Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/56

36 of them came due meant nothing to you. 'October' suggested only recitations and 'fourteenth' permitted you to associate simply the succeeding day in an entirely unsuspicious time. I substituted Mr. Branower. I had explained this system as getting results from persons with poor mental resistance. I had not mentioned it as even surer of results when the person tested is in full control of his faculties, even suspicious and trying to prevent betraying himself. Mr. Branower clearly thought he could guard himself from giving me anything. Now notice his replies.

"The twenty-fifth, the day most of the notes were due, meant so much that it took double the time, before he could drive out his first suspicious association, merely to say 'twenty-sixth.' I told you I suspected his wife was at least cognizant of something wrong. It took him twice the necessary time to say 'Cora' after 'wife' was mentioned. He gave the first association, but the chronoscope registered mercilessly that he had to think it over. 'Wound' then brought the remarkable association 'no' at the end of four and six-tenths seconds. There was no wound; but something had made it so that he had to think it over to see if it was suspicious. When I first saw that dagger letter opener on Dr. Lawrie's desk, I thought that if a man were trying to make it seem suicide, he must at least have thought of using the dagger before the gas. Now note the next test, 'Harrison.' Any innocent man, not overdoing it, would have answered at once the name of the Harrison immediately in all our minds. Mr. Branower thought of him first, of course, and