Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/240

212 the second morning, and then it was merely a telephone message asking him to be at home at three o'clock that afternoon and to see that Miss Pierce was at home also, but to prevent her from seeing or hearing any visitors who might call at that hour. At ten minutes to three, Pierce himself, watching nervously at the window, saw the young psychologist approaching the house in company with two strangers, and himself admitted them.

"Dr. Pierce, let me introduce Inspector Walker of the Chicago Police," Trant, when they had been admitted to the library, motioned to the larger of his companions, a well-proportioned giant, who wore his black serge suit with an awkwardness that showed a greater familiarity with blue broadcloth and brass buttons. "This other gentleman," he turned to the very tall, slender, long-nosed man, with an abnormally narrow head and face, coal black hair and sallow skin, whom Trant and the officer had half held between them, "calls himself Don Canonigo Penol, though I do not know whether that is his real name. He speaks English, and I believe he knows more than anyone else about what went on in your study last Wednesday." A momentary flash of white teeth under Penol's mustache, which was neither a smile nor a greeting, met Pierce's look of inquiry, and he cast uneasy glances to right and left out of his small crafty eyes. "But as Penol, from the moment of his arrest, has flatly refused to make any statement regarding the loss of your papers or the chalchihuitl stone which has so strangely influenced your ward," Trant continued, "we have been obliged to bring him here