Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/37

Rh tainly prefer him for the man in the room last night."

"Harrison?" Branower repeated, contemptuously. "Impossible."

"How impossible?" Trant asked, defiantly.

"Because Harrison, Mr. Trant," the president of the trustees rejoined, "was struck senseless at Elgin in an automobile accident Saturday noon. He has been in the Elgin hospital, scarcely conscious, ever since."

"How did you learn that, Mr. Branower?"

"I have helped many young men to positions here. Harrison was one. Because of that, I suppose, he filled in my name on the 'whom to notify' line of a personal identification card he carried. The hospital doctors notified me just as I was leaving home in my car. I saw him at the Elgin hospital that afternoon."

Young Trant stared into the steady eyes of the president of the trustees. "Then Harrison could not have been the man in the room last night. Do you realize what that implies?" he asked, whitening. "I preferred, I said, to fix him as Harrison. That would keep both Dr. Lawrie from being the thief and any close, personal intimate of his from being the man who struck him dead here last night. But with Harrison not here, the treasurer himself must have known all the particulars of this crime," he struck the canceled note in his hand, "and been concealing it for—that close friend of his who came here with him. You see how very terribly it simplifies our problem? It was some one close enough to Lawrie to cause him to conceal the thing as long as he could, and some one intimate