Read Ebook: The Man Higher Up by Balmer Edwin MacHarg William Paul Frank R Frank Rudolph Illustrator

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Ebook has 140 lines and 12412 words, and 3 pages

"What, he!" cried the stout German. "For why should I tell him about them? He knows nothing. He has bought my time to instruct classes; he has not bought, py chiminey! everything--even the soul Gott gave me!"

"But he would be interested in them?"

"To be sure, he would be interested in them! He would bring in his automobile three or four other fat money-makers, and he would show off before them. He would make his trained bear--that is me--dance!"

"Good!" cried Trant again, excitedly. "Professor Schmalz, would you be willing to give a little exhibition of the plethysmograph and pneumograph, this evening, if possible, and arrange for President Welter to attend it?"

The astute German cast on him a quick glance of interrogation. "Why not?" he said. "It makes nothing to me what purpose you will be carrying out; no, py chiminey! not if it costs me my position of trained bear; because I have confidence in my psychology that it will not make any innocent man suffer!"

"And you will have two or three scientists present to watch the experiments? And you will allow me to be there also and assist?"

"With great pleasure."

"But, Professor Schmalz, you need not introduce me to Mr. Welter, who will think I am one of your assistants."

"As you wish about that, pupil of my dear old friend."

"Excellent!" Trant leaped to his feet. "Provided it is possible to arrange this with Mr. Welter, how soon can you let me know?"

"Ach! it is as good as arranged, I tell you. His vanity will arrange it if I assure the greatest publicity--"

"The more publicity the better."

"Wait! It shall be fixed before you leave here."

The professor led the way into his private study, telephoned to the president of the American Commodities Company, and made the appointment without trouble.

A few minutes before eight o'clock that evening Trant again mounted rapidly the stone steps to the professor's laboratory. The professor and two others, who were bending over a table in the center of the room, turned at his entrance. President Welter had not yet arrived. The young psychologist acknowledged with pleasure the introduction to the two scientists with Schmalz. Both of them were known to him by name, and he had been following with interest a series of experiments, which the elder, Dr. Annerly, had been reporting in a psychological journal. Then he turned at once to the apparatus on the table.

He was still examining the instruments when the noise of a motor car stopping at the door warned him of the arrival of President Welter's party. Then the laboratory door opened and the party appeared. They also were three in number; stout men, rather obtrusively dressed, in jovial spirits, with strong faces flushed now with the wine they had taken at dinner.

"Well, professor, what fireworks are you going to show us to-night?" asked Welter, patronizingly. "Schmalz," he explained to his companions, "is the chief ringmaster of this circus."

The bearded face of the German grew purple under Welter's jokingly overbearing manner; but he turned to the instruments and began to explain them. The pneumograph, which the professor first took up, consists of a very thin flexible brass plate suspended by a cord around the neck of the person under examination, and fastened tightly against the chest by a cord circling the body. On the outer surface of this plate are two small, bent levers, connected at one end to the cord around the body of the subject, and at the other end to the surface of a small hollow drum fastened to the plate between the two. As the chest rises and falls in breathing, the levers press more and less upon the surface of the drum; and this varying pressure on the air inside the drum is transmitted from the drum through an airtight tube to a little pencil which it lowers and raises. The pencil, as it rises and falls, touching always a sheet of smoked paper traveling over a cylinder on the recording device, traces a line whose rising strokes represent accurately the drawing of air into the chest and whose falling represents its expulsion.

It was clear to Trant that the professor's rapid explanation, though plain enough to the psychologists already familiar with the device, was only partly understood by the big men. It had not been explained to them that changes in the breathing so slight as to be imperceptible to the eye would be recorded unmistakably by the moving pencil.

Professor Schmalz turned to the second instrument. This was a plethysmograph, designed to measure the increase or decrease of the size of one finger of a person under examination as the blood supply to that finger becomes greater or less. It consists primarily of a small cylinder so constructed that it can be fitted over the finger and made airtight. Increase or decrease of the size of the finger then increases or decreases the air pressure inside the cylinder. These changes in the air pressure are transmitted through an airtight tube to a delicate piston which moves a pencil and makes a line upon the record sheet just under that made by the pneumograph. The upward or downward trend of this line shows the increase or decrease of the blood supply, while the smaller vibrations up and down record the pulse beat in the finger.

There is still a third pencil touching the record sheet above the other two and wired electrically to a key like that of a telegraph instrument fastened to the table. When this key is in its normal position this pencil makes simply a straight line upon the sheet; but instantly when the key is pressed down, the line breaks downward also.

This third instrument is used merely to record on the sheet, by the change in the line, the point at which the object that arouses sensation or emotion is displayed to the person undergoing examination.

The instant's silence which followed Schmalz's rapid explanation was broken by one of Welter's companions with the query:

"Well, what's the use of all this stuff, any way?"

"Ach!" said Schmalz, bluntly, "it is interesting, curious! I will show you."

"Will one of you gentlemen," said Trant, quickly, "permit us to make use of him in the demonstration?"

"Try it, Jim," Welter laughed, noisily.

"Not I," said the other. "This is your circus."

"Yes, indeed it's mine. And I'm not afraid of it. Schmalz, do your worst!" He dropped, laughing, into the chair the professor set for him, and at Schmalz's direction unbuttoned his vest. The professor hung the pneumograph around his neck and fastened it tightly about the big chest. He laid Welter's forearm in a rest suspended from the ceiling, and attached the cylinder to the second finger of the plump hand. In the meantime Trant had quickly set the pencils to bear upon the record sheet and had started the cylinder on which the sheet traveled under them.

"You see, I have prepared for you." Schmalz lifted a napkin from a tray holding several little dishes. He took from one of these a bit of caviar and laid it upon Welter's tongue. At the same instant Trant pushed down the key. The pencils showed a slight commotion, and the spectators stared at this record sheet!

"Ach!" exclaimed Schmalz, "you do not like caviar."

"How do you know that?" demanded Welter.

"The instruments show that at the unpleasant taste you breathe less freely--not so deep. Your finger, as under strong sensation or emotions, grows smaller, and your pulse beats more rapidly."

It was a joke to them. Boisterously laughing, they tried Welter with other food upon the tray; they lighted for him one of the black cigars of which he was most fond, and watched the trembling pencils write the record of his pleasure at the taste and smell. Through it all Trant waited, alert, watchful, biding the time to carry out his plan. It came when, having exhausted the articles at hand, they paused to find some other means to carry on the amusement. The young psychologist leaned forward suddenly.

Dr. Annerly, bending over the record sheet, uttered a startled exclamation. Trant, glancing keenly at him, straightened triumphantly. But the young psychologist did not pause. He took quickly from his pocket a photograph, showing merely a heap of empty coffee sacks piled carelessly to a height of some two feet along the inner wall of a shed, and laid it in front of the subject. Welter's face did not alter; but again the pencils shuddered over the moving paper, and the watchers stared with astonishment. Rapidly removing the photograph, Trant substituted for it the bent wire given him by Miss Rowan. Then for the last time he swung to the instrument, and as his eyes caught the wildly vibrating pencils, they flared with triumph.

President Welter rose abruptly, but not too hurriedly. "That's about enough of this tomfoolery," he said, with perfect self-possession.

His jaw had imperceptibly squared to the watchful determination of the prize fighter driven into his corner. His cheek still held the ruddy glow of health; but the wine flush had disappeared from it, and he was perfectly sober.

Trant tore the strip of paper from the instrument, and numbered the last three reactions 1, 2, 3. This is the way the records looked:

"Amazing!" said Dr. Annerly. "Mr. Welter, I am curious to know what associations you have with that photograph and bent wire, the sight of which aroused in you such strong emotion."

"Impossible! No psychologist, knowing how this record was taken, could look at it without feeling absolutely certain that the photograph and spring caused in you such excessive emotion that I am tempted to give it, without further words, the name of 'intense fright!' But if we have inadvertently surprised a secret, we have no desire to pry into it further. Is it not so, Mr. Trant?"

At the name President Welter whirled suddenly. "Trant! Is your name Trant?" he demanded. "Well, I've heard of you." His eyes hardened. "A man like you goes just so far, and then--somebody stops him!"

"As they stopped Landers?" Trant inquired.

"Come, we've seen enough, I guess," said President Welter, and, including for one instant in his now frankly menacing gaze both Trant and Professor Schmalz, turned to the door, closely followed by his companions. And a moment later the quick explosions of his automobile were heard. At the sound, Trant seized suddenly a large envelope, dropped into it the photograph and wire he had just used, sealed, signed, and dated it, signed and dated also the record from the instruments, and hurriedly handed all to Dr. Annerly.

"Doctor, I trust this to you," he cried, excitedly. "It will be best to have them attested by all three of you. If possible get the record photographed to-night, and distribute the photographs in safe places. Above all, do not let the record itself out of your hands until I come for it. It is important--extremely important! As for me, I have not a moment to lose!"

He seized his hat and dashed from the room, leaving them in an astonished group.

The young psychologist sped down the stone steps of the laboratory three at a time, ran at top speed to the nearest street corner, turned it and leaped into a waiting taxicab. "The American Commodities Company's dock in Brooklyn," he shouted, "and never mind the speed limits!"

Rentland and the chauffeur, awaiting him in the machine, galvanized at his coming.

"Hot work?" the custom's agent asked.

"It may be very hot; but we have the start of him," Trant replied as the car shot ahead. "Welter himself is coming to the docks to-night, I think, by the look of him! He left just before me, but must drop his friends first. He suspects, now, that we know; but he cannot be aware that we know that they are unloading to-night. He probably counts on our waiting to catch them at the cheating to-morrow morning. So he's going over to-night himself if I size him up right, to order it stopped and remove all traces before we can prove anything. Is Dickey waiting?"

"When you give the word he is to take us in and catch them at it. If Welter himself comes, as you think, it will not change the plan?" Rentland asked.

"Not at all," said Trant, "for I have him already. He will deny everything, of course, but it's too late now!"

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