Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/345

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THE AXTON LETTERS
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watch over your family home, provided I employ a man who has no connection with the police?"

"With that condition I think it would be a very good idea," Axton assented. He waited to see whether Trant had anything more to ask him; then, with a look of partially veiled hostility at Caryl, he went out.

The other followed, but stopped at the door.

"We—that is, Miss Waldron—will hear from you, Mr. Trant?" he asked with sudden distrust—"I mean, you will report to her, as well as to Mr. Axton?"

"Certainly; but I hardly expect to have anything for you for two or three days."

The psychologist smiled, as he shut the door behind Caryl. He dropped into the chair at his desk and wrote rapidly a series of telegrams, which he addressed to the chiefs of police of a dozen foreign and American cities. Then, more slowly, he wrote a message to the Seric Medicine Company, of New York, and another to the Nord Deutscher Lloyd.

The first two days, of the three Trant had specified to Caryl, passed with no other event than the installing of a burly watchman at the Axton home. On the third night this watchman reported to Miss Waldron that he had seen and driven off, without being able to catch, a man who was trying to force a lower window; and the next morning—within half an hour of the arrival of the Overland Limited from San Francisco—Trant called up the Axton home on the telephone with the news that he thought he had at last positive proof of the mysterious man's identity. At least, he