 Chapter 0 of The Silent Bullet. It has always seemed strange to me that no one has ever endowed a professorship in criminal science in any of our large universities. Craig Kennedy laid down his evening paper and filled his pipe with mite tobacco. In college we had roomed together, had shared everything, even poverty, and now that Craig was a professor of chemistry and I was on the staff of the star, we continued the arrangement. Prosperity found us in a rather neat bachelor apartment on the heights, not far from the university. Why should there be a chair in criminal science? I remarked argumentatively, settling back in my chair. I've done my turn at police headquarters reporting, and I can tell you, Craig, it's no place for a college professor. Crime is just crime, and as for dealing with it, the good detective is born and bred to it. College professors for the sociology of the thing? Yes. For the detection of it? Give me a burns. On the contrary, replied Kennedy, his clean cut features betraying in earnestness which I knew indicated that he was leading up to something important. There's a distinct place for science in the detection of crime. On the continent they are far in advance of us in that respect. We are mere children beside a dozen crime specialists in Paris whom I could name. Yes, but where does the college professor come in? I asked rather doubtfully. You must remember Walter, he pursued, warming up to his subject, that it is only within the last ten years or so that we've had a really practical college professor who could do it. The silk stocking variety is out of date now. Today it is the college professor who is the third arbitrator in labour disputes, who reforms our currency, who heads our tariff commissions, and conserves our farms and forests. We have professors of everything. Why not professors of crime? Still as I shook my head lubeously, he hurried on to clinch his point. Colleges have gone a long way from the old ideal of pure culture. They have got down to solving the hard facts of life, pretty nearly all except one. They still treat crime in the old way, study its statistics and pour over its causes and the theories of how it can be prevented. But as for running the criminal himself down, scientifically, relentlessly? Bah! We haven't made an inch of progress since the hammer-and-tongue method of your burns. Doubtless you'll write a thesis on this most interesting subject, I suggested, and let it go with that. No, I am serious, he replied, determined for some reason or other to make a convert of me. I mean exactly what I say. I am going to apply science to the detection of crime, the same sort of methods by which you trace out the presence of a chemical or run an unknown germ to earth. And before I have gone far, I am going to enlist Walter Jamison as an aide. I think I shall need you in my business. How do I come in? Well, for one thing you will get a scoop, a beat, whatever you call it in that newspaper jargon of yours. I smiled in a skeptical way, such as a newspaper man or want to effect toward a thing until it's done, after which we make a wild scramble to exploit it. Nothing more on the subject pass between us for several days. End of Craig Kennedy's Theories. Recording by Elliot Miller, www.voiceofe.com. Chapter 1 of The Silent Bullet. The Silent Bullet. Detectives in fiction nearly always make a great mistake, said Kennedy, one evening after our first conversation on crime and science. They almost invariably antagonize the regular detective force. Now in real life that's impossible. It's fatal. Yes, I agreed, looking up from reading an account of the failure of a large Wall Street brokerage house, Kerr Parker and company, and the peculiar suicide of Kerr Parker. Yes, it's impossible, just as it's impossible for the regular detectives to antagonize the newspapers. Scotland Yard found that out in the Crippen case. My idea of the thing, Jameson, continued Kennedy, is that the Professor of Criminal Science ought to work with, not against the regular detectives. They're all right. They're indispensable, of course. Half the secret of success nowadays is in organization. The Professor of Criminal Science should be merely what the Professor in a technical school often is. Sort of a consulting engineer. For instance, I believe that organization plus science would go far towards cleaning up that Wall Street case I see you are reading. I express some doubt as to whether the regular police were enlightened enough to take that view of it. Some of them are, he replied. Yesterday the chief of police in a western city sent a man east to see me about the price murder. Do you know the case? Indeed, I did. A wealthy banker of the town had been murdered on the road to the golf club, knowing the why or by whom. Every clue had proved fruitless, and the list of suspects was itself so long and so impossible, as the same most discouraging. He sent me a piece of a torn handkerchief with a deep bloodstain on it. Pursuit, Kennedy. He said it clearly didn't belong to the murdered man, that it indicated that the murderer had himself been wounded in the tussle, but as yet had proved utterly valueless as a clue. Would I see what I could make of it? After the man had told me the story, I had a feeling that the murder was committed by either a Sicilian laborer, on the links, or a Negro waiter at the club. Well, to make a short story shorter, I decided to test the bloodstain. Probably you didn't know it, but the Carnegie Institution has just published a minute, careful, and dry study of the blood of human beings and of animals. In fact, they have been able to reclassify the whole animal kingdom on this basis, and have made some most surprising additions to our knowledge of evolution. Now, I don't propose to bore you with the details of the tussle, but one of the things they showed was that the blood of a certain branch of the human race gives a reaction much like the blood of a certain group of monkeys, the chimpanzees, while the blood of another branch gives a reaction like that of the gorilla. Of course there's lots more to it, but that is all that need concern us now. I tried the test. The blood on the handkerchief conformed strictly to the latter test. Now the gorilla was, of course, out of the question. This was no rumorg murder. Therefore it was the Negro waiter. But, I interrupted, the Negro offered a perfect alibi at the start, and no buts, Walter. Here's a telegram I received at dinner. Congratulations, confronted Jackson, your evidence is wired. Confessed. Well, Craig, I take my hat off to you, I exclaimed. Next you'll be solving this Gerbarger case for sure. I would take a hand in it if they'd let me, he said simply. That night, without saying anything, I sauntered down to the imposing new police building amid the squalor of Center Street. They were very busy at headquarters, but having once had that assignment for the star, I had no trouble in getting in. Inspector Barney O'Connor of the Central Office carefully shifted a cigar from corner to corner of his mouth, as I poured forth my suggestion to him. Moll Jameson. He said at length, Do you think this Professor fellow is the goods? I didn't mince manners in my opinion of Kennedy. I told him of the price case and showed him a copy of the telegram. That settled it. Can you bring him down here tonight? He asked quickly. I reached for the telephone, found Craig in his laboratory, finally, and in less than an hour he was in the office. This is a most baiting case, Professor Kennedy. This case of Kurt Parker, said the Inspector, launching it once into his subject. Here is a broker heavily interested in Mexican rubber. It looks like a good thing, plantations right here in the same territory at the soles of the rubber trust. Now, in addition to that, he is branching out to the coast wide steamship lines. Another man, associated with him, is heavily engaged in a railway scheme from the United States down into Mexico. Altogether the steamships and railroads are tape and rubber, oil, copper, and I don't know what other regions. Here in New York they have been pyramiding stocks, borrowing money from two trust companies which they control. It's a lovely scheme. You've read about it, I suppose. Also, you've read that it comes into competition with a certain group of capitalists whom we'll call the system. Well, this depression in the market comes along. At once rumors are spread about the weakness of the trust companies. Run, start on both them. The system, you know them. Make a great show of support in the market. Yet the runs continue. God knows whether they will spread or the trust company stand up under tomorrow after what happened today. It was a good thing the market was closed when it happened. Care Parker was surrounded by a group of people who were in into his schemes with him. They are holding a council of war in the director's room. Suddenly Parker rises, staggers towards the window, falls, and is dead before a doctor can get to him. Every effort is made to keep the thing quiet. It is given out that he committed suicide. The papers don't seem to accept the suicide theory, however. Neither do we. The coroner, who is working for us, has kept his mouth shut so far, and will say nothing till the inquest. For Professor Kennedy, my first man on the spot found that Care Parker was murdered. Now here comes the amazing part of the story. The doors to the offices on both sides were open at the time. There were lots of people in each office. There was the usual click of typewriters in the buzz of the ticker and the hum of conversation. We have any number of witnesses of the whole affair, but as far as any of them knows, no shot was fired. No smoke was seen, no noise was heard, nor was any weapon found. Yet here on my desk is a thirty-two caliber bullet. The coroner's physician probed it out of Parker's neck this afternoon and turned it over to us. Kennedy reached for the bullet and took it thoughtfully in his fingers for a moment. One side of it had apparently struck a bone in the neck of the murdered man and was flattened. The other side was still perfectly smooth. With his inevitable magnifying glass he scrutinized the bullet on every side. I watched his face anxiously, and I could see that he was very intent and very excited. Extraordinary, most extraordinary, he said to himself as he turned it over and over. Where did you say this bullet struck? In the fleshy part of the neck, quite a little back of him below his ear and just above his collar. There it wasn't much bleeding. I think it must have struck the base of his brain. It didn't strike his collar or hair? No, replied the Inspector. Inspector, I think we shall be able to put our hands on the murderer. I think we can get a conviction, sir, on the evidence that I shall get from this bullet in my laboratory. That's pretty much like a storybook. Troll the Inspector incredulously, shaking his head. Perhaps, smiled Kennedy, but there will still be plenty of work for the police to do too. I've only got a clue to the murderer. It will take the whole organization to follow it up, believe me. Now, Inspector, can you spare the time to go down to Parker's office and take me over the ground? No doubt we can develop something else there. Sure, answered O'Connor, and within five minutes we were hurrying downtown in one of the department's automobiles. We found the office under guard of one of the central office men, while in the outside office Parker's confidential clerk and a few assistants were still at work in a subdued and odd manner. Men were working in many other Wall Street offices at night during the panic, but none was in their more reason for it than here. Later, I learned that it was the quiet tenacity of this confidential clerk that saved even as much of Parker's estate as was saved for his widow, little enough it was, too. What he saved for the clients of the firm no one will ever know. Somehow or other I liked John Downey, the clerk, from the moment I was introduced to him. He seemed to me, at least, to be the typical confidential clerk who would carry a secret worth millions and keep it. The officer in charge touched his hand to the inspector, and Downey hastened to put himself at our service. It was plain that the murderer had completely mystified him, and that he was as anxious as we were to get to the bottom of it. Mr. Downey, began Kennedy, I understand you were present when this sad event took place. Yes, sir, sitting right here at the director's table, he replied, taking a chair, like this. Now, can you recollect just how Mr. Parker acted when he was shot? Could you take his place and show us how it happened? Yes, sir, said Downey. He was sitting right here at the head of the table. Mr. Bruce, who is the CO of the firm, had been sitting here at his right. I was at his left. The inspector has a list of all the others present. That door to the right was open, and Mrs. Parker and some other ladies were in the room. Mrs. Parker broke in Kennedy. Yes, like many good brokerage firms, we have a ladies' room. Many ladies are among our clients. We make a point of catering to them. At that time I recollect the door was open. All the doors were open. It was not a secret meeting. Mr. Bruce had just gone into the ladies' department. I think to ask some of them to stand by the firm. He was an artist at smoothing over the fears of customers, particularly women. Just before he went in I had seen the ladies go in a group toward the far end of the room, to look down at the line of depositors on the street, which reached around the corner from one of the trust companies, I thought. I was making a note of an order to send into the outside office there on the left, and had just pushed this button here under the table to call a boy to carry it. Mr. Parker had just received a letter by special delivery, and seemed considerably puzzled over it. No, I don't know what it was about. All of a sudden I saw him start in his chair, rise up unsettling, clap his hand on the back of his head, stagger across the floor, like this, and fall here. Then what happened? Why, I rushed to pick him up. Everything was confusion. I recall someone behind me saying, Here boy, take all these papers off the table and carry them into my office before they get lost in the excitement. I think it was Bruce's voice. The next moment I heard someone say, Stand back, Mrs. Parker has fainted. But I didn't pay much attention, for I was calling to someone not to get a doctor over the telephone, but to go down to the fifth floor where one has an office. I made Mr. Parker as comfortable as I could. There wasn't much I could do. He seemed to want to say something to me, but he couldn't talk. He was paralyzed, at least his throat was. But I did manage to make out finally what sounded to me like, Tell her I don't believe the scandal. I don't believe it. But before he could say whom to tell, he had again become unconscious. And by the time the doctor arrived he was dead. I guess you know everything else as well as I do. You didn't hear the shot fired from any particular direction, asked Kennedy? No, sir. Well, where do you think it came from? That's what puzzles me, sir. The only thing I can figure out is that it was fired from the outside office, perhaps by some customer who had lost money and sought revenge. But no one out there heard it either, any more than they did in the director's room or the lady's department. About that message, asked Kennedy, ignoring what to me seemed to be the most important feature of the case, the mystery of the silent bullet. Didn't you see it after all was over? No, sir. In fact, I had forgotten about it till this moment when you asked me to reconstruct the circumstances exactly. No, sir. I don't know a thing about it. I can't say it impressed itself on my mind at the time, either. What did Mrs. Parker do when she came to? Oh, she cried as if I'd never seen a woman cry before. He was dead by that time, of course. Bruce and I saw her down in the elevator to her car. In fact, the doctor who had arrived said that the sooner she was taken home the better she would be. She was quite hysterical. Did she say anything that you remember? Downey hesitated. Out with it, Downey, said the inspector. What did she say as she was going down in the elevator? Nothing. Tell us. I'll arrest you if you don't. Nothing about the murder on my honor, protested Downey. Kennedy leaned over suddenly and shot a remark at him. Then it was about the note. Downey was surprised, but not quickly enough. Still, he seemed to be considering something, and in a moment he said, I don't know what it was about, but I feel it is my duty after all to tell you. I heard her say, I wonder if he knew. Nothing else? Nothing else. What happened after you came back? We entered the lady's department. No one was there. A woman's automobile coat was thrown over a chair in a heap. Mr. Bruce picked it up. It's Mrs. Parker's, he said. He wrapped it up hastily and rang for a messenger. When did he send it? To Mrs. Parker, I suppose. I didn't hear the address. We went over the whole suite of offices conducted by Mr. Downey. I noted how carefully Kennedy looked into the director's room through the open door from the lady's department. He stood at such an angle that had he been the assassin he could scarcely have been seen, except by those sitting immediately next Mr. Parker at the director's table. The street windows were directly in front of him, and back of him was a chair on which the motor-coat had been found. In Parker's own office we spent some time, as well as in Bruce's. Kennedy made a search for the note, but finding nothing in either office turned out the contents of Bruce's scrap-basket. There didn't seem to be anything in it to interest him. However, even after he had pieced several torn bits of scraps together with much difficulty, and he was about to turn the papers back again, when he noticed something sticking to the side of the basket. It looked like a mass of wet paper, and that was precisely what it was. That's queer, said Kennedy, picking it loose. Then he wrapped it up carefully and put it in his pocket. Inspector, can you lend me one of your men for a couple of days, he asked, as we were preparing to leave? I shall want to send him out of town tonight, and shall probably need his services when he gets back. Very well. Riley will be just a fellow. We'll go back to headquarters, and I'll put him under your orders. It was not until late in the following day that I saw Kennedy again. It had been a busy day at the star. We had gone to work that morning, expecting to see the very financial heavens fall. But, just about five minutes to ten, before the stock exchange opened, the news came in over the wire from our financial man on Broad Street. The system has forced James Bruce, partner of Care Parker, the dead banker, to sell his railroad, steamship, and rubber holdings to it. On this condition it promises unlimited support to the market. Forced, muttered the managing editor, as he waited on the office phone to get the composing room, so as to hurry up the few lines in Red Inc. on the first page and beat our rivals on the streets with the first extras. Why, he's been working to bring that about for the past two weeks. What that system doesn't control isn't worth having. It edits the news before our men get it. And as for Chris for the divorce counts and tragedies, well, hello Jenkins, yes, a special extra. Change the big heads, copy is on the way up, rush it. So you think this Parker case is a mess, I asked? I know it. That's a pretty swift bunch of females that have been speculating at Care Parker and its companies. I understand there's one tiddy and haired young lady, who by the way, has at least one husband who hasn't yet been divorced, who is a sort of ringleader, though she rarely goes personally to her broker's offices. She's one of those uptown plungers, and the story is that she has a whole string of scalps of alleged Sunday school superintendents at her belt. She can make Bruce do pretty nearly anything they say. He's the latest conquest. I got the story on pretty good authority, but until I verified the name, stage and places, of course I wouldn't dare print a line of it. The story goes that her husband is a hanger on on the system, and that she's been working in their interest too. That was why he was so complacent over the whole affair. They put her up to capturing Bruce. And after she had acquired an influence over him, they worked it so that she made him make love to Mrs. Parker. It's a long story, but that isn't all of it. The point was, you see, that by this devious route they hoped to warm out of Mrs. Parker some inside information about Parker's rubber schemes, which he hadn't divulged even to his partners in business. It was a deep and carefully planned plot, and some of the conspirators were pretty deeply in the mire, I guess. I wish I'd had all the facts about who this red-haired female Machiavelli was. What a piece of muck-breaking it would have made. Oh, here comes the rest of the new story over the wire. By Jove! It's said on good authority that Bruce will be taken in as one of the board of directors. What do you think of that? So that was how the wind lay. Bruce making love to Mrs. Parker, and she, presumably betraying her husband's secrets. I thought I saw it all. The note from somebody exposing the scheme, Parker's incredulity, Bruce sitting by him and catching sight of the note, his hurrying out into the lady's department, and then the shot. But who fired it? After all, I had only picked up another clue. Kennedy was not at the apartment at dinner, and an inquiry at the laboratory was fruitless also, so I sat down to fidget for a while. Pretty soon the buzzer on the door sounded, and I opened it to find a messenger boy with a large brown paper parcel. "'Is Mr. Bruce here?' he asked. "'Why, no, he isn't. Then I checked myself and added. He will be here presently. You can leave the bundle.' Well, this is the parcel he telephoned for. His valet told me to tell him that he had a hard time to find it, but he guesses it's all right. The charges are forty cents. Sign here. I signed the book, feeling like a thief, and the boy departed. What it all meant, I could not guess. Just then I heard a key and a lock, and Kennedy came in. "'Is your name Bruce?' I asked. "'Why?' he replied eerily. "'Has anything come?' I pointed to the package. Kennedy made a dive for it and unwrapped it. It was a woman's Pongee automobile coat. He held it up to the light. The pocket on the right side was scorched and burned, and a hole was torn clean through it. A gasp and the full significance of it dawned on me. "'How did you get it?' I exclaimed at last in surprise. "'That's where organization comes in,' said Kennedy. The police at my request went over every messenger call from Parker's office that afternoon, and traced every one of them up. At last they found one that led to Bruce's apartment. None of them had led to Mrs. Parker's home. The rest were all business calls and satisfactorily accounted for. I reasoned that this was the one that involved the disappearance of the automobile coat. It was a chance worth taking, so I got Downey to call up Bruce's valet. The valet, of course, recognized Downey's voice and suspected nothing. Downey assumed to know all about the coat in the package received yesterday. He asked to have it sent up here. I see the scheme worked. "'But, Kennedy, do you think she—' I stopped, speechless, looking at the scorched coat. "'Nothing to say yet,' he replied leconically. "'But if you could tell me anything about that note Parker received, I'd thank you.' I related what our managing editor had said that morning. Kennedy only raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch. "'I had guessed something of that sort,' he said merely. "'I'm glad to find it confirmed even by hearsay evidence. This red-haired young lady interests me. Not a very definite description, but better than nothing at all. I wonder who she is. Ah, well, what do you say to a stroll down the whiteway before I go to my laboratory? I'd like a breath of air to relax my mind.' He had gotten no further than the first theatre when Kennedy slapped me on the back. "'By George Jameson, she's an actress, of course.' "'Who is? What's the matter with you, Kennedy? Are you crazy?' "'The red-haired person. She must be an actress. Don't you remember the obon-haired leading lady in The Follies? The girl who sings that song about Mary Mary quite contrary. Her stage name, you know, is Phoebe Laneige. Well, if it's she who is concerned in this case, I don't think she'll be playing tonight. Let's inquire at the box office.' She wasn't playing, but just what it had to do with anything in particular I couldn't see, and I said as much. "'My Walter, you would never do as a detective. You lack intuition. Sometimes I think I haven't quite enough of it, either. Why didn't I think of that sooner? Don't you know she is the wife of Adolf Hiss, the most inviderate gambler in stocks in the system? Why, I had only to put two and two together, and the whole thing flashed on me in an instant. Isn't it a good hypothesis that she is the red-haired woman in the case? The tool of the system in which her husband is so heavily involved? I'll have to add her to my list of suspects.' "'Why, you don't think she did the shooting?' I asked half-hoping, I must admit, for an assenting nod from him.' "'Well,' he answered dryly, one shouldn't let any preconceived hypothesis stand between him and the truth. I've made a guess at the whole thing already. It may or may not be right. Anyhow, she will fit into it, and if it's not right, I've got to be prepared to make a new guess, that's all.' When we reached the laboratory on a return, the Inspector's man Riley was there, waiting impatiently for Kennedy. "'What luck!' asked Kennedy. "'I've got a list of purchasers of that kind of revolver,' he said. "'We have been to every sporting-good and arms store in this city, which brought them from the factory, and I could lay my hands on pretty nearly every one of those weapons in twenty-four hours. Provided, of course, they haven't been secreted or destroyed.' "'Pretty nearly all isn't good enough,' said Kennedy. "'It will have to be all, unless that name is on the list,' whispered Riley hoarsely. "'Oh, then it's all right,' answered Kennedy, brightening up. "'Riley, I will say that you're a wonderer using the organization in ferreting out such things. There's just one more thing I want you to do. I want a sample of the note-paper and the private desks of every one of these people.' He handed the policeman a list of his nine suspects, as he called them. It included nearly every one mentioned in the case. Riley studied it dubiously, and scratched his chin thoughtfully. "'That's a hard one, Mr. Kennedy, sir. You see, it means getting into so many different houses and apartments. Now, you don't want to do it by means of a warrant, do you, sir? Of course not. Well, then how can we get in?' "'You're a pretty good-looking chap yourself, Riley,' said Kennedy. "'I should think you could jolly a housemate, if necessary. Anyhow, you can get the fellow on the beat to do it. If he isn't already to be found in the kitchen, why, I see a dozen ways of getting the note-paper.' "'Oh, it's me, the lady-killer, sir,' grinned Riley. "'I'm a regular Blonnie-stone when I'm out on a job of that sort. Sure, I'll have some of them for you in the morning.' "'Bring me what you get, the first thing in the morning. Even if you've landed only a few samples,' said Kennedy, as Riley departed, straightening his tie and brushing his head on his sleeve. "'And now, Walter, you must excuse me to-night,' said Craig. "'I've got a lot to do, and shan't be up to our apartment till very late or early. But I feel sure I've got a stranglehold on this mystery. If I get those papers from Riley in good time tomorrow, I shall invite you and several others to a grand demonstration here tomorrow night. Don't forget, keep the whole evening free. It will be a big story.' Kennedy's laboratory was brightly lighted when I arrived early the next evening. One by one his guests dropped in. It was evident that they had little liking up for the visit, but the coroner had sent out the invitations, and they had nothing to do but accept. Each one was politely welcomed by the professor and assigned a seat, much as he would have done with a group of students. The inspector and the coroner sat back a little. Mrs. Parker, Mr. Downey, Mr. Bruce, myself, and Miss Linaige sat in that order on the very narrow and uncomfortable little armchairs used by the students during lectures. At last Kennedy was ready to begin. He took his position behind the long, flat top table, which he used for his demonstrations before his classes. "'I realize, ladies and gentlemen,' he began formally, that I am about to do a very unusual thing, but, as you all know, the police and the coroner have been completely baffled by this terrible mystery, and have requested me to attempt to clear up at least certain points in it. I will begin what I have to say by remarking that the tracing out of a crime like this differs in nothing, except as regards of the subject matter from the search for a scientific truth. The forcing of man's secrets is like the forcing of nature's secrets. Both are pieces of detective work. The methods employed in the detection of crime are, or rather should be, like the methods employed in the process of discovering scientific truth. In a crime of this sort, two kinds of evidence need to be secured. Circumstantial evidence must first be marshaled, and then a motive must be found. I have been gathering facts, but to omit motives and rest contented with mere facts would be inconclusive. It would never convince anybody or convict anybody. In other words, circumstantial evidence must first lead to a suspect, and then this suspect must prove equal to accounting for the facts. It is my hope that each of you may contribute something that will be of service in arriving at the truth of this unfortunate incident. The tension was not relieved, even when Kennedy stopped speaking and began the fuss with a little upright target which he set up at one end of his table. We seemed to be seated over a powder magazine which threatened to explode at any moment. I, at least, felt the tension so greatly that it was only after he had started speaking again that I noticed that the target was composed of a thick layer of some putty-like material. Holding a .32 caliber pistol in his right hand and aiming it at the target, Kennedy picked up a large piece of coarse homespun from the table and held it loosely over the muzzle of the gun. Then he fired. The bullet tore through the cloth, sped through the air, and buried itself in the target. With a knife he pried it out. I doubt if even the inspector himself could have told us that when an ordinary, leadened bullet is shot through a woven fabric, the weave of that fabric is in the majority of cases impressed on the bullet, sometimes clearly, sometimes faintly. Here Kennedy took up a piece of fine bastee and fired another bullet through it. Every leadened bullet, as I have said, which has struck such a fabric, bears an impression of the threads which is recognizable even when the bullet has penetrated deeply into the body. It is only obliterated partially or entirely when the bullet has been flattened by striking a bone or other hard object. Even then, as in this case, if only a part of the bullet is flattened, the remainder may still show the marks of the fabric. A heavy warp, say, of cotton velvet, or, as I have here, homespun, will be imprinted well on the bullet, but even a fine bastee containing one hundred threads to the inch will show marks. Even layers of goods such as a coat, shirt, and undershirt may each leave their marks, but that does not concern us in this case. Now I have here a piece of bungee-soak cut from a woman's automobile coat. I discharge the bullet through it so. I compare the bullet now with the others and with the one probed from the neck of Mr. Parker. I find that the marks on that fatal bullet correspond precisely with those on the bullet fired through the bungee coat. Starling as was this revelation, Kennedy only paused an instant before the next. Now I have another demonstration, a certain note figures in this case. Mr. Parker was reading it or perhaps rereading it at the time he was shot. I have not been able to obtain that note, at least not in the form such as I could use in discovering what were its contents. But in a certain wastebasket I found a mass of wet and pulp-like paper. It had been cut up, masquaded, perhaps chewed, perhaps it had been also soaked with water. There was a wash-patient with running water in this room. The ink had run and of course was illegible. The thing was so unusual that I once assumed that this was the remains of the note in question. Under ordinary circumstances it would be utterly valueless as a clue to anything. But today science is not ready to let anything pass as valueless. I found on microscopic examination that it was an uncommon linen-bond paper, and I have taken a large number of micro-photographs of the fibers in it. They are all similar. I have here also about a hundred micro-photographs of the fibers in other kinds of paper. Many of them bonds. These I have accumulated from time to time in my study of the subject. None of them, as you can see, shows fibers resembling this one in question. So we may conclude that it is of uncommon quality. Through an agent of the police, I have secured samples of the note-paper of everyone who could be concerned, as far as I could see with the case. Here are the photographs of the fibers of these various note-papers, and among them all is just one that corresponds to the fibers in the wet mass of paper I discovered in the scrap basket. Now, lest anyone should question the accuracy of this method, I might cite a case where a man had been arrested in Germany charged with stealing a government bond. He was not searched till later. There was no evidence saved that, after the arrest, a large number of spitballs were found around the courtyard under his cell window. This method of comparing the fibers with those of the regular government paper was used, and by it the man was convicted of stealing the bond. I think it is almost unnecessary to add that in the present case we know precisely who, at this point the tension was so great that it snapped. Miss Laneige, who was sitting beside me, had been leaning forward involuntarily. Almost as if the words were rung from her, she whispered hoarsely. They put me up to doing it. I didn't want to, but the affair had gone too far. I couldn't see him lost before my very eyes. I didn't want her to get him. The quickest way out was to tell the whole story to Mr. Parker and stop it. It was the only way I could think of to stop the thing between another man's wife and the man I loved better than my own husband. God knows, Professor Kennedy, that was all. Calm yourself, madam, interrupted Kennedy soothingly. Calm yourself. What's done is done. The truth must come out. Be calm now. He continued, after the first storm of remorse had spent itself, and we were all outwardly composed again. We have said nothing whatsoever of the mysterious feature of the case, the firing of the shot. The murderer could have thrust the weapon into the pocket of the folds of this coat. Here he drew forth the automobile coat and held it aloft displaying the bullet hole. And he or she, I will not say which, could have discharged the pistol unseen. By removing and secreting the weapon afterwards, one very important piece of evidence would be suppressed. This person could have used such a cartridge as I have here, made with smokeless powder, and the coat would have concealed the flash of the shot very effectively. There would have been no smoke, but neither this coat nor even a heavy blanket would have deadened the report of the shot. What are we to think of that? Only one thing. I have often wondered why the thing wasn't done before. In fact, I have been waiting for it to occur. There is an invention that makes it almost possible to strike a man down with impunity in broad daylight, in any place where there is sufficient noise to cover up a click, a slight poof, and the whir of the bullet in the air. I refer to this little device of a hard-foot inventor. I place it over the muzzle of the 32-caliber revolver I have so far been using. So. Now, Mr. Jameson, if you will sit at that typewriter over there and write, anything, so long as you keep the keys clicking, the inspector will start that imitation stuck-ticker in the corner. Now, we are ready. I cover the pistol with a cloth. I defy anyone in this room to tell me the exact moment when I discharged the pistol. I could have shot any of you, and an outsider not in the secret would never have thought that I was the culprit. To a certain extent, I have reproduced the conditions under which the shooting occurred. At once, on being sure of this feature of the case, I dispatched a man to Hartford to see this inventor. The man obtained from him a complete list 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 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 .32 caliber revolver, and I presume that that person carried the gun and the silencer at the time of the murder of Care 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 anti-climax. 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 waiting? 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 in Redwoodie had been noting in the next room. At the production of the code 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. Ms. Linaise's automatic record during the tracing out of the sending of the note to Parker had been especially unfavorable 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 Mrs. Linaise, 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 the 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 just stepped out of the shadow with a pair of handcuffs. James Bruce, you're under our rest, he said. They're flashed on my mind, and I think on the minds of some of the others, a picture of another electrically wired chair. 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 a 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 a Shaw murder trial. There isn't another that's even a bad second. I'm 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? 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 G. Fletcher, the aged philanthropist and steelmaker, was found dead in his library this morning at his home in 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 discolored, 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 nephew John Chief Fletcher II, who is the Blake Professor of Bacteriology at the University, and by a grandies, Miss Helen Bond. Professor Fletcher was informed of the sad occurrence shortly after leaving a class this morning and hurried out to Fletcher Wood. He would make no statement other than that he was inexpressibly shocked. Miss Bond, who has for several years resided with relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Frances Green of Little Neck, is prostrated by the shock. Walter, added Kennedy, as he laid down the paper and, without any more sparring, came directly to the point. There was something missing from that safe. I had no need to express the interest I now really felt, and Kennedy hastened to take advantage of it. Just before you came in, he continued, Jack Fletcher called me up from Great Neck. You probably don't know it, but it has been privately reported in the inner circle of the university that old Fletcher was to leave the bulk of his fortune to found a great school of preventive medicine, and that the only proviso was that his nephew should be dean of the school. The professor told me over the wire that the will was missing from the safe, and that it was the only thing missing. From his excitement I judged that there is more to the story than he cared to tell over the phone. He said his car was on the way to the city, and he asked if I wouldn't come and help him. He wouldn't say how. Now, I know him pretty well, and I'm going to ask you to come along, Walter, for the express purpose of keeping this thing out of the newspapers. Understand? Until we get to the bottom of it. A few minutes later, the telephone rang, and the hallboy announced that the car was waiting. We hurried down to it. The chauffeur lounged down carelessly into his seat, and we were off across the city and river, and out onto the road to Great Neck with amazing speed. Already I began to feel something of Kennedy's zest for the adventure. I found myself half a dozen times on the point of hazarding a suspicion, only to relapse again into silence at the inscrutable look on Kennedy's face. What was the mystery that awaited us in the great lonely house on Long Island? We found Fletcher Wood, a splendid estate directly on the bay, with a long driveway leading up to the door. Professor Fletcher met us at the port-co-share, and I was glad to note that far from taking me as an intruder, he seemed rather relieved that someone who understood the ways of the newspapers could stand between him and any reporters who might possibly drop in. He ushered us directly into the library, and closed the door. It seemed as if he could scarcely wait to tell us his story. Kennedy, he began, almost trembling with excitement. Look at that safe door! We looked. It had been drilled through in such a way as to break the combination. It was a very heavy door, closely fitting, and it was the best kind of small safe that the state of the art had produced. Yet clearly it had been tampered with, and successfully. Who was this scientific cracksman who had apparently accomplished the impossible? It was no ordinary hand and brain which had executed this job. Fletcher swung the door wide, and pointed to a little compartment inside, whose steel door had been jamied open. Then out of it he carefully lifted a steel box, and deposited it on the library table. I suppose everybody has been handling that box, asked Craig quickly. A smile flitted across Fletcher's features. I thought of that, Kennedy, he said. I remembered what you once told me about fingerprints. Only myself has touched it, and I was careful to take hold of it only on the sides. The wheel was placed in this box, and the key to the box was usually in the lock. Well, the wheel is gone, that's all. Nothing else was touched. But for the life of me I can't find a mark on the box. Not a finger mark. Now, on a heart and humid summer night like last night, I should say it was pretty likely that anyone touching this metal box would have left finger marks. Shouldn't you think so, Kennedy? Kennedy nodded and continued to examine the place where the compartment had been jamied. A low whistle aroused us coming over to the table. Craig tore a white sheet of paper off a pad lying there, and deposited a couple of small particles on it. I found them sticking on the jagged edges of the steel where it had been forced, he said. Then he whipped out a pocket magnifying glass. Not from a rubber glove, he commented, half to himself. By Jove, one side of them shows lines that look as if they were the lines on the person's fingers, and the other side is perfectly smooth. There's not a chance of using them as a clue, except, well, I didn't know criminals in America knew that stunt. What stunt? Why, you know how keen the new detectives are on a fingerprint system. Well, the first thing some of the up-to-date criminals in Europe did was to wear rubber gloves so that they would leave no prints. But you can't work very well with rubber gloves. Last fall in Paris I heard of a fellow who had given the police a lot of trouble. He never left a mark. Or at least it was no good if he did. He painted his hands lightly with a liquid rubber which he had invented himself. It did all that rubber gloves would do, and yet left him the free use of his fingers, with practically the same keenness of touch. Fletcher, whatever is at the bottom of this affair, I feel sure right now that you have to deal with no ordinary criminal. Do you suppose there are any relatives besides those we heard of? I asked Kennedy when Fletcher had left to summon the servants. No, he replied. I think not. Fletcher and Helen Bond, his second cousin, to whom he is engaged, are the only two. Kennedy continued to study the library. He walked in and out of the doors, and examined the windows and viewed the safe from all angles. The old gentleman's bedroom is here, he said, indicating a door. Now, a good smart noise or perhaps even a light shining through the transom from the library might arouse him. I suppose he woke up suddenly and entered by this door. He would see the thief at work on the safe. Yes, that part of reconstructing the story is simple, but who was the intruder? Just then Fletcher returned with the servants. The questioning was long and tedious, and developed nothing except that the butler admitted that he was uncertain whether the windows in the library were locked. The gardener was very obtuse, but finally contributed one possibly important fact. He had noted in the morning that the back gate, leading into a disused road closer to the bay than the main highway in front of the house, was open. It was rarely used, and was kept closed only by an ordinary hook. Whoever had opened it had evidently forgotten to hook it. He had thought it strange that it was unhooked, and in closing it he had noticed in the mud of the roadway marks it seemed to indicate that an automobile had stood there. After the servants had gone, Fletcher asked us to excuse him for a while, as he wished to run over to the greens who lived across the bay. Miss Bond was completely prostrated by the death of her uncle, he said, and was in an extremely nervous condition. Meanwhile, if we found any need of a machine we might use his uncles, or in fact anything around the place. Walter, said Craig, when Fletcher had gone, I want to run back to town tonight, and I have something I'd like to have you do too. We were soon speeding back along the splendid road along Island City, while he laid out our program. You go down to the star office, he said, and look through all the clippings on the whole Fletcher family. Get a complete story of the life of Helen Bond, too, what she has done in society, with whom she has been seen mostly, whether she has made any trips abroad, and whether she has ever been engaged, you know, anything likely to be significant. I'm going up to the apartment to get my camera and then to the laboratory to get some rather bulky paraphernalia I want to take out to Fletcherwood. Meet me at the Columbus Circle Station at, say, half past ten. So we separated. My search revealed the fact that Miss Bond had always been an intimate with the ultra-fashionable Seth, had spent last summer in Europe, a good part of the time in Switzerland and Paris with the greens. As far as I could find out she'd never been reported engaged, but plenty of fortunes as well as foreign titles had been flitting about the ward of the steel magnet. Greg and I met at the appointed time. He had a lot of paraphernalia with him, and it did not add to our comfort as we sped back. But it wasn't much over half an hour before we again found ourselves nearing Great Neck. Instead of going directly back to Fletcherwood, however, Craig had told the chauffeur to stop at the plant of the local electric light and power company, where he asked if he might see the record of the amount of current used the night before. The curve sprawled across the ruled surface of the sheet by the automatic registering needle was irregular, showing the ups and downs of the current rising sharply from sundown and gradually declining after nine o'clock as the lights went out. Somewhere between eleven and twelve o'clock, however, the irregular fall of the curve was broken by a quite noticeable upward twist. Craig asked them if that usually happened. They were quite sure that the curve as a rule went gradually down until twelve o'clock when the power was shut off. But they did not see anything remarkable in it. Oh, I suppose some of the big houses had guests, volunteered to form them, and just to show off the place perhaps they turned on all the lights. I don't know, sir, what it was, but it couldn't have been a heavy train, or we would have noticed it at the time, and the lights would have all been dim. Well, said Craig, just watch and see if it occurs again tonight about the same time. All right, sir. When you close down the plant for the night, will you bring the record card up to Fletcherwood? Ask Craig, slipping a bill into the pocket of the foreman's shirt. I will, and thank you, sir. It was nearly half past eleven when Craig had got his apparatus set up in the library at Fletcherwood. Then he unscrewed all the bulbs from the chandelier in the library, and attached in their places connections with the usual green silk-covered flexible wire rope. These were then joined up to a little instrument which, to me, looked like a drill. Next he muffled the drill with a wad of felt and applied it to the safe door. I could hear the dull tat-tat at the drill. Going into the bedroom and closing the door, I found it was still audible to me, but an old man, inclined to deafness and sleep, would scarcely have been awakened by it. In about ten minutes Craig displayed a neat little hole in the safe door, opposite the one made by the cracksman in the combination. I'm glad you're honest, I said, or else we might be afraid of you, perhaps even make you proven alibi for last night's job. He ignored my bantering and said in a tone such as he might have used before class as students in the general art of scientific safe-cracking. Now, if the power company's curve is just the same as tonight as last night, that will show how the thing was done. I wanted to be sure of it, so I thought I'd try this apparatus which I smuggled in from Paris last year. I believe the old man happened to be wakeful and heard it. Then he pried off the door of the interior compartment, which had been jimmied open. Perhaps we may learn something by looking at this door and studying the marks left by the jimmy, by means of this new instrument of mine. He said, on the library table he fastened an arrangement with two upright posts supporting a dial which he called a dynamometer. The uprights were braced in the back and the whole thing reminded me of a miniature guillotine. This is my mechanical detective, said Craig proudly. It was devised by Bertil on himself, and he personally gave me permission to copy his own machine. You see, it is devised to measure pressure. Now, let's take an ordinary jimmy and see just how much pressure it takes to duplicate these marks on the door. Craig laid the piece of steel on the dynamometer in the position it had occurred in the safe, and braced it tightly. Then he took a jimmy and pressed on it with all his strength. The steel door was connected with the indicator, and the needle spun around until it indicated a pressure such as only a strongman could have exerted. Comparing the marks he made in the steel in the experiment and by the safecracker, it was evident that no such pressure had been necessary. Apparently, the lock on the door was only a trifling affair, and the steel itself was not very tough. The safe markers had relied on the first line of defense to repel attack. Craig tried again and again, each time using less force. At last he got a mark just about similar to the original marks on the steel. Well, well, what do you think of that? he explained reflectively. A child could have done that part of the job. Just then the lights went off for the night. Craig lighted the oil lamp and sat in silence until the electric light plant foreman appeared with the card record, which showed a curve practically identical with that of the night before. A few moments later Professor Fletcher's machine came up the driveway, and he joined us with a worried and preoccupied look on his face that he could not conceal. She's terribly broken up by the suddenness of it all, he murmured as he sank into an arm chair. The shock has been too much for her. In fact, I hadn't had the heart to tell her anything about the robbery, poor girl. Then in a moment he asked, any more clues yet, Kennedy? Well, nothing of first importance. I have only been trying to reconstruct the story of the robbery so that I can reason out a motive in a few details. Then when the real clues come along, we won't have so much ground to cover. The cracksman was certainly clever. He used an electric drill to break the combination and ran it by the electric light current. Exclaimed the Professor, is that so? He must have been above the average. That's interesting. By the way, Fletcher, said Kennedy, I wish you would introduce me to your fiancée tomorrow. I would like to know her. Gladly, Fletcher replied, only you must be careful what you talk about. Remember that death of Uncle has been quite a shock to her. He was her only relative beside myself. I will, promised Kennedy, and, by the way, she may think it strange that I'm out here at a time like this. Perhaps you would better tell her that I'm a nerve specialist or something of that sort. Anything not to connect me with the robbery, which you say you haven't told her about. The next morning found Kennedy out bright and early, for he had not had a very good chance to do anything during the night except reconstruct the details. He was now down by the back gate with his camera, where I found him turning it end down and photographing the road. Together we made a thorough search of the woods and the road about the gate, but could discover absolutely nothing. After breakfast I improvised the dark room and developed films while Craig went down to the back lane along the shore, looking for clues, as he said briefly. Tolwood Nooney returned, and I could see that he was in a brown study, so I said nothing, but handed him the photographs of the road. He took them and laid them down in a long line on a library floor. They seemed to consist of little ridges of dirt on either side of a series of regular round spots, some of the spots very clear and distinct on the sides, others quite obscure in the center. Now and then, where you would expect to see one of the spots, just the symmetry of the thing, it was missing. As I looked at the line of photographs on the floor, I saw that they were a photograph of the track made by the tire of an automobile, and I suddenly recalled what the gardener had said. Next Craig produced the results of his morning work, which consisted of several dozen sheets of white paper, carefully separated into three bundles. These he also laid down in the long lines on the floor, each packaged in a separate line. Then I began to realize what he was doing, and became fascinated in watching him on his hands and knees eagerly scanning the papers and comparing them with the photographs. At last he gathered up two of the sets of papers very decisively and threw them away. Then he shifted the third set a bit and laid it closely parallel to the photographs. Look at these, Walter, he said. Now take this deep and sharp indentation. Well, there's a corresponding one in the photograph. So you can pick them out one for another. Now here's one missing altogether on the paper. So it is in the photograph. Almost like a schoolboy in his glee, he was comparing the little round circles made by the metal insertions in an anti-skid automobile tire. Time and again I had seen imprints like that left in the dust and grease of an asphalted street or in the mud of a road. It had never occurred to me that they might be used in any way. Yet here Craig was, calmly tracing out the similarity before my very eyes, identifying the marks made in the photograph with the prints left on the bits of paper. As I followed him I had a most curious feeling of admiration for his genius. Craig, I cried, that's the thumbprint of an automobile. There speaks the yellow journalist, he answered merrily. Thumbprint system applied to motor cars. I can see the Sunday feature story you have in your mind with that headline already. Yes, Walter, that's precisely what this is. The Berlin police have used it a number of times with the most startling results. But Craig, I exclaimed suddenly, the paper prints, where did you get them? What machine is it? It's one not very far from here. He answered sententiously, and I saw he would say nothing more that might fix the false suspicion on anyone. Still, my curiosity was so great that if there had been an opportunity I certainly should have tried out his plan on all the cars in the Fletcher Garage. Kennedy would say nothing more, and we A.R. luncheon in silence. Fletcher, who had decided to lunch with the Greens, called Kennedy up on the telephone to tell him that it would be all right for him to come, call on Miss Bond later in the afternoon. And may I bring over the apparatus I once described to you to determine just what her nervous condition is? He asked. Apparently the answer was yes, for Kennedy hung up the receiver with a satisfied good-bye. Walter, I want you to come along with me this afternoon as my assistant. Remember, I'm now Dr. Kennedy. The nerve specialist, and you are Dr. Jameson, my colleague. And we are to be in consultation on a most important case. Do you think that's fair, I asked Hotley, to take that girl off her guard, to insinuate yourself into her confidence as a medical adviser, and warm out of her some kind of fact incriminating someone? I suppose it's your plan, and I don't like the ethics, or rather the lack of ethics of the thing. Now think a minute, Walter. Perhaps I am wrong. I don't know. Certainly I feel the end will justify the means. I have an idea that I can get from Miss Bond the only clue I need. One that will lead straight to the criminal. Who knows? I have a suspicion that the thing I'm going to do is the highest form of your so-called ethics. If what Fletcher tells us is true that the girl is going insane over this thing, why should she be so shocked over the death of an uncle she did not live with? I tell you she knows something about this case, that it is necessary for us to know, too. If she doesn't tell someone, it will eat her mind out. I'll add a dinner to the box of cigars we have already bet on this case, that what I'm going to do is for the best, for her best. Again I yielded. For I was coming to have more and more faith in the old Kennedy I had seen made over into a first class detective, and together we started for the Greens, Craig carrying something in one of those long black handbags which physicians use. Fletcher met us on the driveway. He seemed to be very much affected, for his face was drawn, and he shifted from one position to another nervously, from which we inferred that Miss Bond was feeling worse. It was late afternoon, almost verging on Twilight, as he led us through the reception hall and thence onto a long porch overlooking the bay and redolent with honeysuckle. Miss Bond was half reclining in a wicked chair as we ended. She started to rise to greet us, but Fletcher gently restrained her, saying, as he introduced us, that he guessed the doctors would pardon any informality from an invalid. Fletcher was a pretty fine fellow, and I had come to like him, but I soon found myself wondering what he had ever done to deserve winning such a girl as Helen Bond. She was what I should describe as the ideal type of new woman, tall and athletic, yet without any affectation of manishness. The very first thought that it struck me was the incongruousness of a girl of her type suffering from a tack of nerves, and I felt sure it must be, as Craig had said, that she was concealing a secret that was having a terrible effect on her. A casual glance might not have betrayed the true state of her feelings, for her dark hair and large brown eyes and the tan of many suns on her face and arms betokened anything but the nervous thenic. One felt instinctively that she was, with all her athletic grace, primarily a womanly woman. The sun-sinking toe-the-hills across the base softened the brown of her skin, and, as I observed by watching her closely, served partially to conceal the nervousness which was wholly unnatural in a girl of such poise. When she smiled there was a false note in it. It was forced, and it was sufficiently evident to me, that she was going through a mental hell of conflicting emotions that would have killed a woman of less self-control. I felt that I would like to be in Fletcher's shoes. Lovely so when, at Kennedy's request, he withdrew leaving me to witness the torture of a woman of such fine sensibilities, already hunted remorselessly by her own thoughts. Still, I will give Kennedy credit for attackfulness I didn't know the old fellow possessed. He carried through the preliminary questions very well for a pseudo-doctor, appealing to me as his assistant on inconsequential things that enabled me to save my face perfectly. When he came to the critical moment of opening the black bag, he made a very appropriate and easy remark about not having brought any sharp, shiny instruments or nasty black drugs. All I wish to do, Miss Bond, is to make a few simple little tests of your nervous condition. One of them we specialists call reaction time, and another is a test of the heart action. Neither is of any seriousness at all, so I beg you not to become excited, for the cheap value consists in having the patient perfectly quiet and normal. After they are over, I think I'll know whether to prescribe absolute rest or a visit to Newport. She smiled languidly, as he adjusted a long, tightly fitting rubber glove on a shapely forearm, and then encased it in a larger, absolutely inflexible covering of leather. Between the rubber glove and the leather covering was a liquid communicating by a glass tube with a sort of dial. Craig had often explained to me how the pressure of the blood was registered most minutely on the dial, showing the varied up motions as keenly as if you had taken a peep into the very mind of the subject. I think the experimental psychologist called the thing a plethysmograph. Then he had an apparatus which measured association time. The essential part of this instrument was the operation of a very delicate stopwatch, and this duty was given to me. It was nothing more or less than measuring the time that elapsed between his questions to her and her answers, while he recorded the actual questions and answers and noted the results which I worked out. Neither of us was unfamiliar with the process, for when we are in college these instruments were just coming into use in America. Kennedy had never let his particular branch of science narrow him, but had made a practice of keeping abreast of all the important discoveries and methods in other fields. Besides, I had read articles about the chronoscope, the plethysmograph, the sphagmograph, and others of the new psychological instruments. Craig carried it off, however, as if he did this sort of thing as an everyday employment. No, Miss Bond, he said, and his voice was so reassuring and persuasive that I could see she was not made even a shade more nervous by our simple preparations. The game, it is just like a children's parlor game, is just this. I will say a word. Take dog, for instance. You are to answer back immediately the first word that comes into your mind suggested by it. Say cat. I will say chain, for example, and probably you will answer collar, and so on. Do you catch my meaning? It may seem ridiculous, no doubt, but before we are through I feel sure you'll see how valuable such a test is, particularly in a simple case of nervousness such as yours. I don't think she found any sinister interpretation in his words, but I did. And if ever I wanted to protest it was then. But my voice seemed to stick in my throat. He was beginning. It was clearly up to me to give in and not interfere. As closely as I was able, I kept my eyes riveted on the watch and other apparatus, while my ears and heart followed with mealed emotions, the low musical voice of the girl. I will not give all the test, for there was much of it, particularly at the start. That was, in reality, valueless, since it was merely leading up to the surprise tests. From the colorless questions Kennedy suddenly changed. It was done in an instant, when Miss Bond had been completely disarmed and put off her guard. Night, said Kennedy, Tay, came back the reply from Miss Bond. Automobile, horse, bay, beach, road, forest, gate, fence, path, shrubs, porch, house. Did I detect or imagine a faint hesitation? Window, curtain. Yes, it was plain that time. But the words followed one another in quick succession. There was no rest. She had no chance to collect herself. I noted the marked difference in the reaction time, and in my sympathy, damned this cold scientific third degree. Paris, France. Quartier Latin. Students. Apaches. Craig gave it its galasized pronunciation. Apache. Really, Dr. Kennedy, she said, there is nothing I can associate with them. Well, yes, Lavaches, I believe. You had better count that question out. I've wasted a good many seconds. Very well, let us try again, he replied with a forced unconcern, though the answers seemed to interest him. For Les Vaches meant the cows, otherwise known as the police. No lawyer could have reveled in an opportunity for putting leading questions more ruthlessly than did Kennedy. He snapped out his words sharply and unexpectedly. Chandelier. Light. Electric light, he emphasized. Broadway, she answered, endeavouring to force a new association of ideas to replace one which he strove to conceal. Safe. Vaults. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the indicators showed a tremendously increased heart action. As for the reaction time, I noted that it was growing longer and more significant. Remorselessly, he pressed his words home. Mentally, I cursed him. Rubber. Tire. Steel. Pittsburgh. She cried at random. Strong box. No answer. Lock. Again, no answer. He hurried his words. I was leaning forward tense with excitement and sympathy. Key. Silence and fluttering of the blood pressure indicator. Will. As the last word was uttered, her air of frightened defiance was swept away. With a cry of anguish she swayed to her feet. No, no, Doctor, you must not, you must not! She cried without stretch arms. Why do you pick out those words of all others? Can it be? If I had not caught her, I believe she would have fainted. The indicator showed a heart alternately throbbing with feverish excitement and almost stopping with fear. What would Kennedy do next, I wondered. Determined to shut him off as soon as I possibly could. From the moment I had seen her I had been under her spell. Mind should have been Fletcher's place, I knew. Though I cannot but say I felt a certain grim pleasure in supporting even momentarily such a woman in her time of need. Can it be that you have guessed what no one in the world? No. Not even dear old Jack Dreams? Oh, I shall go mad, mad, mad! Kennedy was on his feet in an instant, advancing toward her. The look in his eyes was answer enough for her. She knew that he knew, and she paled and shuddered, shrinking away from him. Miss Bond, he said in a voice at forced attention, it was low and vibrating with feeling. Miss Bond, have you ever told a lie to shield a friend? Yes, she said, her eyes meeting his. So can I, came back the same tense voice, when I know the truth about the friend. Then for the first time tears came in a storm. Her breath was quick and feverish. No one will ever believe, no one will understand. They will say that I killed him, that I murdered him. Through it all I stood almost speechless puzzled. What did it mean? No, said Kennedy. No, for they will never know of it. Never know? Never. If in the end justice is done. Have you the will, or did you destroy it? It was a bold stroke. Yes, no, no. Here it is. How could I destroy it? Even though it was burning out my very soul. She literally tore the paper from the bosom of her dress, and cast it from her in horror and terror. Kennedy picked it up, opened it, and glanced hurriedly through it. Miss Bond, he said, Jack shall never know a word of this. I shall tell him that the will has been found unexpectedly in John Fletcher's desk, among some other papers. Walter, swear on your honour as a gentleman, that this will was found in old Fletcher's desk. Dr. Kennedy, how can I ever thank you? She exclaimed, sinking wearily down into a chair, and pressing our hands to her throbbing forehead. By telling me just how you came by this will, so that when you and Fletcher are married, I may be as good a friend, without suspicion, to you as I am to him. I think a full confession would do you good, Miss Bond. Would you prefer to have Dr. Jameson not hear it? No, he may stay. This much I know, Miss Bond. Last summer in Paris, with the Greens, you must have chance to hear of Pillard the Apache, one of the most noted cracksmen in the world has ever produced. You sought him out. He taught you how to paint your fingers with a rubber composition, how to use an electric drill, how to use the old-fashioned Jimmy. You went down to Fletcherwood by the back road, about a quarter after eleven, the night of the robbery, in the Greens' little electric runabout. You entered the library by an unlocked window. You coupled your drill to the electric light connections of the chandelier. You had to wear quickly, for the power would go off at midnight, yet you could not do the job later, when they were sleeping more soundly, for the very same reason. It was uncanny as Kennedy rushed along in his reconstruction of the scene, almost unbelievable. The girl watched him, fascinated. John Fletcher was wakeful that night. Somehow or other he heard you at work. He entered the library, and by the light streaming from his bedroom, he saw who it was. In anger he must have addressed you, and his passion got the better of his age. He fell suddenly on the floor with the stroke of apoplexy. As you bent over him, he died. But why did you ever attempt so foolish and undertaking? Didn't you know that other people knew of the will and its terms? That you were sure to be traced out in the end, if not by friends, by foes? How did you suppose you could profit by destroying the will, of which others knew the provisions? Any other woman than Helen Bond would have been hysterical long before Kennedy had finished pressing home remorselessly, one fact after another of her story. But, with her, the relief now after the tension of many hours of concealment, seemed to nerve her to go to the end and tell the truth. What was it? Had she some secret lover for whom she had dared to secure all the family fortune? Or was she shielding someone dearer to her than her own reputation? Why had Kennedy made Fletcher withdraw? Her eyes dropped and her breast rolls and fell with suppressed emotion. Yet I was hardly prepared for her reply when at last she slowly raised her head and looked us calmly in the face. I did it because I loved Jack. Neither of us spoke. I, at least, had fallen completely under the spell of this masterful woman. Right or wrong, I could not restrain a feeling of admiration and amazement. Yes, she said, as her voice thrilled with emotion, strange as it may sound to you, it was not love of self that made me do it. I was—I am—madly in love with Jack. No other man has ever inspired such respect and love as he has. His work in the university I have fairly gloated over. And yet—and yet, Dr. Kennedy, can you not see that I am different from Jack? What would I do with the income of the wife of even the dean of the new school? The annuity provided for me and the will is paltry. I need millions. From the tiniest baby I have been reared that way. I have always expected this fortune. I have been given everything I wanted. But it is different when one is married. You must have your own money. I need a fortune. For then I could have the townhouse, the country house, the yacht, the motors, the clothes, the servants that I need. They are as much a part of my life as your profession is of yours. I must have them. And now it was all to slip from my hands. True, it was to go in such a way by this last will as to make Jack happy in his new school. I could have let that go if that was all. There are other fortunes that have been laid at my feet. But I wanted Jack. And I knew Jack wanted me. Dear boy, he never could realize how utterly unhappy intellectual poverty would have made me, and how my unhappiness would have reacted on him in the end. In reality, this great and beneficent philanthropy was finally to blight both our love and our lives. What was I to do? Stand by and see my life and my love ruined, or refuse Jack for the fortune of a man I did not love? Helen Bond is not that kind of woman, I said to myself. I consulted the greatest lawyer I knew. I put a hypothetical case to him, and asked his opinion in such a way as to make him believe he was advising me how to make an unbreakable will. He told me of provisions and clauses to avoid, particularly in making benefactions. That was what I wanted to know. I would put one of those clauses in my uncle's will. I practiced uncle's writing till I was as good a forger of that clause as anyone could have become. I had picked out the very words in his own handwriting to practice from. Then I went to Paris and, as you have guessed, learned how to get things out of a safe like that of uncle's. Before God all I planned to do was to get that will, change it, replace it, and trust that uncle would never notice the change. Then, when he was gone, I would have contested the will. I would have got my full share either by court proceedings or by settlement out of court. You see, I had it all planned out. The school would have been founded. I, we, would have founded it. What difference, I said, did thirty millions or fifty millions make to an impersonal school, a school not yet even in existence? The twenty million dollars are so different, or even half of it, meant life and love to me. I had planned to steal the cash and the safe, anything to divert attention from that will and make it look like a plain robbery. I would have done the altering of the will that night and had returned it to the safe before morning. But it was not to be. I had almost opened the safe when my uncle entered the room. His anger completely unnerved me, and from the moment I saw him on that floor to this I haven't had a sane thought. I forgot to take the cash. I forgot everything but that will. My only thought was that I must get it and destroy it. I doubt if I could have altered it with my nerve so upset. There. Now you have my whole story. I am at your mercy. Narrow, said Kennedy, believe me, there is a mental statute of limitations that, as far as Jameson and myself are concerned, has already erased this affair. Walter, will you find Fletcher? I found the Professor pacing up and down the gravel walk impatiently. Fletcher, said Kennedy, a night's rest is all Miss Bond really needs. It is simply a case of overwrought nerves and it will pass off of itself. Still, I would advise a change of scene as soon as possible. Good afternoon, Miss Bond, and my best wishes for your health. Good afternoon, Dr. Kennedy. Good afternoon, Dr. Jameson. I, for one, was glad to make my escape. A half hour later, Kennedy, with well-simulated excitement, was racing me in the car up to the Greens again. We literally burst unannounced in the tete-té on the porch. Fletcher, Fletcher, cried Kennedy. Look what Walter and I have just discovered in a tin-strong box poked off in the back of your uncle's desk. Fletcher seized the will and by the dim light that shone from the hall read it hastily. Thank God, he cried. The school is provided for as I thought. Isn't it glorious, remembered Helen? Truth to my instinct, I muttered. Another good newspaper yarn killed. End of The Scientific Cracksman, Recording by Elliot Miller, www.voiceofee.com