"I am prepared for it."
He touched a bell, and the door to the next room opened. One of
Kennedy's graduate students stepped in.
"You have the records, Whiting?" he asked.
"Yes, Professor."
"I may say," said Kennedy, "that each of your chairs is wired under
the arm in such a way as to betray on an appropriate indicator in the
next room every sudden and undue emotion. Though it may be concealed
from the eye, even of one like me who stand facing you, such emotion
is nevertheless expressed by physical pressure on the arms of
the chair. It is a test that is used frequently with students to
demonstrate various points of psychology. You needn't raise your arms
from the chair, ladies and gentlemen. The tests are _all over_ now.
What did they show, Whiting?"
The student read what he had been noting in the next room. At the
production of the coat during the demonstration of the markings of the
bullet, Mrs. Parker had betrayed great emotion, Mr. Bruce had done
likewise, and nothing more than ordinary emotion had been noted for
the rest of us. Miss La Neige's automatic record during the tracing
out of the sending of the note to Parker had been especially
unfavorable to hear; Mr. Bruce showed almost as much excitement; Mrs.
Parker very little and Downey very little. It was all set forth in
curves drawn by self-recording pens on regular ruled paper. The
student had merely noted what took place in the lecture-room as
corresponding to these curves.
"At the mention of the noiseless gun," said Kennedy, bending over the
record, while the student pointed it out to him and we leaned forward
to catch his words, "I find that the curves of Miss La Neige, Mrs.
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