“What a perfect ready-made set of notions you have, Markham! Don’t you know that an innocent man, when he comes under suspicion, is apt to be more nervous than a guilty one, who, to begin with, had enough nerve to commit the crime, and, secondly, realizes that any show of nervousness is regarded as guilt by you lawyer chaps? ‘My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure’ is a mere Sunday-school pleasantry. Touch almost any innocent man on the shoulder and say ‘You’re arrested’, and his pupils will dilate, he’ll break out in a cold sweat, the blood will rush from his face, and he’ll have tremors and dyspnœa. If he’s a hystérique, or a cardiac neurotic, he’ll probably collapse completely. It’s the guilty person who, when thus accosted, lifts his eyebrows in bored surprise and says, ‘You don’t mean it, really,—here have a cigar’.”
“The hardened criminal may act as you say,” Markham conceded; “but an honest man who’s innocent doesn’t go to pieces, even when accused.”
Vance shook his head hopelessly.
“My dear fellow, Crile and Voronoff might have lived in vain for all of you. Manifestations of fear are the result of glandular secretions—nothing more. All they prove is that the person’s thyroid is undeveloped or that his adrenals are subnormal. A man accused of a crime, or shown the bloody weapon with which it was committed, will either smile serenely, or scream, or have hysterics, or faint, or appear disint’rested—according to his hormones, and irrespective of his guilt. Your theory, d’ ye see, would be quite all right if everyone had the same amount of the various internal secretions. But they haven’t. . . . Really, y’ know, you shouldn’t send a man to the electric chair simply because he’s deficient in endocrines. It isn’t cricket.”
Before Markham could reply Swacker appeared at the door and said Heath had arrived.
The Sergeant, beaming with satisfaction, fairly burst into the room. For once he forgot to shake hands.
“Well, it looks like we’d got hold of something workable. I went to this Captain Leacock’s apartment-house last night, and here’s the straight of it:—Leacock was at home the night of the thirteenth all right; but shortly after midnight he went out, headed west—get that!—and he didn’t return till about quarter of one!”
“What about the hall-boy’s original story?” asked Markham.
“That’s the best part of it. Leacock had the boy fixed. Gave him money to swear he hadn’t left the house that night.—What do you think of that, Mr. Markham? Pretty crude—huh? . . . The kid loosened up when I told him I was thinking of sending him up the river for doing the job himself.” Heath laughed unpleasantly. “And he won’t spill anything to Leacock, either.”
Markham nodded his head slowly.