evening papers except the News had the name correctly. Even the News corrected its account in its later edition. And I did not say that Johanson himself had anything to do with it. But either you must claim it a strange coincidence that, within eight hours after a report was current in the city that Johanson had broken out and was coming to murder Bronson, Bronson was actually murdered, or else you must admit the practical certainty that the man waiting to murder Bronson saw this account, and, not knowing it was incorrect, chose that night to kill the attorney, so as to lay it to Johanson.” He picked up his suit case. “But come, let us test Kanlan.”

  “I haven’t told Jake what you’re going to do to him,” Walker volunteered, as he led the three to the cells below. Sweeny, at Crowley’s nod, had brought with him a satchel from the upper office.