Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/21

Rh the effect of every thought, impulse and act in the human being. Daily I have been proving, as mere laboratory experiments to astonish a row of staring sophomores, that which—applied in courts and jails—would conclusively prove a man innocent in five minutes, or condemn him as a criminal on the evidence of his own uncontrollable reactions. And more than that, Dr. Reiland! Teach any detective what you have taught to me, and if he has half the persistence in looking for the marks of crime on men that he had in tracing its marks on things, he can clear up half the cases that fill the jail in three days."

"And the other half within the week, I suppose, Trant?"

The older man smiled at the other's enthusiasm.

For five years Reiland had seen his young companion almost daily; first as a freshman in the elementary psychology class—a red-haired, energetic country-boy, ill at ease among even the slight restrictions of this fresh-water university. The boy's eager, active mind had attracted his attention in the beginning; as he watched him change into a man, Trant's almost startling powers of analysis and comprehension had aroused the old professor's admiration. The compact, muscular body, which endured without fatigue the great demands Trant made upon it and brought him fresh to recitations from two hours sleep after a night of work; and the tireless eagerness which drove him at a gallop through courses where others plodded, had led Reiland to appoint Trant his assistant just before his graduation. But this energy told Reiland, too, that he could not hope to hold Trant long