Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/78

56 Trant continued. "Inspector Walker"—he turned to the friendly superior officer as he recognized the hopelessness of explaining to Crowley—"I understood, of course, when I asked you to bring me here that, even if my test should prove conclusive to me, yet I could scarcely hope to have the police yet accept it. I shall let Miss Allison know that Kanlan can have had no possible connection with the crime against Mr. Bronson; but I understand that I can clear Kanlan in the eyes of the police only by giving Captain Crowley," Trant bowed to that astounded officer, "the real murderer in his place."

"You say you have made the test, Trant?" Walker challenged, in stupefaction. But before Trant could answer, Crowley pushed him aside, roughly, and stooped to the satchel which Sweeny had brought.

"Of course he hasn't, Walker!" he answered, disgustedly. "He don't dare to, and is throwing a bluff. But I'll show him, with his own machine, too, if there's anything to it at all!" The captain stooped and, pulling from the opened valise a photograph of the spot where the murder was committed, he dashed it before Kanlan's face. Instantly, as both the captain and inspector turned to Trant's galvanometer needle, the little instrument showed a reaction. Up it crept, higher and higher, over the scale of the dial, as the sweat, surprised by the guilty picture from the gambler's hands, made the contact with the electrodes in his palms and the current flowed through his body.

"See! So it wasn't all a lie!" Crowley pointed triumphantly to the instrument. He stooped again to the satchel and put a photograph of the body of the