“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.