Part 3

“I say we have caught your men red-handed,” Trant repeated, “at the methods used, with your certain knowledge and under your direction, Mr. Welter, to steal systematically from the United States Government for—probably the last ten years. We have uncovered the means by which your company checker at scale No. 3, which, because of its position, probably weighs more cargoes than all the other scales together, has been lessening the apparent weights upon which you pay duties.”

“Cheating here under my direction?” Welter now bellowed indignantly. “What are you talking about? Rowan, what is he talking about?” he demanded, boldly, of the dock superintendent; but the cadaverous little man was unable to brazen it out with him.

“You need not have looked at your dock superintendent just then, Mr. Welter, to see if he would stand the racket when the trouble comes, for which you have been paying him enough on the side to keep him in electric motors and marble statuettes. And you cannot try now to disown this crime with the regular president-of-corporation excuse, Mr. Welter, that you never knew of it, that it was all done without your knowledge by a subordinate to make a showing in his department; and do not expect, either, to escape so easily your certain complicity in the murder of Landers, to prevent him from exposing your scheme and since—even the American Commodities Company scarcely dared to have two ‘accidental deaths’ of checkers in the same month—the shanghaiing of Morse later.”

“My complicity in the death of Landers and the disappearance of Morse?” Welter roared.

“I said the murder of Landers,” Trant corrected. “For when Rentland and Dickey tell to-morrow before the grand jury how Landers was about to disclose to the Customs Department the secret of the cheating in weights; how he was made afraid by Rowan, and later was about to tell anyway and was prevented only by a most sudden death, I think murder will be the word brought in the indictment. And I said shanghaiing of Morse, Mr. Welter. When we remembered this morning that Morse had disappeared the night the _Elizabethan Age_ left your docks and you and Rowan were so intensely disgusted at its having had to put into Boston this morning instead of going on straight to Sumatra, we did not have to wait for the chance information this evening that Captain Wilson is a friend of Rowan’s to deduce that the missing checker was put aboard, as confirmed by the Boston harbor police this afternoon, who searched the ship under our instructions.” Trant paused a moment; again fixed the now trembling Welter with his eye, and continued: “I charge your certain complicity in these crimes, along with your certain part in the customs frauds,” the psychologist repeated. “Undoubtedly, it was Rowan who put Morse out of the way upon the _Elizabethan Age_. Nevertheless, you knew that he was a prisoner upon that ship, a fact which was written down in indelible black and white by my tests of you at the Stuyvesant Institute two hours ago, when I merely mentioned to you ‘a prisoner in the _Elizabethan Age_.’

“I do not charge that you, personally, were the one who murdered Landers; or even that Rowan himself did; whether his negro did, as I suspect, is a matter now for the courts to decide upon. But that you undoubtedly were aware that he was not killed accidentally in the engine room, but was killed the Wednesday night before and his body hidden under the coffee bags, as I guessed from the fibres of coffee sacking on his clothes, was also registered as mercilessly by the psychological machines when I showed you merely the picture of a pile of coffee sacks.

“And last, Mr. Welter, you deny knowledge of the cheating which has been going on, and was at the bottom of the other crimes. Well, Welter,” the psychologist took from his pocket the bent, twine-wound wire, “here is the ‘innocent’ little thing which was the third means of causing you to register upon the machines such extreme and inexplicable emotion; or rather, Mr. Welter, it is the companion piece to that, for this is not the one I showed you, the one given to Morse to use, which, however, he refused to make use of; but it is the very wire I took to-night from the hole in the post where it bore against the balance beam-rod to cheat the Government. When this is made public to-morrow, and with it is made public, too, and attested by the scientific men who witnessed them, the diagram and explanation of the tests of you two hours ago, do you think that you can deny longer that this was all with your knowledge and direction?”

The big, bull neck of the president swelled, and his hands clenched and reclenched as he stared with gleaming eyes into the face of the young man who thus challenged him.

“You are thinking now, I suppose, Mr. Welter,” Trant replied to his glare, “that such evidence as that directly against you cannot be got before a court. I am not so sure of that. But at least it can go before the public to-morrow morning in the papers, attested by the signatures of the scientific men who witnessed the test. It has been photographed by this time, and the photographic copies are distributed in safe places, to be produced with the original on the day when the Government brings criminal proceedings against you. If I had it here I would show you how complete, how merciless, is the evidence that you knew what was being done. I would show you how at the point marked 1 on the record your pulse and breathing quickened with alarm under my suggestion; how at the point marked 2 your anxiety and fear increased; and how at 3, when the spring by which this cheating had been carried out was before your eyes, you betrayed yourself uncontrollably, unmistakably. How the volume of blood in your second finger suddenly diminished, as the current was thrown back upon your heart; how your pulse throbbed with terror; how, though unmoved to outward appearance, you caught your breath, and your laboring lungs struggled under the dread that your wrong doing was discovered and you would be branded—as I trust you will now be branded, Mr. Welter, when the evidence in this case and the testimony of those who witnessed my test are produced before a jury—a deliberate and scheming thief!”

“—— —— you!” The three words escaped from Welter’s puffed lips. He put out his arm to push aside the customs officer standing between him and the door. Dickey resisted.

“Let him go, if he wants to!” Trant called to the officer. “He can neither escape nor hide. His money holds him under bond!”

The officer stepped aside, and Welter, without another word, went into the hall. But when his face was no longer visible to Trant, the hanging pouches under his eyes grew leaden gray, his fat lips fell apart loosely, his step shuffled; his mask had fallen!

“Besides, we need all the men we have, I think,” said Trant, turning back to the prisoners, “to get these to a safe place. Miss Rowan,” he turned then and put out his hand to steady the terrified and weeping girl, “I warned you that you had probably better not come here to-night. But since you have come and have had pain because of your stepfather’s wrong doings, I am glad to be able to give you the additional assurance, beyond the fact, which you have heard, that your fiancé was not murdered, but merely put away on board the _Elizabethan Age_; that he is safe and sound, except for a few bruises, and, moreover, we expect him here any moment now. The police are bringing him down from Boston on the train which arrives at ten.”

He went to the window and watched an instant, as Dickey and Rentland, having telephoned for a patrol, were waiting with their prisoners. Before the patrol wagon appeared, he saw the bobbing lanterns of a lurching cab that turned a corner a block away. As it stopped at the entrance, a police officer in plain clothes leaped out and helped after him a young man wrapped in an overcoat, with one arm in a sling, pale, and with bandaged head. The girl uttered a cry, and sped through the doorway. For a moment the psychologist stood watching the greeting of the lovers. He turned back then to the sullen prisoners.

“But it’s some advance, isn’t it, Rentland,” he asked, “not to have to try such poor devils alone; but, at last, to capture the man who makes the millions and pays them the pennies—the man higher up?”

The End

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 1926 issue of Amazing Stories magazine.]