Luther Trant is a young psychology professor who has made a radical wager: that the methods of the laboratory can do what a policeman's instincts cannot. Armed with stopwatch and word-association tests, he reads the hidden thoughts that suspects betray in a fraction of a second — the telltale pause, the telling word that the mind cannot control. In this landmark 1910 detective novel, Trant confronts a locked-room murder, a deadly game of cards, a vanishing cart, a hospital's dark secret, a girl with a peculiar golden tooth, and finally a race against the clock in which psychology itself must save a life. More than a century before forensic psychology became standard practice, Luther Trant proved that the most dangerous evidence is not the footprint left behind — but the thought that a guilty mind cannot hide. This faithful modern retelling keeps Balmer's ingenious plots and sharp suspense while setting them in vivid, present-day English. Part of Timeless Classics.
