Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/358

326 stamp stuck askew above an uneven line of great, unsteady characters addressing the envelope to Trant at the club. Within it, ten lines spread this wild appeal across the paper:

The psychologist glanced at his watch swiftly. It was already twenty-five minutes to eleven!

Besides the panic expressed by the writing itself, the broken sentences, the reiterated appeal, most of all the strange and disconnected recurrence three times in the few short lines of the word eleven—which plainly pointed to that hour as the last at which help might avail—the characters themselves, which were the same as those on the envelope, confirmed the psychologist's first impression that the note was written by a man, a young man, too, despite the havoc that fear and nervelessness had played with him.

"You're sure it was a woman's voice on the phone?" he asked quickly.

"Yes, sir; and she seemed a lady."

Trant hastily picked up the telephone on the desk; "Hello! Is this the West End Police Station? This