Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/281

Rh with its primer pierced which had failed in Neal Sheppard's gun, he tore out the bullet with a single wrench and held the shell down. "See! it was empty, Mr. Sheppard! That was the first one in your brother's gun! That was why it didn't go off! And this—the last one the other man had, the one he didn't even try to shoot," Trant jerked out the bullet from it too with another wrench of his teeth—"was empty as well. See! And the other man knew it; that was why he didn't even try to shoot it, but ejected it on the floor as it was!"

"How did you guess that? And how did you know that the other cartridge, the one Jim—the other fellow—didn't even try to fire—wasn't loaded, too?" Sheppard now checked short in surprise, stupefied and amazed, gazed, with the other white-haired man and the Indian, at the empty shells.

But Trant went on swiftly: "Are Sheppard-Tyler shells so poorly loaded, Mr. Sheppard, that two out of ten of them are bad? And not only two, but this—and this—and this," at each word he dropped on the table another shell, "the three left in your brother's rifle. For these others are bad—unloaded, too! So that even if he had been able to pull the trigger on them, they would have failed like the first; and I know that for the same reason that I know about the first ones. Five out of ten shells of Sheppard-Tyler loading 'accidentally' with no powder in them. That is too much for you—for anyone—to believe, Mr. Sheppard! And that was why I said to you a moment ago, as I say again, don't charge that young man out there with murder!"