Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/86

64 she rang for the maid to show him out. But when he was alone with the maid in the hall his eyes flashed suddenly.

"Tell me," he demanded, swiftly, "the night Mr. Bronson was killed, was there anything the matter with the telephone?"

The girl hesitated and stared at him queerly. "Why, yes, sir," she said. "A man had to come next day to fix it."

"The break was on the inside—I mean, the man worked in the house?"

"Why—yes, sir." The maid had opened the door. Trant stopped with a smothered exclamation and picked up a newspaper just delivered. He spread it open and saw that it was the five o'clock edition of the News.

"This is Mrs. Mitchell's paper," he demanded, "the one she always reads?"

"Why, yes, sir," the girl answered again.

Trant paused to consider. "Tell Mrs. Mitchell everything I asked you," he decided finally, and hurried down the steps and back to the police station.

In the room where the desk sergeant told him Inspector Walker was awaiting him Trant found both Crowley and Sweeny with the big officer, and a fourth man, a stranger to him. The stranger was slight and dark. He had a weak, vain face, but one of startling beauty, with great, lazy brown eyes, filled with childlike innocence. He twisted his mustache and measured Trant curiously, as the blunt, red-headed young man entered.

"So this is the fellow," he asked Crowley,