Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/79

Rh murdered attorney before the suspect's eyes. The stolid Kanlan still held the muscles of his face firm and no flush betrayed him; but again, as Crowley, Sweeny, and Walker excitedly stared at the galvanometer needle it jumped and registered the stronger current. Crowley, with a victorious grunt, lifted the blood-stained coat of the murdered attorney and rubbed the sleeve against Kanlan's cheek. At this, and again and again with each presentation of objects connected with the crime, the merciless little galvanometer showed an ever-increasing reaction. Trant shrugged his shoulders.

"Jake, we got the goods on you now!" Crowley took the gambler's chin roughly between his tough fists and pushed back his head until the uneasy eyes met his own. "You'd best confess. You killed him!"

"I did not!" Kanlan choked.

"You're a liar! You killed him. I knew it, anyway. If you were a nigger you'd have been lynched before this!"

For the first time since Crowley took the test into his own hands, Trant, watching the galvanometer needle, started in surprise. He gazed suddenly at Kanlan's olive face, surmounted by his curly black hair, and smiled. The needle had jumped up higher again, completing Crowley's triumph. They filed out of the cell, and back to the little office.

"So I proved him on your own machine," Crowley rejoiced openly, "you four-flushing patent palmist!"

"You've proved, Captain Crowley," Trant returned quietly, "what I already knew, that in your previous