The big, bull neck of the president swelled, and his hands clenched and reclenched as he stared with gleaming eyes into the face of the young man who thus challenged him.
“You are thinking now, I suppose, Mr. Welter,” Trant replied to his glare, “that such evidence as that directly against you cannot be got before a court. I am not so sure of that. But at least it can go before the public to-morrow morning in the papers, attested by the signatures of the scientific men who witnessed the test. It has been photographed by this time, and the photographic copies are distributed in safe places, to be produced with the original on the day when the Government brings criminal proceedings against you. If I had it here I would show you how complete, how merciless, is the evidence that you knew what was being done. I would show you how at the point marked 1 on the record your pulse and breathing quickened with alarm under my suggestion; how at the point marked 2 your anxiety and fear increased; and how at 3, when the spring by which this cheating had been carried out was before your eyes, you betrayed yourself uncontrollably, unmistakably. How the volume of blood in your second finger suddenly diminished, as the current was thrown back upon your heart; how your pulse throbbed with terror; how, though unmoved to outward appearance, you caught your breath, and your laboring lungs struggled under the dread that your wrong doing was discovered and you would be branded—as I trust you will now be branded, Mr. Welter, when the evidence in this case and the testimony of those who witnessed my test are produced before a jury—a deliberate and scheming thief!”
“—— —— you!” The three words escaped from Welter’s puffed lips. He put out his arm to push aside the customs officer standing between him and the door. Dickey resisted.
“Let him go, if he wants to!” Trant called to the officer. “He can neither escape nor hide. His money holds him under bond!”
The officer stepped aside, and Welter, without another word, went into the hall. But when his face was no longer visible to Trant, the hanging pouches under his eyes grew leaden gray, his fat lips fell apart loosely, his step shuffled; his mask had fallen!
“Besides, we need all the men we have, I think,” said Trant, turning back to the prisoners, “to get these to a safe place. Miss Rowan,” he turned then and put out his hand to steady the terrified and weeping girl, “I warned you that you had probably better not come here to-night. But since you have come and have had pain because of your stepfather’s wrong doings, I am glad to be able to give you the additional assurance, beyond the fact, which you have heard, that your fiancé was not murdered, but merely put away on board the Elizabethan Age; that he is safe and sound, except for a few bruises, and, moreover, we expect him here any moment now. The police are bringing him down from Boston on the train which arrives at ten.”
He went to the window and watched an instant, as Dickey and Rentland, having telephoned for a patrol, were waiting with their prisoners. Before the patrol wagon appeared, he saw the bobbing lanterns of a lurching cab that turned a corner a block away. As it stopped at the entrance, a police officer in plain clothes leaped out and helped after him a young man wrapped in an overcoat, with one arm in a sling, pale, and with bandaged head. The girl uttered a cry, and sped through the doorway. For a moment the psychologist stood watching the greeting of the lovers. He turned back then to the sullen prisoners.
“But it’s some advance, isn’t it, Rentland,” he asked, “not to have to try such poor devils alone; but, at last, to capture the man who makes the millions and pays them the pennies—the man higher up?”
The End
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 1926 issue of Amazing Stories magazine.