Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/182

156 which was that Mr. Landers had been killed by some part of the machinery, it was said that the accident must have happened either the evening before, just before the engineer shut off his engines, or the first thing that morning, just after he had started them; for otherwise somebody in the engine room would have seen it."

"But where had Landers been all day Thursday, Miss Rowan, from two o'clock on the second night before, when your father last saw him, until the accident in the engine room?"

"It was supposed he had been drunk. When his body was found, his clothes were covered with fibers from the coffee-sacking, and the jury supposed he had been sleeping off his liquor in the coffee warehouse during Thursday. But I had known Ed Landers for almost three years, and in all that time I never knew him to take even one drink."

"Then it was a very unlikely supposition. You do not believe in that accident, Miss Rowan?" Trant said, brusquely.

The girl grew white as paper. "Oh, Mr. Trant, I don't know! I did believe in it. But since Will—Mr. Morse—has disappeared in exactly the same way, under exactly the same circumstances, and everyone acts about it exactly the same way—"

"You say the circumstances of Morse's disappearance were the same?" Trant pressed quietly when she was able to proceed.

"After Mr. Landers had been found dead," said the girl, pulling herself together again, "Mr. Morse, who had been checker in one of the other scale houses,