Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/232

204 through one of those windows and drop to the walk below without harm?"

"A man, Trant? Yes; of course, that is possible," Pierce agreed, impatiently. "But why consider the possibility of a man's escape, when there was no question among those who heard the cries that they came from a woman or a child!"

"The screams came from a woman," Trant replied. "But not necessarily the footsteps that were heard from the other side of the door. No, Dr. Pierce; the condition of this room indicates without any question or doubt that not one, but two persons were present here when these events occurred—one so familiar with these premises as to know where the key to the cabinets was to be found in your desk; the other so unfamiliar with them as not even to know that the doors of the cabinets were sliding, not swinging doors, since it was in attempting to pull the door outward like a swinging door that the knob was broken off, as is shown by the condition of the bolt which would otherwise have been bent. And the person whose footsteps were heard was a man, for only a man could have escaped through the window, as that person unquestionably must have done."

"But I do not see how you help things by adding a man's presence here to the other," Pierce protested. "It simply complicates matters, since it furnishes us no solution as to how the woman escaped!"

But the psychologist, without heeding him, dropped into a chair beside the table, rested his chin upon his hands, and his eyes grew filmy with the concentration of thought.