Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/32

14 that the face of the president did not soften, "Do you, too, believe this? It is not so! Oh, my boy, just before this terrible thing, you were telling me of the new training which could be used to clear the innocent and prove the guilty. I thought it braggadocio. I scoffed at your ideas. But if your words were truth, now prove them. Take this shame from this innocent man."

The young man sprang to his friend as he tottered. "Dr. Reiland, I shall clear him!" he promised wildly. "I shall prove, I swear, not only that Dr. Lawrie was not a thief, but—he was not even a suicide!"

"What madness is this, Trant," the president demanded impatiently, "when the facts are so plain before us?"

"So plain, Dr. Joslyn? Yes," the young man rejoined, "very plain indeed—the fact that before the papers were burned, before the gas was turned on or the tips taken from the fixture, before that door was slammed and the spring lock fastened it from the outside—Dr. Lawrie was dead and was laid upon that lounge!"

"What? What—what, Trant?" Reiland and the president exclaimed together. But the young man addressed himself only to the president.

"You yourself, sir, before we told you how we found him, saw that Dr. Lawrie had not himself lain down, but had been laid upon the lounge. He is not light; some one almost dropped him there, since the edge of the lounge cut the plaster on the wall. The single note not burned lay under his body, where it could