Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/31

Rh with the tread of students passing to recitation rooms.

Trant's eyes had registered all the room, and now measured Joslyn and Dr. Reiland. They had ceased to be trusted men and friends of his as, with the quick analysis that the old professor had so admired in his young assistant, he incorporated them in his problem.

"Who filled this out?" Trant had taken the paper from the hand of the president and asked this question suddenly.

"Harrison. It was the custom. The signature is Lawrie's, and the note is regular. Oh, there can be no doubt, Reiland!"

"No, no!" the old man objected. "James Lawrie was not a thief!"

"How else can it be? The tips taken from the fixture, the keyhole plugged with paper, the shutters—never closed before for ten years—fastened within, the door locked! Burned notes, the single one left signed in his own hand! And all this on the very day before his books must have been presented to the trustees! You must face it, Reiland—you, who have been closer to Lawrie than any other man—face it as I do! Lawrie is a suicide—a hundred thousand dollars short in his accounts!"

"I have been close to him," the old man answered bravely. "You and I, Joslyn, were almost his only friends. Lawrie's life has been open as the day; and we at least should know that there can have been no disgraceful reason for his death.

"Luther," the old professor turned, stretching out his hands pleadingly to his young assistant, as he saw