Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/188

162 really at the bottom of this business and the only ones worth getting—will you catch them?"

"We must take those we can get," said Dickey sharply.

Trant laid his hand on the little officer's arm.

"I am a stranger to you," he said, "but if you have followed some of the latest criminal cases in Illinois perhaps you know that, using the methods of modern practical psychology, I have been able to get results where old ways have failed. We are front to front now with perhaps the greatest problem of modern criminal catching, to catch, in cases involving a great corporation, not only the little men low down who perform the criminal acts, but the men higher up, who conceive, or connive at the criminal scheme. Rentland, I did not come here to convict merely a dock foreman; but if we are going to reach anyone higher than that, you must not let Inspector Dickey excite suspicion by prying into matters at the docks this afternoon!"

"But what else can we do?" said Rentland, doubtfully.

"Modern practical psychology gives a dozen possible ways for proving the knowledge of the man higher up in this corporation crime," Trant answered, "and I am considering which is the most practicable. Only tell me," he demanded suddenly; "Mr. Welter I have heard is one of the rich men of New York who make it a fad to give largely to universities and other institutions; can you tell me with what ones he may be most closely interested?"

"I have heard," Rentland replied, "that he is one of