Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/375

Rh time I could get away to the telephone, I tried to get Mr. Trant; and the last time I got back—it was awful! It was hardly ten, but he was walking up and down with my pistol in his hand, whispering strange things over and over to himself, saying most of anything, 'No one can make me do it! No one can make me do it—even when it's eleven—even when it's eleven!'—and staring—staring at his watch which he'd taken out and laid on the table; staring and staring so—so that I knew I must get someone before eleven—and at last I was running next door for help—for anyone—for anything when—when I heard the shots—I heard the shots!"

She sank forward and buried her face in her hands; rent by tearless sobs. Her fingers, white from the pressure, made long marks on her cheeks, showing livid even in the pallor of her face. But Siler pursed his lips toward Trant, and laid his hand upon her arm, sternly.

"Steady, steady, Mrs. Newberry!" the plainclothes man warned. "You can not do that now! You say you were with your husband a moment before the shooting, but you were not in the room when he was killed?"

"Yes; yes!" the woman cried.

"You went out the door the last time?"

"The door? Yes; yes; of course the door! Why not the door?"

"Because, Mrs. Newberry," the detective replied impressively, "just at, or a moment after, the time of the shooting, a woman left that room by the