Page:Top-Notch Magazine, May 1 1915 (IA tn 1915 05 01).pdf/89

 after they arrived there, Trant joined them, still carrying in his hand his instrument ease. The boy and his father closed their negotiations and went out with Trant into the street. They saw then, to their surprise, that the psychologist was not alone. Two men were awaiting them, each of whom carried a case like Trant's. The elder of the two, a man between fifty and sixty years old, met young Edwards' stare with a benignant glance of his pale blue eyes through an immense pair of gold spectacles. The other was young, pale, broad-browed, with an intelligent face, and his gaze was fixed in a look of dreamy contemplation. They were dressed as mechanics, but their general appearance was not that of workmen.

The door of Meyan's lodging house was opened to them by the landlady. She led the way to the second floor, but paused to show a room to Trant.

"That is Meyan's room," Trant explained. "We will wait for him over here." He followed the woman into a small and stuffy bedroom on the other side of the hall. "We had better not speak while we are waiting and—we had better wait in the dark."

In the strange, stuffy, darkened little room the five sat in silence. Footsteps passed often in the street outside, and twice some one went through the hall. A half hour they waited thus. Then a heavier footstep warned them of Meyan's coming. A minute later, the front door opened again and admitted—as Trant felt from the effect of the first tone which reached the man waiting at his side—Eva Silber. After several minutes Trant turned up the light and motioned to the two strangers who had come with him. They immediately rose and left the room.

"I am going to submit you both to a very trying ordeal," Trant said to his clients, in a tone so low it could not reach the hallway, "and it will require great self-control on your part. Within five, or I hope at most ten, minutes I am going to show you into Meyan's room, where you will find, among other persons, Meyan himself and Miss Silber. I want you to promise that neither of you will attempt to question or to speak to Miss Silber until I give you leave. Otherwise I cannot allow you to go in there, and I have my own reasons for wanting you to be present."

"If it is essential, Mr. Trant" the elder Edwards said.

Trant looked at the young man, who nodded.

"Thank you," said the psychologist; and he went out and closed the door upon them.

Fully a quarter of an hour had passed, in spite of Trant's promise to summon them in ten minutes, before the psychologist again opened the door and ushered them into the room they already knew as Meyan's.

The long table in the center of the room had been cleared, and behind it three men sat in a row. Two of these were the strangers who had come with Trant, and the cases they had carried, together with the one Trant himself had brought, stood open under the table. The man who sat between these two was Meyan. Near the table stood Miss Silber.

At sight of her, Winton Edwards made one swift step forward before he recollected the promise he had made, and checked himself. Eva Silber had grown pale as death. She stood now with small hands clenched tight against her breast, staring into the face of the young American she loved. Trant closed the door and locked it.

"We can begin now, I think," he said.

He stooped at once over the instrument cases and brought out from them three folding screens, about eighteen inches square when extended, which he