Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/349

Rh tell you who he is? Well, rather! That is Lord George Albany, who got into Claude Shelton's boy in San Francisco for $30,000 in a card game; that is Mr. Arthur Wilmering, who came within a hair of turning the same trick on young Stuyvesant in New York; that—first and last—is Mr. George Lawler himself, who makes a specialty of cards and rich men's sons!"

"Lawler? George Lawler?" Caryl and the girl gasped again.

"But why, in this affair, he used his own name," the detective continued, "is more than I can see; for surely he shouldn't have minded another change."

"He met Mr. Howard Axton in London," Trant suggested, "where there was still a chance that the card cheating in the Sussex guards was not forgotten, and he might at any moment meet someone who recalled his face. It was safer to tell Axton all about it, and protest innocence."

"Howard Axton?" the girl echoed, recovering herself at the name. "Why, MrMr. [sic] Trant; if this is Mr. Lawler, as this man says and you believe, then where is Mr. Axton—oh, where is Howard Axton?"

"I am afraid, Miss Waldron," the psychologist replied, "that Mr. Howard Axton was undoubtedly lost in the wreck of the Gladstone. It may even have been the finding of Howard Axton's body that this man described in that last letter."

"Howard Axton drowned! Then this man—"

"Mr. George Lawler's specialty being rich men's sons," said the psychologist, "I suppose he joined company with Howard Axton because he was the son of