The Springfield herald., 1912-03-29

1-SS,+AIy OrylnR IN tHe SuuSHlle VI
E&I%I the window of dead man s
room. Behind the hand
that dumped them there
from the tea cup was the unknown
personality in which lay the secret
force that had wrought the horrible
deed, and only such a rare mind as
that of Lawrence Rand could have
followed the long, faint, broken, de-
ductive trail. That he did SO have
always held to be one of the marvels
even of his strange and spectacular
career.
remember very distinctly that we
had left the apartment one summer
evening, having run in from the bunga-
low we had that year on the Rockland
county shore, and after attending TO
such few details as awaited us we had
gone to the club and spent leisurely
two hours over n most excellent din
ner There were one or two men
there from the west who had been
put up" for fortnights, and one OF
them had interested Rand with his
metallurgical experiments and gradu-
ally drawn Rand into talking of the
methods which he had employed with
such astounding SUCCESS in his inves-
legations of mysterious cases.
at is simply this" said Rand. "The
course of every man alive Is one
string of friction. He comes in con-
tact with other men, with animals,
plants and inanimate things as he sits
walks, rides, sleeps; in fact in every
thing he does. His radio activity Is
constantly destroying contiguous
cells. He leaves a track that tells the
story of his acts, thoughts, motives.
all of him, in fact. more plainly than
If the angels read them out. If our per-
ceptions were only trained to decipher
each little sign correctly. No man
leaves the same sort of track. Nor
do the signs ever lie. The observer
may mislead himself, but the truth is
there IL he has the eyes, the mind and
the patience. In the tombstone mir
ror poisoning case, for instance, IL
seemed that we were pursuing an I'M
possible theory The facts seemed to
be lying to us, but we persisted In the
logical course, and we won. When aft
er surrounding the girl with every pos
u,
and testing every drop of food she
tasted and foot of air she breathed we
found that poison was still being In
troduced into her system we accepted
the impossible as possible and found
that the pores of the palm of her hand
were absorbing the deadly stuff from
the mirror she used to watch the VI
sion of death creeping into her face
A tall man of aristocratic bearing,
his face white. his hands trembling
came suddenly out of the library into
the garden dining room in which our
group sat and at the sight of Rand
sitting there the tension of his face
relaxed a trife. He hurried over and
bent down from behind Rand to whis-
per something hurriedly. l saw Rand
gather himself together at once as
languorous tiger suddenly reused to
action. Then he beckoned to me, and
rising, said: pray, excuse us, gentle
men," and led the way inside.
"Mr. Duncan, this is Or. Lloyd Nc
Leod, a member of the club who has
not favored us with his presence in
resent years, which accounts for your
not having met. He tells me his IA
ther has just met his death under cir
cumstances which are very strange
and asks us to take care of the case.
Although he believes it to have been
murder he will prepare a certificate OF
death from natural causes, and If 1t
proves to have been suicide or we
fail to find the murderer we are not to
divulge the circumstances. | am will
ing to go ahead on that basis II you
are.
agreed, and Rand asked DR.. Mac
I.eod to detail the case as he knew 1t.
This is his statement:
my father was sixty-eight his last
birthday and had been retired from
his former business of importing
South American wares IS years. j am
the only son, but sister who died
four years ago left two children, boy
now twelve and a girl now ten. The
two children lived with their grandfa-
.her at No. 242 Gramercy Park, the
only other occupants of the old house
being Dickinson, the butler, and his
wife Margaret, the cook and general
servant, who have been in the family
20 years and completely administered
the household The two children
were shut all this afternoon in Gram
ercy Park, which you know is private
for the families that live about 1t.
Just at dusk Dickinson left the house
to unlock the gate and bring them