Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/258

228 the stone was able to recall it, with a dulling feeling of fear and apathy to her emotions, without being in itself able to bring recollection to her conscious mind, I could only conjecture.

"But after learning from you that while a child she had lived among Central American Indians, and discovering that the chalchihuitl stone was a ceremonial stone of savage religious rites—particularly the marriage rite—I could not help but note the remarkable coincidence that the man who brought the chalchihuitl stone appeared precisely at the time he would have come if he had learned from newspapers in Central America of the girl's intended marriage. As the most probable reason for his coming, considering the other circumstances, was to prevent the wedding, I thought the easiest way to lay hands upon him and establish his identity was to publish at once the notice that the wedding had been postponed, which, if he saw it, would make him confident he had accomplished his object and draw him here again. Draw him it did, last night, into the arms of Walker and myself, with a Lake Forest officer along to make the arrest legal."

"I see! I see! Go on!" Pierce urged intently.

"But though I caught him," Trant continued, "I could not gain the really important facts from him by questioning, as I was totally unaware of the particulars which concerned Miss Iris's—or rather Isabella Clarke's—parentage and self-exiled father. But I knew that, by throwing her into the true 'trance' which you have just witnessed—a hysterical condition known as monoideic somnambulism to