by Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg

“ Authors of “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Man Higher Up.”
uther Trant, on the rainy morning of April 13th, sat alone in his office. On his wrist, as he bent closely over a heap of typewritten pages spread before him on his desk, a small instrument in continual motion ticked like a watch. It was for him an hour of idleness; he was reading fiction. And with his passion for making visible and recording the workings of the mind, he was taking a permanent record of his feelings as he read.
The instrument strapped on Trant's arm was called a sphygmograph. ”

“ Every emotion reacts upon the pulse, which strengthens in joy and weakens in sorrow, grows slower with anger, faster with despair; and as every slightest variation is detected and registered by the Sphygmograph—I felt certain that if I could test the three men together by having Miss Silber tell her father's story aloud, I could determine conclusively by comparison of the records of the two revolutionists with that of Meyan, what his sympathies really were. ”

“ He tossed off the liquor, rolling it upon his tongue, and all saw the record regain its first appearance; then, as the stimulant began to take effect, the pencil point lifted higher at each rise and the elevations became farther apart. They stared and laughed.
"Whisky effects you about normally, I should say." Trant began to unfasten the sphygmograph from the man's wrist. "I have heard it said that black-haired men, like you, feel its effect least of all; light-haired men more; men with red hair like mine feel the greatest effect, it's said. We red-haired men have to be careful with whisky." ”

“ I was certain that of all men in the world there was but one who could recognize or feel any emotion at sight of that yellowed and time-worn paper; and that man was Valerian Urth, who had used it to betray Herman Silber.
“I showed it to Meyan, and obtained this really amazing reaction which ends his record.” The psychologist pointed to the record. “It assured me that Meyan and Urth were one.”
“This is amazing, Mr. Trant,” Cuthbert Edwards said. “But you have left unexplained the most perplexing feature of all—the hammering!” ”

“ There's a red-headed man," one of the crowd cried suddenly, pointing. "Try it on him."
Two enthusiasts at once broke from the group and rushed eagerly to Meyan. He had continued, inattentive through all, to read his newspaper, but now he laid it down. Trant and young Edwards, as he rose and slouched half curiously toward them, could see plainly for the first time his strongly boned, coarsely powerful face, and heavy-lidded eyes, and the grossly muscular strength of his big-framed body. ”

“ And though at sight of it no face changed among the three, even Trant's clients could see how one line now suddenly grew flat, with low elevations, irregular and far apart, as the pencil point seemed almost to stop its motion over the smoked paper of the man in the middle, Meyan.
"That is all," said Trant, in a tone of assured triumph, as he unstrapped the sphygmographs from their wrists. "You can speak now, Mr. Edwards."
"Eva!" cried Winton Edwards in wild appeal. "You are not married to this man?" ”

“ The psychologist turned to meet young Edwards as he hurried in, and together they went out to join the father at the motor.
“We can do nothing sooner than to-night,” Trant said, shortly, an expression of keen anxiety on his face. “I must learn more about this man, but my inquiries must be conducted alone. If you will meet me here again at seven o'clock to-night, say at the pawn-broker's shop we passed upon the corner, I hope to be able to solve the mystery of the ‘hammering man,’ and the influence he is undoubtedly exerting on Miss Silber. ”

“ Since you and your own are safe, do you become insensible that others now again wait in your place? And those that swing in the wind! Have you forgot? If you remember and are true, communicate. And you can help save them all! ”

“ Then, as Edwards nodded his comprehension, the psychologist turned easily to the man nearest him at the bar—a pallid Lithuanian sweatshop worker.
“I suppose you can stand a lot of that?” Trant nodded to his glass of pungent whisky. “Still—it has its effect on you. Sends your heart action up— quickens your pulse.” ”

“ Obviously, it must have been Herman Silber who did the hammering at Eva's home and here in this house. It was obvious, too, that Herman Silber was the 'your own' of the advertisement.
"To test Meyan, whom we found in the saloon, was not difficult," said Trant. "I arranged to have him overhear some one speaking of an arrest at Warsaw, which would at once suggest itself as a hotbed of Russian revolutionists to either a revolutionist or a police agent; but the idea would certainly give positive and very opposite reactions if the man were a true revolutionist or if he were a spy. ”

“ Not her feelings toward me, for I felt certain even then that she loved me! But an influence—the influence of this man—had come between us! She told me there was no longer any question of her marrying! She refused the explanation she had promised to make to me! She told me to go away and forget her, or—as I wrote you—to think of her as dead!
“You can imagine my feelings! I could not sleep last night after I had left her. As I was wandering about the house, I saw the evening paper lying spread out on the library table and my eye caught her name in it. ”

“ Then the psychologist swiftly adjusted the sphygmograph upon the out-stretched arm and watched intently an instant until the stylus point had caught up the strong and even pulse which set it rising and falling in perfect rhythm. As he turned to the bar for the whisky, the rear door slammed and the voice Trant was expecting spoke:
“Yes; it was at Warsaw the police took him. He was taken without warning and from his friend's house. What next? The prisons are full, but they keep on filling them; the graveyards will be full next!” ”

“ I arranged with Munikov and Vasili to come here with me to-night, and, after Meyan had arrived, they left us here and went to him as representatives of the revolutionary movement to ask his credentials.
"When he could furnish none," Trant went on, "they proposed, and in fact forced him, into this test. It is a dangerous thing to endeavor to pass oneself off as a revolutionist, and it was safer for him to submit to a test than to have his mission frustrated by incurring not only suspicion, but possibly death. ”

“ The Story Told by the Pulse Record of a Russian
A dozen idlers leaned against the bar or sat in chairs tilted against the wall. Trant examined these idlers one after another closely. The only man at whom he did not seem to look was one who, as the only red-headed man in the place, must plainly be Meyan. “Red-headed” was the only description they had of him, but meager as it was, with the landlady's statement as to Meyan being in the saloon, Trant resolved to test him. ”

“ No," Trant replied. "But to you—and to these gentlemen"—he motioned to the two who had sat at the table with Meyan—"I have to announce the result of my test, for which they are waiting. This elder gentleman is Ivan Munikov, who was forced to leave Russia eight years ago because his pamphlet on 'Inalienable Rights' had incurred the displeasure of the police. This younger man is Dmitri Vasili, who was exiled to Siberia for political offenses at thirteen years of age, but escaped to America. They both are members of the Russian revolutionary organization in Chicago." ”

“ Before going to the Crerar Library, then, it was clear that we had to do with a Russian revolutionary intrigue. At the library I obtained the key to the cipher and translated the advertisement, obtaining the name of Meyan and his address, and also the name and address of Dmitri Vasili, a well-known pro-revolutionary writer. To my surprise, Vasili knew nothing of any revolutionist named Meyan. It was inconceivable that a revolutionary emissary should come to Chicago and he not know of it. It became necessary to find Meyan immediately. ”

“ Rooms come not so easy here; we have many people. But now we have another, so to-night she is coming again."
"Does it now seem necessary for us to press this investigation further?" Cuthbert Edwards asked caustically. As he spoke, the sound of measured, heavy blows came to them down the dark stair apparently from the second floor of the building. The elder Edwards cried excitedly and triumphantly: "What is that? Listen! That man—Meyan, if it is Meyan—must be here; for that is the same hammering."
"This is even better luck than we could have expected!" exclaimed the psychologist ”

“ In the fight that followed, father was able only to wound the other upon the chest with the blunt knife they had used to cut their food, before the spy called a confederate down from the loft, and father was overcome.
“On the information of these police spies, without trial of any sort—father's friends could discover only that the name of his betrayer was Valerian Urth—father was sentenced to solitary confinement in an underground cell for life! And my mother— because she sent food and fagots to a supposed convict—was exiled to Siberia! ”

“ Neither he nor the housekeeper, who is not in Eva's confidence, is likely to be able to help us in this matter."
"The man may have slipped out of the house unseen," suggested Trant.
"Quite impossible," Cuthbert Edwards asserted. "Miss Silber lived, in a little house west of Ravenswood. There are very few houses, none within at least a quarter of a mile of her. The ground is flat, and no one could have got away without being seen by me."
"Your story so far is certainly very peculiar," the psychologist commented, "and it gains interest with every detail. ”

“ Late one night, in a terrible snowstorm, just twenty years ago, a peasant brought to our door a note, unsigned for the sake of safety, it seemed, telling father that an escaped political prisoner was dying of exposure and starvation in a hut on a deserted farm ten miles from the town. ”

“ At the bottom of each screen was a circular hole just large enough for a man's arm to go through; and at Trant's command the men put their arms through them. Stooping again swiftly over the instrument cases, Trant took out three sphygmographs.
He rapidly adjusted these on the arms of the three men, and set in motion the revolving drums, against which the pencil points traced their wavy lines on smoked paper. His clients, leaning forward in their interest, could then understand the purpose of the screens, which were designed to hide the pitilessly exact records from the three men. ”

“ He introduced me to Munikov, who had been a friend of Silber before his imprisonment, and between them I got the history of Herman Silber and his daughter.
"I explained to Munikov and Vasili that the methods of the psychological laboratory would be as efficacious in picking out a spy among true men as I have many times proved them to be in convicting the criminal. ”