Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/354

322 man who recalled even the sound of his midnight visitor's shoulders when they rubbed against the wall—fail to remember in his recollection of the shipwreck the roaring wind and roaring sea, the screams of men and women, the crackling of the fire? They would have been his clearest recollection. But the man who wrote the fourth letter recalled most clearly that the sea was white and frothy, the men were pallid and staring!"

"I see! I see!" Caryl and the girl cried as, at the psychologist's bidding, they scanned together the letters he spread before them.

"The subterfuge by which I destroyed the second letter of the set, after first making a copy of it—"

"You did it on purpose? What an idiot I was!" exclaimed Caryl.

"Was merely to obviate the possibility of mistake," Trant continued, without heeding the interruption. "The statement this man dictated, as it was given in terms of 'sight,' assured me that he was not Axton. When, by means of the telegraph, I had accounted for the present whereabouts of three of the four men he might possibly be, it became plain that he must be Lawler. And finding that Lawler was badly wanted in San Francisco, I asked Mr. Burns to come on and identify him.him.(quote) [sic]

"And the stationing of the watchman here was a blind also, as well as his report of the man who last night tried to force the window?" Caryl exclaimed.

Trant nodded. He was watching the complete dissolution of the swindler's effrontery. Trant had appreciated that Lawler had let him speak on