Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/369

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THE ELEVENTH HOUR
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side the body, "is hers. I saw it the last time I was called in here."

"But how could he have known—if she shot him—that she was going to kill him just at eleven?" Trant objected, pulling from his pocket the note, which old Mr. Newberry had returned to him, and handing it to Siler. "He sent that to me; at least, the father says it is in his handwriting."

"You mean," Siler's eyes rose slowly from the paper, "that she must have told him what she was going to do—premeditated murder?"

"I mean that the first fact which we have—and which certainly seems to me wholly incompatible with anything which you have suggested so far—is that Walter Newberry foresaw his own death and set the hour of its accomplishment; and that his wife—it is plain at least to me—when she telephoned so often for me to-day, was trying to help him to escape from it. Now what are the other facts? "Trant went on rapidly, paying no attention to the obstinate glance in the eyes of the officer. "I distinctly heard five shots—four together and then, after a second or so, one. You heard five?"

"Yes."

"And five shots," the psychologist's quick glances had been taking in the finer details of the room, "are accounted for by the bullet holes—one through the lower pane of the window I found open, which shows it was down and closed during the shooting, as there is no break in the upper half; one on the plaster there to the side; one under the moulding there four feet to the right; and one more, in the plaster almost as