Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/366

334 had been ejected as it was fired. The psychologist straightened.

"We have come too late," he said simply to the father. "It was necessary, as he foresaw, to get here before eleven, if we were to help him; for he is dead. And now—" he checked himself, as the little woman clutched her husband and buried her face in his sleeve, and the little man stared up at him with a chalky face—"it will be better for you to wait somewhere else till we are through here."

"In the name of mercy, Mr. Trant!" Newberry cried miserably, as the psychologist picked up a lamp and lighted the two old people into the hall, "what is this terrible thing that has happened here? What is it—Oh, what is it, Mr. Trant? And where—where is Adele?"

"I am here, father; I am here!" a new voice broke clearly and calmly through the confusion, and the light of Trant's lamp fell on a slight but stately girl advancing down the hallway. "And you," she said as composedly to the psychologist, though Trant could see now that her self-possession was belied by the nervous picking of her fingers at her dress and her paleness, which grew greater as she met his eyes, "are Mr. Trant—and you came too late!"

"You are—Mrs. Walter Newberry?" Trant returned. "You were the one who was calling me up this morning and this afternoon?"

"Yes," she said. "I was his wife. So he is dead!"

She took no heed of the quick glance Trant flashed to assure himself that she spoke in this way before she