Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/265

Rh their pursuers alike, had startled the public and the wiser heads of the police. But finding the door to Trant's office on the twelfth floor standing open, and the psychologist himself taking off his things, Sheppard first stared over the stocky, red-haired youth, and then clicked his tongue with satisfaction.

"It's lucky you're early, Mr. Trant," he approved bluffly. "There is short enough time as it is, before we meet the train." He had glanced at the clock as he spoke, and pulled off his gloves without ceremony. "You look like what I expected—what I'd heard you were. Now—you know me?"

"By reputation, at least, Mr. Sheppard," Trant replied. "There has been enough in the papers these last two weeks, and as you spoke of yourself over the telephone just now as the brother of the late Neal Sheppard, I suppose this morning's report is correct. That is, your brother has finally been found in the woods—dead?"

"So you've been following it, have you?"

"Only in the papers. I saw, of course, that Mr. Neal Sheppard was missing from your hunting party in Northern Ontario two weeks ago," Trant replied. "I saw that you had been unable to find him and had given him up for drowned in one of the lakes or dead in the woods, and therefore you had come home the first of the week to tell his daughter. Then this morning I saw Mr. Chapin and your guide, whom you had left to keep up the search, had reported they found him—killed, apparently, by a stray shot."

"I see. I told Chapin to give that out till he saw me, no matter how he found him." Sheppard tossed