Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/282

252 "You mean," Sheppard gasped, "that Jim did not kill Neal?"

"I didn't say that," Trant returned sharply. "But your brother was not shot down in cold blooded murder; I'm sure of that! Whether Jim Tyler, or another, shot him, I can not yet say; but I hope soon to prove. For there were only four men in the woods who had Sheppard-Tyler guns; and he must have been shot either by Tyler, or Findlay, or Chapin, or—to open all the possibilities—by yourself, Mr. Sheppard!" the psychologist continued boldly.

"Who? Me?" roared Chapin in fiery indignation.

"What—what's that you're saying?" The old sportsman stood staring at his young adviser, half in outrage, half in astonishment.

Then, staring at the startling display of the empty shells—whose meaning was as yet as incomprehensible to him as the means by which the psychologist had so suddenly detected them—and dazed by Trant's sudden and equally incomprehensible defense of young Tyler after he had detected them, he weakened. "I—I'm afraid. I don't understand what you mean, Mr. Trant!" he said helplessly; then, irritated by his own weakness, he turned testily toward the door: "I wonder what is keeping them out there?"

"Mr. Trant says," Chapin burst out angrily, "that either you or I is as likely to have shot Neal as young Jim! But Mr. Trant is crazy; we'll have young Jim in here and prove it!" and he threw open the door.

But it was not young Tyler, but a girl, tall and blond, with a lithe, straight figure almost like a boy's,