“And Landers?”
“Landers was the company’s checker on scale No. 3. Well, about five weeks ago I began to see that Mr. Landers was troubled about something. Twice a queer, quiet little man with a scar on his cheek came to see him, and each time they went up to Mr. Landers’s room and talked a long while. Ed’s room was over the sitting room, and after the man had gone I could hear him walking back and forth—walking and walking until it seemed as though he would never stop. I told father about this man who troubled Mr. Landers, and he asked him about it, but Mr. Landers flew into a rage and said it was nothing of importance. Then one night—it was a Wednesday—everybody stayed late at the docks to finish unloading the steamer Covallo. About two o’clock father got home, but Mr. Landers had not been ready to come with him. He did not come all that night, and the next day he did not come home.
“Now, Mr. Trant, they are very careful at the warehouses about who goes in and out, because so many valuable things are stored there. On one side the warehouses open onto the docks, and at each end they are fenced off so that you cannot go along the docks and get away from them that way; and on the other side they open onto the street through great driveway doors, and at every door, as long as it is open, there stands a watchman, who sees everybody that goes in and out. Only one door was open that Wednesday night, and the watchman there had not seen Mr. Landers go out. And the second night passed, and he did not come home. But the next morning, Friday morning,” the girl caught her breath hysterically, “Mr. Landers’s body was found in the engine room back of scale house No. 3, with the face crushed in horribly!”
“Was the engine room occupied?” said Trant, quickly.
“It must have been occupied in the daytime, and probably on the night when Landers disappeared, as they were unloading the Covallo. But on the night after which the body was found—was it occupied that night?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Trant. I think it could not have been, for after the verdict of the coroner’s jury, which was that Mr. Landers had been killed by some part of the machinery, it was said that the accident must have happened either the evening before, just before the engineer shut off his engines, or the first thing that morning, just after he had started them; for otherwise somebody in the engine room would have seen it.”
“But where had Landers been all day Thursday, Miss Rowan, from two o’clock on the second night before, when your father last saw him, until the accident in the engine room?”
“It was supposed he had been drunk. When his body was found, his clothes were covered with fibers from the coffee-sacking, and the jury supposed he had been sleeping off his liquor in the coffee warehouse during Thursday. But I had known Ed Landers for almost three years, and in all that time I never knew him to take even one drink.”
“Then it was a very unlikely supposition. You do not believe in that accident, Miss Rowan?” Trant said, brusquely.
The girl grew white as paper. “Oh, Mr. Trant, I don’t know! I did believe in it. But since Will—Mr. Morse—has disappeared in exactly the same way, under exactly the same circumstances, and everyone acts about it exactly the same way—”
“You say the circumstances of Morse’s disappearance were the same?” Trant pressed quietly when she was able to proceed.
“After Mr. Landers had been found dead,” said the girl, pulling herself together again, “Mr. Morse, who had been checker in one of the other scale houses, was made checker on scale No. 3. We were surprised at that, for it was a sort of promotion, and father did not like Will; he had been greatly displeased at our engagement. Will’s promotion made us very happy, for it seemed as though father must be changing his opinion. But after Will had been checker on scale No. 3 only a few days, the same queer, quiet little man with the scar on his cheek who had begun coming to see Mr. Landers before he was killed began coming to see Will, too! And after he began coming, Will was troubled, terribly troubled, I could see; but he would not tell me the reason. And he expected, after that man began coming, that something would happen to him. And I know, from the way he acted and spoke about Mr. Landers, that he thought he had not been accidentally killed. One evening, when I could see he had been more troubled than ever before, he said that if anything happened to him I was to go at once to his boarding house and take charge of everything in his room, and not to let anyone into the room to search it until I had removed everything in the bureau drawers; everything, no matter how useless anything seemed. Then, the very next night, five days ago, just as while Mr. Landers was checker, everybody stayed overtime at the docks to finish unloading a vessel, the Elizabethan Age. And in the morning Will’s landlady called me on the phone to tell me that he had not come home. Five days ago, Mr. Trant! And since then no one has seen or heard from him; and the watchman did not see him come out of the warehouse that night just as he did not see Ed Landers.”
“What did you find in Morse’s bureau?” asked Trant.
“I found nothing.”
“Nothing?” Trant repeated. “That is impossible, Miss Rowan! Think again! Remember he warned you that what you found might seem trivial and useless.”
The girl, a little defiantly, studied for an instant Trant’s clear-cut features. Suddenly she arose and ran from the room, but returned quickly with a strange little implement in her hand. It was merely a bit of wire, straight for perhaps three inches, and then bent in a half circle of five or six inches, the bent portion of the wire being wound carefully with stout twine.
“Except for his clothes and some blank writing paper and envelopes that was absolutely the only thing in the bureau. It was the only thing at all in the only locked drawer.”
Trant and Rentland stared disappointedly at this strange implement, which the girl handed to the psychologist.
“You have shown this to your stepfather, Miss Rowan, for a possible explanation of why a company checker should be so solicitous about such a thing as this?” asked Trant.
“No,” the girl hesitated. “Will had told me not to say anything; and I told you father did not like Will. He had made up his mind that I was to marry Ed Landers. In most ways father is kind and generous. He’s kept the coupe we came here in for mother and me for two years; and you see,” she gestured a little proudly about the bedecked and badly furnished rooms, “you see how he gets everything for us. Mr. Landers was most generous, too. He took me to the theaters two or three times every week—always the best seats, too. I didn’t want to go, but father made me. I preferred Will, though he wasn’t so generous.”
Trant’s eyes returned, with more intelligent scrutiny, to the mysterious implement in his hand.
“What salary do checkers receive, Rentland?” he asked, in a low tone.
“One hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.”
“And her father, the dock superintendent—how much?” Trant’s expressive glance now jumping about from one gaudy, extravagant trifle in the room to another, caught a glimpse again of the electric coupe standing in the street, then returned to the tiny bit of wire in his hand.
“Three thousand a year,” Rentland replied.
“Tell me, Miss Rowan,” said Trant, “this implement—have you by any chance mentioned it to President Welter?”
“Why, no, Mr. Trant.”
“You are sure of that? Excellent! Excellent! Now the queer, quiet little man with the scar on his cheek who came to see Morse; no one could tell you anything about him?”
“No one, Mr. Trant; but yesterday Will’s landlady told me that a man has come to ask for Will every forenoon since he disappeared, and she thinks this may be the man with the scar, though she can’t be sure, for he kept the collar of his overcoat up about his face. She was to telephone me if he came again.”
“If he comes this morning,” Trant glanced quickly at his watch, “you and I, Rentland, might much better be waiting for him over there.”
The psychologist rose, putting t
he bent, twine-wound bit of wire carefully into his pocket; and a minute later the two men crossed the street to the house, already known to Rentland, where Morse had boarded. The landlady not only allowed them to wait in her little parlor, but waited with them until at the end of an hour she pointed with an eager gesture to a short man in a big ulster who turned sharply up the front steps.
“That’s him—see!” she exclaimed.
“That the man with the scar!” cried Rentland. “Well! I know him.”
He made for the door, caught at the ulster and pulled the little man into the house by main force.
“Well, Dickey!” the secret agent challenged, as the man faced him in startled recognition. “What are you doing in this case? Trant, this is Inspector Dickey, of the Customs Office,” he introduced the officer.
“I’m in the case on my own hook, if I know what case you’re talking about,” piped Dickey. “Morse, eh? and the American Commodities Company, eh?”
“Exactly,” said Rentland, brusquely. “What were you calling to see Landers for?”
“You know about that?” The little man looked up sharply. “Well, six weeks ago Landers came to me and told me he had something to sell; a secret system for beating the customs. But before we got to terms, he began losing his nerve a little; he got it back, however, and was going to tell me when, all at once, he disappeared, and two days later he was dead! That made it hotter for me; so I went after Morse. But Morse denied he knew anything. Then Morse disappeared, too.”
“So you got nothing at all out of them?” Rentland interposed.
“Nothing I could use. Landers, one time when he was getting up his nerve, showed me a piece of bent wire—with string around it—in his room, and began telling me something when Rowan called him, and then he shut up.”
“A bent wire!” Trant cried, eagerly. “Like this?” He took from his pocket the implement given him by Edith Rowan. “Morse had this in his room, the only thing in a locked drawer.”
“The same thing!” Dickey cried, seizing it. “So Morse had it, too, after he became checker at scale No. 3, where the cheating is, if anywhere. The very thing Landers started to explain to me, and how they cheated the customs with it. I say, we must have it now, Rentland! We need only go to the docks and watch them while they weigh, and see how they use it, and arrest them and then we have them at last, eh, old man?” he cried in triumph. “We have them at last!”
“You mean,” Trant cut in upon the customs man, “that you can convict and jail perhaps the checker, or a foreman, or maybe even a dock superintendent—as usual. But the men higher up—the big men who are really at the bottom of this business and the only ones worth getting—will you catch them?”
“We must take those we can get,” said Dickey sharply.
Trant laid his hand on the little officer’s arm. “I am a stranger to you,” he said, “but if you have followed some of the latest criminal cases in Illinois perhaps you know that, using the methods of modern practical psychology, I have been able to get results where old ways have failed. We are front to front now with perhaps the greatest problem of modern criminal catching, to catch, in cases involving a great corporation, not only the little men low down who perform the criminal acts, but the men higher up, who conceive, or connive at the criminal scheme. Rentland, I did not come here to convict merely a dock foreman; but if we are going to reach anyone higher than that, you must not let Inspector Dickey excite suspicion by prying into matters at the docks this afternoon!”
“But what else can we do?” said Rentland, doubtfully.
“Modern practical psychology gives a dozen possible ways for proving the knowledge of the man higher up in this corporation crime,” Trant answered, “and I am considering which is the most practicable. Only tell me,” he demanded suddenly; “Mr. Welter I have heard is one of the rich men of New York who make it a fad to give largely to universities and other institutions; can you tell me with what ones he may be most closely interested?”
“I have heard,” Rentland replied, “that he is one of the patrons of the Stuyvesant School of Science. It is probably the most fashionably patroned institution in New York; and Welter’s name, I know, figures with it in the newspapers.”
“Nothing could be better!” Trant exclaimed. “Kuno Schmalz has his psychological laboratory there. I see my way now, Rentland; and you will hear from me early in the afternoon. But keep away from the docks!” He turned and left the astonished customs officers abruptly. Half an hour later the young psychologist sent in his card to Professor Schmalz in the laboratory of the Stuyvesant School of Science. The German, broad-faced, spectacled, beaming, himself came to the laboratory door.
“Is it Mr. Trant—the young, apt pupil of my old friend, Dr. Reiland?” he boomed, admiringly. “Ach! luck is good to Reiland! For twenty years I, too, have shown them in the laboratory how fear, guilt, every emotion causes in the body reactions which can be measured. But do they apply it? Pouf! No! it remains to them all impractical, academic, because I have only nincompoops in my classes!”
“Professor Schmalz,” said Trant, following him into the laboratory, and glancing from one to another of the delicate instruments with keen interest, “tell me along what line you are now working.”
“Ach! I have been for a year now experimenting with the plethysmograph and the pneumograph. I make a taste, I make a smell, or I make a noise to excite feeling in the subject; and I read by the plethysmograph that the volume of blood in the hand decreases under the emotions and that the pulse quickens; and by the pneumograph I read that the breathing is easier or quicker, depending on whether the emotions are pleasant or unpleasant. I have performed this year more than two thousand of those experiments.”
“Good! I have a problem in which you can be of the very greatest use to me; and the plethysmograph and the pneumograph will serve my purpose as well as any other instrument in the laboratory. For no matter how hardened a man may be, no matter how impossible it may have become to detect his feelings in his face or bearing, he cannot prevent the volume of blood in his hand from decreasing, and his breathing from becoming different, under the influence of emotions of fear or guilt. By the way, professor, is Mr. Welter familiar with these experiments of yours?”
“What, he!” cried the stout German. “For why should I tell him about them? He knows nothing. He has bought my time to instruct classes; he has not bought, py chiminey! everything—even the soul Gott gave me!”
“But he would be interested in them?”
“To be sure, he would be interested in them! He would bring in his automobile three or four other fat money-makers, and he would show me off before them. He would make his trained bear—that is me—dance!”
“Good!” cried Trant again, excitedly. “Professor Schmalz, would you be willing to give a little exhibition of the plethysmograph and pneumograph, this evening, if possible, and arrange for President Welter to attend it?”
The astute German cast on him a quick glance of interrogation. “Why not?” he said. “It makes nothing to me what purpose you will be carrying out; no, py chiminey! not if it costs me my position of trained bear; because I have confidence in my psychology that it will not make any innocent man suffer!”
“And you will have two or three scientists present to watch the experiments? And you will allow me to be there also and assist?”
“With great pleasure.”
“But, Professor Schmalz, you need not introduce me to Mr. Welter, who will think I am one of your assistants.”
“As you wish about that, pupil of my dear old friend.”
“Excellent!” Trant leaped to his feet. “Provided it is possible to arrange this with Mr. Welter, how soon can you let me know?”
“Ach! it is as good as arranged, I tell you. His vanity will arrange it if I assure the greatest publicity—”
“The more publicity the better.”
“Wait! It shall be fixed before you leave here.”
The professor led the way into his private study, telephoned to the president of the American Commodities Company, and made the appointment without trouble.
A few minutes before eight o’clock that evening Trant again mounted rapidly the stone steps to the professor’s laboratory. The professor and two others, who were bending over a table in the center of the room, turned at his entrance. President Welter had not yet arrived. The young psychologist acknowledged with pleasure the introduction to the two scientists with Schmalz. Both of them were known to him by name, and he had been following with interest a series of experiments which the elder, Dr. Annerly, had been reporting in a psychological journal. Then he turned at once to the apparatus on the table. He was still examining the instruments when the noise of a motor stopping at the door warned him of the arrival of President Welter’s party. Then the laboratory door opened and the party appeared. They also were three in number; stout men, rather obtrusively dressed, in jovial spirits, with strong faces flushed now with the wine they had taken at dinner.
“Well, professor, what fireworks are you going to show us to-night?” asked Welter, patronizingly. “Schmalz,” he explained to his companions, “is the chief ring master of this circus.”
The bearded face of the German grew purple under Welter’s jokingly overbearing manner; but he turned to the instruments and began to explain them. The Marey pneumograph, which the professor first took up, consists of a very thin flexible brass plate suspended by a cord around the neck of the person under examination, and fastened tightly against the chest by a cord circling the body. On the outer surface of this plate are two small, bent levers, connected at one end to the cord around the body of the subject, and at the other end to the surface of a small hollow drum fastened to the plate between the two. As the chest rises and falls in breathing, the levers press more and less upon the surface of the drum; and this varying pressure on the air inside the drum is transmitted from the drum through an air-tight tube to a little pencil which it drops and lifts. The pencil, as it rises and falls, touching always a sheet of smoked paper traveling over a cylinder on the recording device, traces a line whose rising strokes represent accurately the drawing of air into the chest and whose falling represents its expulsion.
The Mystery & Suspense Novella Page 30
