of all the dealers in New York to whom such devices had been sold. The man also traced every sale of those dealers. He did not actually obtain the weapon, but if he is working on schedule-time according to agreement he is at this moment armed with a search-warrant and is ransacking every possible place where the person suspected of this crime could have concealed his weapon. For, one of the persons intimately connected with this case purchased not long ago a silencer for a thirty-two-calibre revolver, and I presume that that person carried the gun and the silencer at the time of the murder of Kerr Parker.”
Kennedy concluded in triumph, his voice high pitched, his eyes flashing. Yet to all outward appearance not a heartbeat was quickened. Someone in that room had an amazing store of self-possession. The fear flitted across my mind that even at the last Kennedy was baffled.
“I had anticipated some such anticlimax,” he continued after a moment. “I am prepared for it.”
He touched a bell, and the door to the next room opened. One of Kennedy’s graduate students stepped in.
“You have the records, Whiting?” he asked.
“Yes, Professor.”
“I may say,” said Kennedy, “that each of your chairs is wired under the arm in such a way as to betray on an appropriate indicator in the next room every sudden and undue emotion. Though it may be concealed from the eye, even of one like me who stands facing you, such emotion is nevertheless expressed by physical pressure on the arms of the chair. It is a test that is used frequently with students to demonstrate various points of psychology. You needn’t raise your arms from the chairs, ladies and gentlemen. The tests are all over now. What did they show, Whiting?”
The student read what he had been noting in the next room. At the production of the coat during the demonstration of the markings of the bullet, Mrs. Parker had betrayed great emotion, Mr. Bruce had done likewise, and nothing more than ordinary emotion had been noted for the rest of us. Miss La Neige’s automatic record during the tracing out of the sending of the note to Parker had been especially unfavourable to her; Mr. Bruce showed almost as much excitement; Mrs. Parker very little and Downey very little. It was all set forth in curves drawn by self-recording pens on regular ruled paper. The student had merely noted what took place in the lecture-room as corresponding to these curves.
“At the mention of the noiseless gun,” said Kennedy, bending over the record, while the student pointed it out to him and we leaned forward to catch his words, “I find that the curves of Miss La Neige, Mrs. Parker, and Mr. Downey are only so far from normal as would be natural. All of them were witnessing a thing for the first time with only curiosity and no fear. The curve made by Mr. Bruce shows great agitation and—”
I heard a metallic click at my side and turned hastily. It was Inspector Barney O’Connor, who had stepped out of the shadow with a pair of handcuffs.
“James Bruce, you are under arrest,” he said.
There flashed on my mind, and I think on the minds of some of the others, a picture of another electrically wired chair.
The Scientific Cracksman
“I’m willing to wager you a box of cigars that you don’t know the most fascinating story in your own paper tonight,” remarked Kennedy, as I came in one evening with the four or five newspapers I was in the habit of reading to see whether they had beaten the Star in getting any news of importance.
“I’ll bet I do,” I said, “or I was one of about a dozen who worked it up. It’s the Shaw murder trial. There isn’t another that’s even a bad second.”
“I am afraid the cigars will be on you, Walter. Crowded over on the second page by a lot of stale sensation that everyone has read for the fiftieth time, now, you will find what promises to be a real sensation, a curious half-column account of the sudden death of John G. Fletcher.”
I laughed. “Craig,” I said, “when you put up a simple death from apoplexy against a murder trial, and such a murder trial; well, you disappoint me—that’s all.”
“Is it a simple case of apoplexy?” he asked, pacing up and down the room, while I wondered why he should grow excited over what seemed a very ordinary news item, after all. Then he picked up the paper and read the account slowly aloud.
John G. Fletcher, Steel Magnate, Dies Suddenly
Safe Open but Large Sum of Cash Untouched
John Graham Fletcher, the aged philanthropist and steelmaker, was found dead in his library this morning at his home at Fletcherwood, Great Neck, Long Island. Strangely, the safe in the library in which he kept his papers and a large sum of cash was found opened, but as far as could be learned nothing is missing.
It had always been Mr. Fletcher’s custom to rise at seven o’clock. This morning his housekeeper became alarmed when he had not appeared by nine o’clock. Listening at the door, she heard no sound. It was not locked, and on entering she found the former steel-magnate lying lifeless on the floor between his bedroom and the library adjoining. His personal physician, Dr. W. C. Bryant, was immediately notified.
Close examination of the body revealed that his face was slightly discoloured, and the cause of death was given by the physician as apoplexy. He had evidently been dead about eight or nine hours when discovered.
Mr. Fletcher is survived by a nephew, John G. Fletcher, II, who is the Blake professor of bacteriology at the University, and by a grandniece, Miss Helen Bond. Professor Fletcher was informed of the sad occurrence shortly after leaving a class this morning and hurried out to Fletcherwood. He would make no statement other than that
