THE THINKING MACHINE 2

The Roswell Tiara

and other stories

by Jacques Futrelle

CONTENTS

1. The Problem of the Organ Grinder

2. The Problem of the Perfect Alibi

3. The Problem of the Private Compartment

4. The Problem of the Red Rose

5. The Roswell Tiara

6. The Mystery of the Scarlet Thread

7. The Case of the Scientific Murderer

8. The Problem of the Souvenir Cards

9. The Problem of the Stolen Rubens

10. The Problem of the Superfluous Finger

11. The Three Overcoats

12. The Problem of the Vanishing Man

__________

1. The Problem of the Organ Grinder

Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, was standing in a corner with both hands in his coat pockets. Just three inches to the left of his second waistcoat button was the point of a stiletto, and he glanced at it from time to time in frank uneasiness, then his eyes returned to the flushed, tense face of the girl who held it. She was Italian. Her eyes were splendidly black, and there was a gleam in them that was anything but reassuring. Her scarlet lips were parted slightly, disclosing small, regular, white teeth clenched tightly together. A brilliant multicolored headdress partially confined her hair and rippled down about her shoulders. Her skirt was barely to her ankles.

“I feel like the third act of an Italian comic opera,” Hatch thought grimly. Then aloud, “What is all this?”

“You must be silent, signor!” warned the young woman in excellent English.

“I am going to be,” Hatch explained; “but still I should like to——”

“You must be silent, signor!” the girl repeated. “No, don’t take your hands from your pockets!”

“But look here!”

The stiletto point was pressed in until he felt it against his flesh. He winced involuntarily, but wisely held his tongue. It was a time to stand perfectly still and wait. He had come to the tenement in the course of his professional duties, and had rapped on this door to inquire in which apartment a certain family lived. The door had been opened by the young woman—and now this! He didn’t understand it; he didn’t even make a pretense of conjecturing what it meant. He just kept on standing still.

From outside came the varied noises of a busy city. Inside the gloom grew about him, and gradually the rigid, motionless figure of the girl became a shadowy silhouette. Then an electric arc light outside, which happened to be on a level with a window, spluttered and flashed into brilliance almost blinding him. Through the murk of the room only their motionless figures were visible.

After awhile the reporter heard vaguely a stealthy shuffle of feet as if some one was passing along the hall. Then the door leading from the hall into the next room opened and closed softly. The girl prodded him with the stiletto point to remind him to be silent. It was a needless warning, because now Hatch dimly foresaw some grave and imminent danger to himself in the presence of this third person, whoever it might be. Unconsciously he was concentrating all his forces, mental and physical, for—for something he didn’t know what.

The shuffling feet were now in the next room. He heard them moving about as if coming toward the connecting door. Then a hand was laid on the knob, the lock rattled a little, and the door was softly closed. Hatch took a deep breath of relief—whoever this third person might be, he evidently had no business in the room with them just at that moment.

With straining ears and tense nerves the reporter listened, and after awhile came a muffled chatter as of some one talking rapidly and incoherently. Then he heard a man’s voice, pleasant neither in tone nor in the expletives used, and several times he heard the chatter—quick, excited, incoherent. At last the man broke out into a string of profanity, objurgations. The chatter rose angrily, and burst finally into a strangling, guttural scream of anguish.

With a chilly creepiness along his spine and nerves strained to the breaking point, Hatch started forward involuntarily. The stiletto point at his breast stopped him. He glared at the rigid figure of the girl and choked back, with an effort, an outburst of emotion. His utter helplessness overwhelmed him.

“Some one is being killed in there!” he protested desperately between gritting teeth.

“Sh-h!” warned the girl.

From the next room came the shuffling of feet again, then a soft thump thrice repeated, and a faint gurgling cry. Hatch shivered a little; the girl was rigid as marble.

“I guess that fixed you!” Hatch heard a man say.

There was silence for a minute or so. The feet moved stealthily again, and the door leading from the other room into the hall opened and closed. The footsteps moved rapidly along, then apparently precaution was forgotten, for they clattered down the steps and were gone.

Suddenly the girl straightened up. “You will remain here, signor,” she said, “until I am out of the house? You will raise no alarm for at least five minutes? Believe me, if you do, it will be worse for you; for sometime, somewhere, you will have occasion to regret it! You promise?”

Hatch would not make himself believe that he had the slightest choice in the matter. “I promise, of course,” he said.

She bowed a little, half mockingly, flung open the door, and ran out. Hatch heard the swishing of her skirts as she sped down the stairs, then he brought himself together with a huge sigh and a nervous jerking of his limbs.

He strode across the room twice to regain possession of jumping nerves, then paused and lighted a cigarette. What was in the next room? He didn’t know. He wanted to know, and yet there was an intangible fear which clung to him and held him back when he started for the door. At last he mastered this absurd weakness, and flung the door open wide, and walked in. At first he saw nothing, and he had expected to see every evidence of a brutal crime. Then in a far corner he noticed what seemed to be a bundle of rags which had been thrown there carelessly. He strode over boldly and poked it with his foot, stooping to examine it.

What he saw brought an exclamation from him; but it was rather of astonishment than of horror. The thing he had found was the body of a monkey. The rags were the tawdry clothing in which organ grinders attire their apish companions. There was a little cap, a coat, and trousers.

“Well! What in the deuce——” exclaimed the reporter. He dropped on his knees beside the tiny body. There were three stab wounds in it—one in the throat and two in the breast. The body was still warm.

“But why,” protested Hatch, “should anyone, man or woman, murder a monkey?”

Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen—The Thinking Machine—didn’t hazard a conjecture. “Are you sure it was a monkey that was murdered?” he asked instead. “I mean are you sure that only a monkey was murdered?”

“I am sure,” he responded emphatically, “that the monkey was killed while I listened, and certainly there was nothing else that I could find or that I heard to indicate anything beyond that.”

“Did you search the place?” queried the scientist.

“Yes.”

“Find anything?”

“No, nothing.”

“Did you happen to notice, Mr. Hatch, if the monkey’s clothing had pockets?”

“There were no pockets. I looked for them.”

The Thinking Machine lay back in his chair, steadily squinting upward for several minutes, without speaking. Then: “I can comprehend readily why the monkey should have been killed as it was. Any one of half a dozen hypotheses would explain that. But if the monkey didn’t have a pocket somewhere in its clothing, then I don’t see so readily why——Oh, of course—must have been bigger than I thought,” he mused.

“What?” inquired Hatch.

“Are you sure, Mr. Hatch, that there had been nothing sewn to the clothing of the monkey?” asked The Thinking Machine, without heeding the question—“that nothing had been ripped loose from the clothing?”

“I can’t say as to that,” the reporter replied.

“Where is the monkey now?”

“Still there in the room, I suppose. I came straight from there to you here. Of course, my being held up that way wasn’t of any actual consequence—it was merely incidental, I thought, to the other.”

The Thinking Machine nodded. “Yes,” he agreed. “I presume that was merely because you happened to arrive at an inopportune moment, and that method was employed to keep you out of the way until whatever was to be done was done.”

The Thinking Machine and the reporter went out together. It was a few minutes past nine o’clock when they reached the tenement. It was dirty and illy lighted, and boldly faced a street which was a center of the Italian colony. Hatch led the way in and up the stairs to the room where he had left the monkey. The little body still lay huddled up, inert, as he had left it.

By the light of an electric bulb The Thinking Machine examined it closely. Twice Hatch saw him shake his head. When The Thinking Machine arose from the floor his face was inscrutable. He led Hatch around that room and the next and through a third which connected, and then they went out.

“It is an extraordinary case, Mr. Hatch,” he explained as they went on. “There are now three explanations of the affair, either one of which would fit in with every fact that we know. But instead of helping us, these three possibilities make it necessary for us to know more. Two of them must be removed—the remainder will be correct as surely as two and two make four, not sometimes but all the time.”

Hatch waited patiently.

“The real problem here,” the scientist continued after a moment, “is the identity of the person who owned the monkey. When we get that, we get a starting point.”

“That would not seem difficult,” Hatch suggested. “It is extremely improbable that anyone knows of the affair except the persons who were responsible for it, perhaps the owner of the monkey and ourselves. An advertisement in the newspapers would bring the owner quickly enough.”

“There is always the possibility, Mr. Hatch, that the owner is the man who killed the monkey,” replied the scientist. “In that event the advertisement would do no good; and there is a question if it would be advisable to let those persons who are responsible for the animal’s death know that the matter is being investigated. This is presuming, of course, that some one besides the owner killed it. It will be just as well to let the young woman who held you prisoner believe that the affair is at an end. Any other course just now might indirectly endanger the life of some one who has not yet appeared in the case.

“I am going home now, Mr. Hatch,” concluded the scientist, “and it is possible that within two or three hours I may devise a plan by which we can find the monkey’s owner. If so, I shall communicate with you.”

“You can reach me at police headquarters until about midnight,” replied the reporter. “I am going up there on another affair.”

It was about a quarter past eleven o’clock that night when Hatch scurried away to a telephone and eagerly cried to The Thinking Machine, “I know the man who owned the monkey!”

Ten minutes later he was in the scientist’s little reception room. “The man who owned the monkey,” he said, “is named Giacomo Bardetto. He is an organ grinder. He was found unconscious in an area way at the other end of the city to-night at ten o’clock. He had been struck down from behind, his organ smashed, his pockets rifled, and no one knows how long he had been unconscious when found. He is now in a hospital, still unconscious. The police know nothing whatever about the monkey incident; but I surmise that the dead monkey was Bardetto’s. You might have noticed that a short chain was attached to the monkey’s clothing? The other end of that chain is fastened to the hand organ.”

“How was Bardetto identified?” asked The Thinking Machine.

“By his organ grinder’s license, which was fastened to the inside of a flap on the instrument.”

“His home?”

“Here is the address,” and the reporter produced a card on which he had jotted down the street and number.

The Thinking Machine studied the card for a moment, then glanced at his watch. It was five minutes of midnight.

“Detective Mallory sent a man there to notify his family of Bardetto’s condition,” Hatch went on to explain. “But it seems that he has no family or relatives. Mallory, of course, has nothing to lead him to think that the case is anything more than ordinary assault and robbery.”

“Let’s go see what the case really is, Mr. Hatch,” said the scientist. “I know in a general way what it is, of course; but it possesses many singular features.”

Half an hour later they stood in the room where Bardetto lived. This too was in a tenement and poorly furnished. It seemed to be a combination of bed room, living room, dining room, and kitchen. The Thinking Machine began a minute search of the room. Bureau drawers were pulled out, the bed denuded, articles of furniture moved, and even the oil stove turned upside down. Hatch stood looking on without the slightest idea of the object of the search.

“What are you looking for?” he asked at last.

“I don’t know,” The Thinking Machine confessed frankly. “The ultimate purpose is to find out why the monkey was killed. I have an idea that there is something here that will answer the question.”

And the search continued. Every conceivable point seemed to have been gone over; and Hatch was marveling at the thoroughness of it, when The Thinking Machine dropped on his knees on the floor and wriggled along, minutely inspecting the baseboard at every joint. One of these sounded unlike the others when he rapped it, and he began work at it. Finally the board responded to the prying of a knife and fell out. The Thinking Machine took one look.

“Dear me! Dear me!” he exclaimed in a tone which nearly indicated astonishment.

He plunged both hands into the narrow aperture and tumbled out on the floor package after package of money—crackling, rustling bills—unfolded and with the sheen of newness still on them. There was money and money! Hatch stared with bulging eyes.

“Now I know why the monkey was killed,” remarked The Thinking Machine conclusively. “This is what I was looking for, but I didn’t know it.”

“Great Scott! Whose is it? How much is there? Where did it come from?”

Hatch flung the questions at the diminutive scientist still crouching on the floor. The Thinking Machine glanced at him in petulant reproof at an excitement which the reporter’s voice betrayed.

“Whose is it?” he repeated. “Bardetto’s. How much is there? I should say from fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars. It’s all in two and five dollar bills. Where did it come from? I should say that it came from the——”

The door behind them squeaked a little as it swung on its hinges. Hatch turned quickly. It was the girl. For an instant they stood motionless, staring at each other in mutual astonishment. The Thinking Machine didn’t even glance around.

“Put that woman under arrest, Mr. Hatch,” he commanded irritably, “and close the door! She has no revolver, but look out for a knife.”

Hatch pushed the door to with his foot. “Now, signorina,” he remarked grimly, “I shall have to ask you to remain silent.”

The girl was evidently not one of the screaming kind, but her right hand disappeared into the folds of her dress as she faced him boldly. It was a sinister movement. Hatch smiled a little, and his own right hand went back to his hip. Perhaps he smiled because he had never been guilty of carrying a revolver in all his life.

“Don’t do that, signorina!” he advised pleasantly. “Don’t make any mistake with that knife! I have never drawn a revolver on a woman, and I don’t want to now; but believe me, you must take out the knife and drop it. You must, I say!” and his right hand moved forward the fraction of a foot threateningly.

Staring straight into his eyes without a tremor in her own, the girl produced the stiletto, and it clattered on the floor. Hatch kicked it beyond her reach. The Thinking Machine finally arose from his place on the floor.

“Mr. Hatch,” he commanded sharply, “take the young woman over in the far corner there and let her sit down. Just so surely as she makes any noise, however slight, it will cost one of us, perhaps even both of us, our lives. Remember that and act accordingly. Don’t hesitate an instant because she happens to be a woman. I shall be able alone to take care of whoever else may happen to enter.”

The tone was one which was utterly strange to the reporter, coming as it did from this crabbed, irritable little scientist whom he had known so long. It was chilling by reason of its very gravity, and for the first time in his life Hatch felt that his companion considered a situation imminently dangerous. All of which convinced him that if he had ever obeyed orders now was the time. The girl’s face was white, but there was a slight, mocking smile wavering about her lips.

The Thinking Machine turned the gas half down, then went over and sat near the door. Silently they waited, five, ten, fifteen minutes; then they heard a quick, muffled tread moving along the hall toward the door.

“If she moves or makes the slightest sound, shoot!” directed The Thinking Machine in a low voice.

He arose and faced the door. Some one fumbled at the lock, and the door swung inward. The figure of a man appeared.

“Hands up!” commanded The Thinking Machine abruptly, and he thrust a glittering something beneath the intruder’s nose. The man’s hand went up. The Thinking Machine leaned forward suddenly and deftly abstracted a revolver from the stranger’s right hand pocket. He gave a sight of infinite relief as he straightened up, holding the captured revolver in hand.

“It’s all right, Mr. Hatch,” he said to the reporter, who had scarce dared remove his eyes from his prisoner. Then to the man and woman, “It may interest you to know that neither of us had a weapon of either sort until I got this revolver. I stopped you,” he told the man, “with a clinical thermometer, and Mr. Hatch captured you,” he told the woman, “at the point, we may say, of his pipe case.”

They were all at police headquarters—The Thinking Machine, Hatch, and the two prisoners. Piled up on Detective Mallory’s desk were the packages of bills which the scientist had discovered. They were counterfeit, all of two and five dollar denominations, and excellent in texture, engraving, and printing. But the numbers were at fault; all the twos were the same, and all the fives were the same.

For the enlightenment of Detective Mallory, The Thinking Machine and Hatch repeated in detail those incidents leading up to the capture of the man and the woman.

“There is really little to explain,” said the scientist at the end; “although the problem, while it lasted, was one of the most complex and intricate I have ever met. We may dismiss Mr. Hatch’s first adventure as of no consequence. It just happened that he went to the house on a different matter, and fortunately was dragged into this affair. Now, I have no doubt that the prisoners here will give us the location of the counterfeiter’s plant?”

He glanced at the man and woman. They looked at each other, but remained silent.

“I have never met a counterfeiter yet who would give up the hiding place of his plates,” remarked Detective Mallory.

“But these are not counterfeiters, Mr. Mallory,” said The Thinking Machine; “they are merely thieves. Bardetto, the man who was found unconscious, who owned the monkey, is one of the counterfeiters. Let me explain briefly how every fact considered clears up the problem. First, the inevitable logic of the affair shows us that these two prisoners learned in some manner unknown that Bardetto was either a principal or an agent for some big counterfeiting scheme; for we can’t believe that they thought this was real money. But instead of reporting the matter to the police they resolved to benefit by it themselves. How? By stealing the bills from Bardetto, this to be followed, perhaps, by immediate flight to Italy. They are both Italians, and you may know that a clever American counterfeit abroad is almost as good as the genuine; and for that matter these bills would pass in circulation readily here.

“Granting, then, that they did know of Bardetto’s part in the scheme, we can readily imagine that they learned that Bardetto had a quantity of the money in his possession; so the robbery was planned. The man here did the work, and was to meet the woman in the vacant rooms of the tenement where Mr. Hatch saw her.

“Well, Bardetto was attacked and his pockets rifled. Evidently our prisoner did not find what he sought, and yet he knew that the money had passed into Bardetto’s possession, and perhaps too that he had had no opportunity of getting rid of it. Was it in the organ? He smashed it to see. It wasn’t. Then, the monkey: was the money concealed about the animal’s clothing? That was the next question in the robber’s mind.

“Half a dozen reasons, such as some one approaching, would have prevented this man making a search there; so he broke the monkey’s chain and took the little brute along with him. In the vacant apartments the man did not meet the woman—we know why—perhaps presumed that she did not come, and so went on with his search. It is extremely probable that the monkey struggled and fought in the hands of a stranger, so the man stabbed it. He had no use for it, anyway. Now, as a matter of fact,” and the scientist turned to the man whom he had personally taken prisoner, “you took a pouch or pocket from beneath the monkey’s clothing, didn’t you?”

The prisoner stared at him an instant, then nodded.

“So he got that counterfeit money which he knew had been in Bardetto’s possession,” continued The Thinking Machine. “It was not a great deal—not so much as he had anticipated, we’ll say—then he and the woman planned to search Bardetto’s room for more, knowing he was in the hospital. Perhaps the woman went ahead to reconnoiter. I didn’t see her enter, but knew it was a woman because her skirts swished, and told Mr. Hatch to lose no time in arresting her.

“The minute I found the money I knew the solution of the affair—the solution that must be correct. Up to that time I had imagined a dozen other things—jewels, letters, papers of some sort. That is why I told Mr. Hatch I didn’t know what I was searching for.” There was a pause. “I think, perhaps, that explanation covers it all.”

“I still don’t see why Hatch should have been held up,” remarked Detective Mallory.

“It might have been merely excess of caution,” was the reply, “or the woman might have admitted him first under a misapprehension as to his identity, and was afraid to let him go. It was almost dark in the hall.”

“But why should Bardetto entrust the money to the monkey?” Hatch inquired curiously. “It seems to me that it would have been safer for him to carry it himself.”

“On the contrary,” was the reply. “A man in his position is always expecting arrest. If the money had been found on him, it would have convicted him; if it had been found in his organ, and that should have fallen into other hands and been identified, it would have convicted him. But if the money was on the monkey, which couldn’t talk, and he felt himself in danger, it would have been easy to free it, and perhaps it could easily have succeeded in making its escape.”

The two prisoners willingly informed Detective Mallory of the whereabouts of the counterfeiter’s plant—were apparently even anxious to inform him—and he in person led the raid on it. Plates for the bills were seized, and five expert workers placed under arrest.

From the time Hutchinson Hatch was held up in the vacant room until seven prisoners were in their cells at police headquarters less than twelve hours had elapsed.

______________

2. The Problem of the Perfect Alibi

Skulking along through the dense gloom, impalpably a part of the murky mist which pressed down between the tall board fences on each side, moved the figure of a man. Occasionally he shot a glance behind him, but the general direction of his gaze was to his left, where a fence cut off the small back-yards of an imposing row of brownstone residences. At last he stopped and tried a gate. It opened noiselessly and he disappeared inside. A pause. A man came out of the gate, closed it carefully and walked on through the alley toward an arc-light which spread a generous glare at the intersection of a street.

* * *

Patrolman Gillis was standing idly on a corner, within the light-radius of a street lamp debating some purely personal questions when he heard the steady clack, clack, clack of foot-steps a block or more away. He glanced up and dimly he saw a man approaching. As he came nearer the policeman noticed that the man’s right hand was pressed to his face.

“Good evening, officer,” said the stranger nervously. “Can you tell me where I can find a dentist?”

“Toothache?” inquired the policeman.

“Yes, and it’s nearly killing me,” was the reply. “If I don’t get it pulled I’ll—I’ll go crazy.”

The policeman grinned sympathetically.

“Had it myself—I know what it is,” he said. “You passed one dentist down in the other block, but there’s another just across the street here,” and he indicated a row of brown-stone residences. “Dr. Paul Sitgreaves. He’ll charge you good and plenty.”

“Thank you,” said the other.

He crossed the street and the policeman gazed after him until he mounted the steps and pulled the bell. After a few minutes the door opened, the stranger entered the house and Patrolman Gillis walked on.

“Dr. Sitgreaves here?” inquired the stranger of a servant who answered the bell.

“Yes.”

“Please ask him if he can draw a tooth for me. I’m in a perfect agony, and——”

“The doctor rarely gets up to attend to such cases,” interrupted the servant.

“Here,” said the stranger and he pressed a bill in the servant’s hand. “Wake him for me, won’t you? Tell him it’s urgent.”

The servant looked at the bill, then opened the door and led the patient into the reception room.

Five minutes later, Dr. Sitgreaves, gaping ostentatiously, entered and nodded to his caller.

“I hated to trouble you, doctor,” explained the stranger, “but I haven’t slept a wink all night.”

He glanced around the room until his eye fell upon a clock. Dr. Sitgreaves glanced in that direction. The hands of the clock pointed to 1:53.

“Phew!” said Dr. Sitgreaves. “Nearly two o’clock. I must have slept hard. I didn’t think I’d been asleep more than an hour.” He paused to gape again and stretch himself. “Which tooth is it?” he asked.

“A molar, here,” said the stranger, and he opened his mouth.

Dr. Sitgreaves gazed officially into his innermost depths and fingered the hideous instruments of torture.

“That tooth’s too good to lose,” he said after an examination. “There’s only a small cavity in it.”

“I don’t know what’s the matter with it,” replied the other impatiently, “except that it hurts. My nerves are fairly jumping.”

Dr. Sitgreaves was professionally serious as he noted the drawn face, the nervous twitching of hands and the unusual pallor of his client.

“They are,” he said finally. “There’s no doubt of that. But it isn’t the tooth. It’s neuralgia.”

“Well, pull it anyway,” pleaded the stranger. “It always comes in that tooth, and I’ve got to get rid of it some time.”

“It wouldn’t be wise,” remonstrated the dentist. “A filling will save it. Here,” and he turned and stirred an effervescent powder in a glass. “Take this and see if it doesn’t straighten you out.”

The stranger took the glass and gulped down the foaming liquid.

“Now sit right there for five minutes or so,” instructed the dentist. “If it doesn’t quiet you and you insist on having the tooth pulled, of course——”

He sat down and glanced again at the clock after which he looked at his watch and replaced it in a pocket of his pajamas. His visitor was sitting, too, controlling himself only with an obvious effort.

“This is real neuralgia weather,” observed the dentist at last, idly. “Misty and damp.”

“I suppose so,” was the reply. “This began to hurt about twelve o’clock, just as I went to bed, and finally it got so bad that I couldn’t stand it. Then I got up and dressed and came out for a walk. I kept on, thinking that it would get better but it didn’t and a policeman sent me here.”

There was a pause of several minutes.

“Feel any better?” inquired the dentist, at last.

“No,” was the reply. “I think you’d better take it out.”

“Just as you say!”

The offending tooth was drawn, the stranger paid him with a sigh of relief, and after a minute or so started out. At the door he turned back.

“What time is it now, please?” he asked.

“Seventeen minutes past two,” replied the dentist.

“Thanks,” said the stranger. “I’ll just have time to catch a car back home.”

“Good night,” said the dentist.

“Good night.”

* * *

Skulking along through the dense gloom, impalpably a part of the murky mist which pressed down between tall board fences on each side, moved the figure of a man. Occasionally he shot a glance behind him, but the general direction of his gaze was to his left, where a fence cut off the small back-yards of an imposing row of brown-stone residences. At last he stopped and tried a gate. It opened noiselessly and he disappeared inside. A pause. A man came out of the gate, closed it carefully and walked on through the alley toward an arc-light which spread a generous glare at the intersection of a street.

* * *

Next morning at eight o’clock, Paul Randolph De Forrest, a young man of some social prominence, was found murdered in the sitting room of his suite in the big Avon apartment house. He had been dead for several hours. He sat beside his desk, and death left him sprawled upon it face downward. The weapon was one of several curious daggers which had been used ornamentally on the walls of his apartments. The blade missed the heart only a quarter of an inch or so; death must have come within a couple of minutes.

Detective Mallory went to the apartments, accompanied by the Medical Examiner. Together they lifted the dead man. Beneath his body, on the desk, lay a sheet of paper on which were scrawled a few words; a pencil was clutched tightly in his right hand. The detective glanced then stared at the paper; it startled him. In the scrawly, trembling, incoherent handwriting of the dying man were these disjointed sentences and words:

“Murdered .... Franklin Chase .... quarrel .... stabbed me .... am dying .... God help me .... clock striking 2 .... good-bye.”

The detective’s jaws snapped as he read. Here was crime, motive and time. After a sharp scrutiny of the apartments, he went down the single flight of stairs to the office floor to make some inquiries. An elevator man, Moran, was the first person questioned. He had been on duty the night before. Did he know Mr. Franklin Chase? Yes. Had Mr. Franklin Chase called to see Mr. De Forrest on the night before? Yes.

“What time was he here?”

“About half past eleven, I should say. He and Mr. De Forrest came in together from the theatre.”

“When did Mr. Chase go away?”

“I don’t know, sir. I didn’t see him.”

“It might have been somewhere near two o’clock?”

“I don’t know, sir,” replied Moran again, “I’ll—I’ll tell you all I know about it. I was on duty all night. Just before two o’clock a telegram was ’phoned for a Mr. Thomas on the third floor. I took it and wrote on it the time that I received it. It was then just six minutes before two o’clock. I walked up from this floor to the third—two flights—to give the message to Mr. Thomas. As I passed Mr. De Forrest’s door, I heard loud voices, two people evidently quarrelling. I paid no attention then but went on. I was at Mr. Thomas’s door possibly five or six minutes. When I came down I heard nothing further and thought no more of it.”

“You fix the time of passing Mr. De Forrest’s door first at, say, five minutes of two?” asked the detective.

“Within a minute of that time, yes, sir.”

“And again about two or a minute or so after?”

“Yes.”

“Ah,” exclaimed the detective. “That fits in exactly with the other and establishes beyond question the moment of the murder.” He was thinking of the words “clock striking 2” written by the dying man. “Did you recognize the voices?”

“No, sir, I could not. They were not very clear.”

That was the substance of Moran’s story. Detective Mallory then called at the telegraph office and indisputable records there showed that they had telephoned a message for Mr. Thomas at precisely six minutes of two. Detective Mallory was satisfied.

Within an hour Franklin Chase was under arrest. Detective Mallory found him sound asleep in his room in a boarding house less than a block away from the Avon. He seemed somewhat astonished when informed of his arrest for murder, but was quite calm.

“It’s some sort of a mistake,” he protested.

“I don’t make mistakes,” said the detective. He had a short memory.

Further police investigation piled up the evidence against the prisoner. For instance, minute blood stains were found on his hands, and a drop or so on the clothing he had worn the night before; and it was established by three fellow lodgers—young men who had come in late and stopped at his room—that he was not in his boarding house at two o’clock the night before.

That afternoon Chase was arraigned for a preliminary hearing. Detective Mallory stated the case and his statement was corroborated by necessary witnesses. First he established the authenticity of the dying man’s writing. Then he proved that Chase had been with De Forrest at half past eleven o’clock; that there had been a quarrel—or argument—in De Forrest’s room just before two o’clock; and finally, with a dramatic flourish, he swore to the blood stains on the prisoner’s hands and clothing.

The august Court stared at the prisoner and took up his pen to sign the necessary commitment.

“May I say something before we go any further?” asked Mr. Chase.

The Court mumbled some warning about anything the prisoner might say being used against him.

“I understand,” said the accused, and he nodded, “but I will show that there has been a mistake—a serious mistake. I admit that the writing was Mr. De Forrest’s; that I was with him at half past eleven o’clock and that the stains on my hands and clothing were blood stains.”

The Court stared.

“I’ve known Mr. De Forrest for several years,” the prisoner went on quietly. “I met him at the theatre last night and walked home with him. We reached the Avon about half past eleven o’clock and I went to his room but I remained only ten or fifteen minutes. Then I went home. It was about five minutes of twelve when I reached my room. I went to bed and remained in bed until one o’clock, when for a reason which will appear, I arose, dressed and went out, say about ten minutes past one. I returned to my room a few minutes past three.”

Detective Mallory smiled sardonically.

“When I was arrested this morning I sent notes to three persons,” the prisoner went on steadily. “Two of these happen to be city officials, one the City Engineer. Will he please come forward?”

There was a little stir in the room and the Court scratched one ear gravely. City Engineer Malcolm appeared inquiringly.

“This is Mr. Malcolm?” asked the prisoner. “Yes? Here is a map of the city issued by your office. I would like to ask please the approximate distance between this point——” and he indicated on the map the location of the Avon— “and this.” He touched another point far removed.

The City Engineer studied the map carefully.

“At least two and a half miles,” he explained.

“You would make that statement on oath?”

“Yes, I’ve surveyed it myself.”

“Thank you,” said the prisoner, courteously, and he turned to face the crowd in the rear. “Is Policeman No. 1122 in Court?—I don’t know his name?”

Again there was a stir, and Policeman Gillis came forward.

“Do you remember me?” inquired the prisoner.

“Sure,” was the reply.

“Where did you see me last night?”

“At this corner,” and Gillis put his finger down on the map at the second point the prisoner had indicated.

The Court leaned forward eagerly to peer at the map; Detective Mallory tugged violently at his moustache. Into the prisoner’s manner there came tense anxiety.

“Do you know what time you saw me there?” he asked.

Policeman Gillis was thoughtful a moment.

“No,” he replied at last. “I heard a clock strike just after I saw you but I didn’t notice.”

The prisoner’s face went deathly white for an instant, then he recovered himself with an effort.

“You didn’t count the strokes?” he asked.

“No, I wasn’t paying any attention to it.”

The colour rushed back into Chase’s face and he was silent a moment. Then:

“It was two o’clock you heard strike?” It was hardly a question, rather a statement.

“I don’t know,” said Gillis. “It might have been. Probably was.”

“What did I say to you?”

“You asked me where you could find a dentist, and I directed you to Dr. Sitgreaves across the street.”

“You saw me enter Dr. Sitgreaves’ house?”

“Yes.”

The accused glanced up at the Court and that eminent jurist proceeded to look solemn.

“Dr. Sitgreaves, please?” called the prisoner.

The dentist appeared, exchanging nods with the prisoner.

“You remember me, doctor?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask you to tell the Court where you live? Show us on this map please.”

Dr. Sitgreaves put his finger down at the spot which had been pointed out by the prisoner and by Policeman Gillis, two and a half miles from the Avon.

“I live three doors from this corner,” explained the dentist.

“You pulled a tooth for me last night?” went on the prisoner.

“Yes.”

“Here?” and the prisoner opened his mouth.

The dentist gazed down him.

“Yes,” he replied.

“You may remember, doctor,” went on the prisoner, quietly, “that you had occasion to notice the clock just after I called at your house. Do you remember what time it was?”

“A few minutes before two—seven or eight minutes, I think.”

Detective Mallory and the Court exchanged bewildered glances.

“You looked at your watch, too. Was that exactly with the clock?”

“Yes, within a minute.”

“And what time did I leave your office?” the prisoner asked.

“Seventeen minutes past two—I happen to remember,” was the reply.

The prisoner glanced dreamily around the room twice, his eyes met Detective Mallory’s. He stared straight into that official for an instant then turned back to the dentist.

“When you drew the tooth there was blood of course. It is possible that I got the stains on my fingers and clothing?”

“Yes, certainly.”

The prisoner turned to the Court and surprised a puzzled expression on that official countenance.

“Is anything else necessary?” he inquired courteously. “It has been established that the moment of the crime was two o’clock; I have shown by three witnesses—two of them city officials—that I was two and a half miles away in less than half an hour; I couldn’t have gone on a car in less than fifteen minutes—hardly that.”

There was a long silence as the Court considered the matter. Finally he delivered himself, briefly.

“It resolves itself into a question of the accuracy of the clocks,” he said. “The accuracy of the clock at the Avon is attested by the known accuracy of the clock in the telegraph office, while it seems established that Dr. Sitgreaves’ clock was also accurate, because it was with his watch. Of course there is no question of veracity of witnesses—it is merely a question of the clock in Dr. Sitgreaves’ office. If that is shown to be absolutely correct we must accept the alibi.”

The prisoner turned to the elevator man from the Avon.

“What sort of a clock was that you mentioned?”

“An electric clock, regulated from Washington Observatory,” was the reply.

“And the clock at the telegraph office, Mr. Mallory?”

“An electric clock, regulated from Washington Observatory.”

“And yours, Dr. Sitgreaves?”

“An electric clock, regulated from Washington Observatory.”

The prisoner remained in his cell until seven o’clock that evening while experts tested the three clocks. They were accurate to the second; and it was explained that there could have been no variation of either without this variation showing in the delicate testing apparatus. Therefore it came to pass that Franklin Chase was released on his own recognizance, while Detective Mallory wandered off into the sacred precincts of his private office to hold his head in his hands and think.

Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, had followed the intricacies of the mystery from the discovery of De Forrest’s body, through the preliminary hearing, up to and including the expert examination of the clocks, which immediately preceded the release of Franklin Chase. When this point was reached his mental condition was not unlike that of Detective Mallory—he was groping hopelessly, blindly in the mazes of the problem.

It was then that he called to see Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen—The Thinking Machine. That distinguished gentleman listened to a recital of the known facts with petulant, drooping mouth and the everlasting squint in his blue eyes. As the reporter talked on, corrugations appeared in the logician’s expansive brow, and these gave way in turn to a net-work of wrinkles. At the end The Thinking Machine sat twiddling his long fingers and staring upward.

“This is one of the most remarkable cases that has come to my attention,” he said at last, “because it possesses the unusual quality of being perfect in each way—that is the evidence against Mr. Chase is perfect and the alibi he offers is perfect. But we know instantly that if Mr. Chase killed Mr. De Forrest there was something the matter with the clocks despite expert opinion.

“We know that as certainly as we know that two and two make four, not some times but all the time, because our reason tells us that Mr. Chase was not in two places at once at two o’clock. Therefore we must assume either one of two things—that something was the matter with the clocks—and if there was we must assume that Mr. Chase was responsible for it—or that Mr. Chase had nothing whatever to do with Mr. De Forrest’s death, at least personally.”

The last word aroused Hatch to a new and sudden interest. It suggested a line of thought which had not yet occurred to him.

“Now,” continued the scientist, “if we can find one flaw in Mr. Chase’s story we will have achieved the privilege of temporarily setting aside his defence and starting over. If, on the contrary, he told the full and exact truth and our investigation proves that he did, it instantly clears him. Now just what have you done, please?”

“I talked to Dr. Sitgreaves,” replied Hatch. “He did not know Chase—never saw him until he pulled the tooth, and then didn’t know his name. But he told me really more than appeared in court, for instance, that his watch had been regulated only a few days ago, that it had been accurate since, and that he knew it was accurate next day because he kept an important engagement. That being accurate the clock must be accurate, because they were together almost to the second.

“I also talked to every other person whose name appears in the case. I questioned them as to all sorts of possibilities, and the result was that I was compelled to accept the alibi—not that I’m unwilling to of course, but it seems peculiar that De Forrest should have written the name as he was dying.”

“You talked to the young men who went into Mr. Chase’s room at two o’clock?” inquired The Thinking Machine casually.

“Yes.”

“Did you ask either of them the condition of Mr. Chase’s bed when they went in?”

“Yes,” replied the reporter. “I see what you mean. They agreed that it was tumbled as if someone had been in it.”

The Thinking Machine raised his eyebrows slightly.

“Suppose, Mr. Hatch, that you had a violent toothache,” he asked after a moment, still casually, “and were looking for relief, would you stop to notice the number of a policeman who told you where there was a dentist’s office?”

Hatch considered it calmly, as he stared into the inscrutable face of the scientist.

“Oh, I see,” he said at last. “No, I hardly think so, and yet I might.”

Later Hatch and The Thinking Machine, by permission of Detective Mallory, made an exhaustive search of De Forrest’s apartments in the Avon, seeking some clue. When the Thinking Machine went down the single flight of stairs to the office he seemed deeply perplexed.

“Where is your clock?” he inquired of the elevator man.

“In the inside office, opposite the telephone booth,” was the reply.

The scientist went in and taking a stool, clambered up and squinted fiercely into the very face of the timepiece. He said “Ah!” once, non-commitally, then clambered down.

“It would not be possible for anyone here to see a person pass through the hall,” he mused. “Now,” and he picked up a telephone book, “just a word with Dr. Sitgreaves.”

He asked the dentist only two questions and their nature caused Hatch to smile. The first was:

“You have a pocket in the shirt of your pajamas?”

“Yes,” came the wondering reply.

“And when you are called at night you pick up your watch and put it in that pocket?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks. Good-bye.”

Then The Thinking Machine turned to Hatch.

“We are safe in believing,” he said, “that Mr. De Forrest was not killed by a thief, because his valuables were undisturbed, therefore we must believe that the person who killed him was an acquaintance. It would be unfair to act hastily, so I shall ask you to devote three or four days to getting this man’s history in detail; see his friends and enemies, find out all about him, his life, his circumstances, his love affairs—all those things.”

Hatch nodded; he was accustomed to receiving large orders from The Thinking Machine.

“If you uncover nothing in that line to suggest another line of investigation I will give you the name of the person who killed him and an arrest will follow. The murderer will not run away. The solution of the affair is quite clear, unless——” he emphasized the word— “unless some unknown fact gives it another turn.”

Hatch was forced to be content with that and for the specified four days laboured arduously and vainly. Then he returned to The Thinking Machine and summed up results briefly in one word: “Nothing.”

The Thinking Machine went out and was gone two hours. When he returned he went straight to the ’phone and called Detective Mallory. The detective appeared after a few minutes.

“Have one of your men go at once and arrest Mr. Chase,” The Thinking Machine instructed. “You might explain to him that there is new evidence—an eye witness if you like. But don’t mention my name or this place to him. Anyway bring him here and I’ll show you the flaw in the perfect alibi he set up!”

Detective Mallory started to ask questions.

“It comes down simply to this,” interrupted The Thinking Machine impatiently. “Somebody killed Mr. De Forrest and that being true it must be that that somebody can be found. Please, when Mr. Chase comes here do not interrupt me, and introduce me to him as an important new witness.”

An hour later Franklin Chase entered with Detective Mallory. He was somewhat pale and nervous and in his eyes lay a shadow of apprehension. Over it all was the gloss of ostentatious nonchalance and self control. There were introductions. Chase started visibly at actual reference to the “important new witness.”

“An eye witness,” added The Thinking Machine.

Positive fright came into Chase’s manner and he quailed under the steady scrutiny of the narrow blue eyes. The Thinking Machine dropped back into his chair and pressed his long, white fingers tip to tip.

“If you’ll just follow me a moment, Mr. Chase,” he suggested at last. “You know Dr. Sitgreaves, of course? Yes. Well, it just happens that I have a room a block or so away from his house around the corner. These are Mr. Hatch’s apartments.” He stated it so convincingly that there was no possibility of doubt. “Now my room faces straight up an alley which runs directly back of Dr. Sitgreaves’s house. There is an electric light at the corner.”

Chase started to say something, gulped, then was silent.

“I was in my room the night of Mr. De Forrest’s murder,” went on the scientist, “and was up moving about because I, too, had a toothache. It just happened that I glanced out my front window.” His tone had been courteous in the extreme; now it hardened perceptibly. “I saw you, Mr. Chase, come along the street, stop at the alley, glance around and then go into the alley. I saw your face clearly under the electric light, and that was at twenty minutes to three o’clock. Detective Mallory has just learned of this fact and I have signified my willingness to go on the witness stand and swear to it.”

The accused man was deathly white now; his face was working strangely, but still he was silent. It was only by a supreme effort that he restrained himself.

“I saw you open a gate and go into the back yard of Dr. Sitgreaves’s house,” resumed The Thinking Machine. “Five minutes or so later you came out and walked on to the cross street, where you disappeared. Naturally I wondered what it meant. It was still in my mind about half past three o’clock, possibly later, when I saw you enter the alley again, disappear in the same yard, then come out and go away.”

“I—I was not—not there,” said Chase weakly. “You were—were mistaken.”

“When we know,” continued The Thinking Machine steadily, “that you entered that house before you entered by the front door, we know that you tampered with Dr. Sitgreaves’s watch and clock, and when we know that you tampered with those we know that you murdered Mr. De Forrest as his dying note stated. Do you see it?”

Chase arose suddenly and paced feverishly back and forth across the room; Detective Mallory discreetly moved his chair in front of the door. Chase saw and understood.

“I know how you tampered with the clock so as not to interfere with its action or cause any variation at the testing apparatus. You were too superbly clever to stop it, or interfere with the circuit. Therefore I see that you simply took out the pin which held on the hands and moved them backward one hour. It was then actually a quarter of three—you made it a quarter of two. You showed your daring by invading the dentist’s sleeping room. You found his watch on a table beside his bed, set that with the clock, then went out, spoke to Policeman Gillis whose number you noted and rang the front door bell. After you left by the front door you allowed time for the household to get quiet again, then re-entered from the rear and reset the watch and clock. Thus your alibi was perfect. You took desperate chances and you knew it, but it was necessary.”

The Thinking Machine stopped and squinted up into the pallid face. Chase made a hopeless gesture with his hands and sat down, burying his face.

“It was clever, Mr. Chase,” said the scientist finally. “It is the only murder case I know where the criminal made no mistake. You probably killed Mr. De Forrest in a fit of anger, left there while the elevator boy was upstairs, then saw the necessity of protecting yourself and devised this alibi at the cost of one tooth. Your only real danger was when you made Patrolman Gillis your witness, taking the desperate chance that he did not know or would not remember just when you spoke to him.”

Again there was silence. Finally Chase looked up with haggard face.

“How did you know all this?” he asked.

“Because under the exact circumstances, nothing else could have happened,” replied the scientist. “The simplest rules of logic proved conclusively that this did happen.” He straightened up in the chair. “By the way,” he asked, “what was the motive of the murder?”

“Don’t you know?” asked Chase, quickly.

“No.”

“Then you never will,” declared Chase, grimly.

When Chase had gone with the detective, Hatch lingered with The Thinking Machine.

“It’s perfectly astonishing,” he said. “How did you get at it anyway?”

“I visited the neighbourhood, saw how it could have been done, learned through your investigation that no one else appeared in the case, then, knowing that this must have happened, tricked Mr. Chase into believing I was an eye witness to the incident in the alley. That was the only way to make him confess. Of course there was no one else in it.”

One of the singular points in the Chase murder trial was that while the prisoner was convicted of murder on his own statement no inkling of a motive ever appeared.

_______________

3. The Problem of the Private Compartment

Leaning forward in his seat, the driver lashed his horses into a gallop. The carriage had barely halted at the railroad station, when a woman leaped out. She was closely veiled; but her slender figure revealed the fact that she was little more than a girl. She paused just long enough to hand the driver a bill, then hurried to a train.

When the conductor passed through the cars he found the slender young woman sitting in one of the day coaches. She paid her fare in cash through to Albany, and made inquiry about accommodations in the sleeping car. He volunteered to arrange the matter for her; and so it came to pass that half an hour after she had boarded the train she was ushered into the more exclusive rear car.

“We have only one upper berth,” the conductor there apologized.

“Oh, well, it doesn’t really matter,” she remarked listlessly, and was shown to a seat.

Then for the first time she raised her veil. Her pretty face was still flushed from the excitement of catching the train; but a haunting, furtive fear mingled with a shade of sorrow in the shadowy, dark eyes, and the red lips expressed a sullen defiance. For a long time she sat moodily thoughtful, staring out of the window; then the growing dusk obliterated the flying landscape, and the porter came through to light the lamps.

After awhile the door of the drawing room compartment at one end of the car opened, and a young woman glanced out. It might have been idle curiosity which caused her to scrutinize the lounging passengers; but her eyes paused, with a flash of recognition, on the crisp, brown hair of the slender young woman just half a dozen seats ahead, and she went forward.

“Why, Julia!” she exclaimed. “I hadn’t the faintest idea you were on the train!”

First there came an embarrassed surprise into the face of the slender young woman; but it was instantly followed by an expression of relief.

“Oh, Mary! How you startled me!”

There was a little interchange of greetings, which ended by Miss Mary Langham leading Miss Julia Farrar back into the snug little drawing room. They had been classmates at Vassar, these two, and there were a thousand things to talk about; yet in the manner of each was a certain restraint, a vague, indefinable reserve. As a breaking point of a sudden silence which fell between them, Miss Farrar mentioned the upper berth that she had been given.

“Well, don’t worry about that a moment, my dear,” urged Miss Langham cheerfully. “I have this whole big compartment, and there are two lower berths. You shall take one, and I’ll take the other.” There was silence for a moment. “But, my dear girl, where are you going?”

“I’m going to Albany—now,” was the reply.

“Right on the eve of your——”

“I’m not going to marry Mr. Devore!” interrupted Miss Farrar with quick passion.

Miss Langham lifted her arched brows in astonishment. “Why, Julia, you amaze me!” she exclaimed.

“I’m running away from him now,” she went on.

Miss Langham stared at her blankly for an instant. Defiance flamed in Miss Farrar’s face; there were tense little lines about the mouth, and the lips were pressed sternly together. But at last some glimmer of comprehension seemed to reach Miss Langham, and with it came an expression which might almost have been of relief. With a quick movement she seized Miss Farrar’s hand.

“I think I understand, dear,” she said sympathetically at last. “Under all circumstances, I don’t know that I can blame you either. Mr. Devore must know that you don’t love him.”

“Well, if he doesn’t, it isn’t because I haven’t told him so, goodness knows!” replied Miss Farrar.

Miss Langham laughed lightly, and her eyes reflected some strange, new born light, a glimmer of satisfaction.

“Poor fellow!” she mused. “And he is so devoted!”

“I don’t want his devotion!” blazed Miss Farrar. “The mere sight of him is intolerable to me. It’s all just like—like I was being sold to him. It’s perfectly hideous, and I won’t—I won’t—I won’t!”

Defiance melted into tears of anger and mortification, and Miss Farrar lay against Miss Langham’s shoulder while her slender figure was shaken by a storm of sobs. Miss Langham stroked the crisp, brown hair back from the white temples, and continued to stare dreamily out of the window.

“Even my father and mother and brother conspired with him against me,” Miss Farrar sobbed after a time. “They insisted on the marriage from the first, merely because Mr. Devore happens to be wealthy. I don’t know why I ever agreed, unless it was just desperation. I detest the man, and yet the members of my own family, knowing that, could only think of the brilliant match, the money, and social position which marriage would bring.”

“To-morrow it was to have been,” mused Miss Langham vacantly.

“Yes, to-morrow. For weeks and weeks it has been a nightmare to me, and last night, somehow, I seemed to go all to pieces. The sight of the wedding gown made me perfectly furious. All to-day I thought of it, and thought of it, until my head seemed bursting. Then late this afternoon I could stand it no longer; so I—I ran away. I suppose it’s horrid of me, and I know my father and mother will never forgive me for the scandal it will cause; but I don’t care. They’ve made me almost hate them. I’m going to my aunt’s in Albany and remain there for a few days. Of course, my father will be furious, and will try to force me to return; but she’s a dear loyal soul and won’t let them take me away. Then I shall decide about the future.”

“I can’t imagine a worse fate than marriage with a man whom you don’t love,” said Miss Langham after a pause. “I don’t blame you at all. But remember, my dear, in giving up your family you will have to look out for yourself—perhaps earn your own living?”

“I don’t care,” continued Miss Farrar passionately. “I have fifty or sixty dollars now, and before that is gone surely I can get a place as teacher, or governess, or something. I will do something.”

“And I have no doubt that everything will come right,” Miss Langham assured her. She raised the tear stained face between her hands and printed a kiss on each damp cheek. “And now, my dear, you need repose. Lie down and rest for awhile.”

With the obedience of a child Miss Farrar lay across the berth, and after awhile, with Miss Langham’s hand clasped between her own, closed her red, swollen eyes in sleep.

It was perhaps half an hour later that Miss Langham pressed her call button beside the door. A porter appeared.

“What is the next stop?” she inquired.

“East Newlands,” was the reply.

“Can I send a telegram from there?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Langham gently detached her fingers from the clinging clasp of the sleeping girl, and scribbled a telegram on a blank which the porter offered. It was addressed to J. Charles Wingate, in a small city, just beyond Albany, and said:

Have changed my mind. This is irrevocable.    M.

When the train pulled into Albany the following morning Miss Julia Farrar was found dead in her berth, fully dressed, except for her hat. A thirty-two caliber bullet had entered her body just below the left shoulder. Miss Langham herself gave the alarm. When physicians came they agreed that Miss Farrar had been dead for at least two hours.

Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen—The Thinking Machine—absorbed, digested, and assimilated all the known facts in the problem of the private compartment. Instantly that singular, penetrating brain beneath the mop of tangled, straw yellow hair was alive with questions.

“Who is Miss Langham?” was the first query.

“She is the daughter of Daniel Eustace Langham, president of a national bank in his home city,” replied Hutchinson Hatch, reporter. “She and Miss Farrar were classmates in Vassar, and met by accident on the train.”

“Do you know they met by accident?”

“It seems to have been by accident,” the reporter amended. “As a matter of fact, Miss Langham was on the train first—in fact, had engaged the drawing room compartment a couple of days ahead.”

“Does she know—Miss Langham, I mean— know Devore?”

“Very well indeed,” responded the reporter. “A couple of years ago he was rather assiduous in his attentions to her. That was before Devore met Miss Farrar.”

The Thinking Machine turned suddenly in his chair and squinted into the eyes of the newspaper man. Faint corrugations in the dome-like brow were swept away.

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “An old love affair! How did it come to be broken off?”

“I imagine it was Devore who broke it off,” replied Hatch. “When he met Miss Farrar it resulted in a quick transfer of attentions. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t seem to be a very pleasant sort of person, anyway—spoiled son and sole heir of a man worth millions. You know what that means.”

“And where was Miss Langham going at the time of the tragedy?” inquired the scientist.

“To visit some friends just beyond Albany.”

For a long time The Thinking Machine was silent, while Hatch turned over those vague impressions which the scientist’s manner and words had created.

“That seems to simplify the matter somewhat,” mused The Thinking Machine at last.

“You don’t mean,” blurted Hatch quickly—“you don’t mean that Miss Langham could have had anything to do with Miss Farrar’s death?”

“Why not?” demanded The Thinking Machine coldly.

“But her social position, her wealth, everything, would seem to remove her beyond the range of suspicion,” Hatch protested.

The Thinking Machine regarded him with frank disapproval. “Two and two always make four, Mr. Hatch,” he said shortly. “We have here a motive for the crime—jealousy—and practically exclusive opportunity. Social position and wealth do not deter criminals; they only make them more cunning. In this case two and two make four so obviously that I am surprised Miss Langham wasn’t arrested immediately. Where is she now, by the way?”

“With her father and mother at the Hotel Bellevoir in town here,” Hatch responded. “Immediately after the tragedy was reported she returned here, and her father and mother joined her. She is now suffering from shock, and inaccessible—at least to reporters.”

“Any physician?”

“Dr. Barrow and Dr. Curtis are attending her.”

“I may call on her in person,” remarked The Thinking Machine. “And now about this man Devore? Have you seen him?”

“He was the first man the police wanted to see,” explained the reporter. “They have already made him account for his every move on the night of the murder. Of course, a motive in his case would be obvious—anger, revenge, jealousy, anything.”

“And where was he between, say, midnight and breakfast that night?”

“He says he was asleep at home.”

“He says!” snapped The Thinking Machine abruptly. “Don’t you know?”

“Not of my knowledge.”

“Well, find out!” was the curt instruction. “That isn’t one of the things that we can be at all uncertain about.”

Hatch opened his eyes again. Here were two lines of investigation laid out by the scientist, either one of which might, if pursued to a logical conclusion, convict a person of wealth and position of a terrible crime.

“And Miss Farrar’s family?” continued The Thinking Machine mercilessly. “Where were her father and brother that night?”

“Surely you can’t believe that——”

“I never believe anything, Mr. Hatch, until I know it. I merely wanted to know where they were; for on that side too it is possible to conceive a motive for Miss Farrar’s death.”

“There has been no inquiry in that direction at all,” explained the bewildered reporter. “I’ll begin one.”

Then for a time The Thinking Machine sat with fingertips pressed idly together, squinting blankly at the ceiling.

“While a motive is never absolutely essential to the solution of any criminal problem,” he observed after awhile, “it will frequently indicate a line of investigation. Now, in the usual case when a motive appears the solution is inevitable. But this case differs from the usual case in that we have too many motives—three excellent ones that we know—a jealous woman, a suitor discarded on the eve of his wedding, and perhaps a vengeful father or brother. And beyond those there are other possibilities.”

Hatch went about his business with turbulent, troubled thoughts—a vague sense of treading on dangerous ground—while The Thinking Machine turned to the telephone. Five minutes later he picked up his hat and went to the Hotel  Bellevoir.

“Did Dr. Curtis telephone you?” he inquired of the clerk.

“Yes. Is this Mr. Van Dusen?”

The Thinking Machine bobbed his head, and was ushered into Miss Langham’s apartments.

Pallid as the sheets, resistlessly inert, the girl lay staring upward as if fascinated by the brilliant scintillating point which floated backward and forward rhythmically before her eyes as The Thinking Machine slowly waved his arm. It was like some weird exorcism, some uncanny incantation, but it compelled attention.

“Watch it closely, please!”

The scientist’s tone was low, almost a whisper, yet it carried a command. The swing of his arm shortened gradually, almost imperceptibly, and slowly the bright spot passed upward in little erratic circles until it was directly before her eyes. And there it stopped for a moment. After awhile it moved on again, still farther upward, in a straight line, until the girl was aware of a queerly strained feeling in her eyes. It paused again, then very, very slowly began to move round and round.

After awhile the fascination in the girl’s eyes gave way to a vacant staring, and the pupils distended, as a mist crept over them. Slowly, slowly, the swing of the bright spot decreased, until at last it hung motionless, suspended in air, between the slim fingers of the scientist. Thus for a time, and the vacant staring became glassy—dead. Then the bright spot was withdrawn, materializing as the lower part of the bowl of a silver spoon which The Thinking Machine laid on the table beside him. One hand passed over the girl’s white face once. The long fingers lingered caressingly on the lids, and pressed them together.

The Thinking Machine passed round from the head of the couch where the girl lay and took a seat, with his hand on her wrist. The pulse fluttered a little, but he nodded his head as if satisfied.

“You are on a train—in a private compartment,” he said, still in a voice that was almost a whisper.

“Yes,” breathed the girl. It was nearly inaudible.

“A young woman is sleeping there.”

“Yes,” came the sigh again.

“You hate her.”

“No.”

It was a flat, unequivocal denial, and the dreamy, sighing tone hardened suddenly. Again The Thinking Machine pressed his fingers down on her eyelids, and sat silent for a time.

“You dislike her,” he suggested.

“No,” the girl denied once more dreamily. “She and I were——” and the phrase drifted off into intangible incoherency.

“You have a revolver in your traveling bag.”

“Yes.”

The petulant, crabbed face of The Thinking Machine lighted suddenly, exultantly. But when he spoke again it was in the same whispering monotone. “You always carry a revolver when traveling.”

“No.”

“Your revolver is thirty-two caliber.”

“I don’t know.”

“The sleeping woman loves the man you love.”

“Yes.”

“She is at your mercy; therefore you will kill her.”

“No, no, no!”

There was a sudden horror in the voice, a strange, convulsive working of the face, and the eyelids fluttered. Thrice The Thinking Machine passed his hands over her face, and she became calm again.

“You are back in your own apartments at the Hotel Bellevoir,” he continued after a minute.

“Yes,” she answered readily.

“Your revolver is in the traveling bag.”

“No.”

The Thinking Machine glanced quickly round the room, and again his eyes settled on the pallid face.

“It is in the dressing table.”

“Yes.”

With set, inscrutable face, the scientist arose and went to the table. In the drawer lay a handsomely mounted weapon. He picked it up, examined it closely as he whirled the barrel in his fingers, and then replaced it, after which he returned to the girl.

“You have fainted,” he said. “You will return to consciousness in a moment.”

He leaned forward and blew gently into the closed eyes, and the girl sighed. Thrice he did this, then a trace of color appeared in the face, and she raised her eyelids. For an instant she stared into the drawn face of the scientist.

“Why, I must have fainted,” she said.

Hutchinson Hatch burst into the laboratory, where The Thinking Machine was at work, with an air of excitement which caused the eminent scientist to turn and squint at him in disapproval.

“That man Devore lied about where——” he began.

“Just a moment, Mr. Hatch,” interrupted The Thinking Machine curtly. “Did you see the sleeping car in which Miss Farrar was killed?”

“Yes,” replied the reporter, and, somewhat abashed, sat down.

“I suppose the windows were all screened, as is usually the case?”

“Why, I suppose so,” was the reply.

“Was there any hole of any sort in the screen of the window in the private compartment?”

“Oh, I see what you mean. Shot from the outside. No, there was no hole.”

The brow of the scientist had been smooth and unruffled as the summer sea; but now the minute corrugations which Hatch knew so well appeared again, and he sat silent for a time.

“When you came in you started to say——” he remarked at last.

“That Devore lied as to where he was the night Miss Farrar was killed,” Hatch hastened to explain. “He said he was at home in bed. I have the word of two servants that he was not, and have learned that he was at Troy that night.”

“Well?” inquired the scientist impassively.

“Troy is just a short distance from Albany,” the reporter rushed on. “The train had to pass so near there, don’t you see, that Devore might have boarded it, and——”

He paused. The Thinking Machine arose suddenly, and paced back and forth across the room twice.

“Why was he in Troy?” he asked.

“It was some sort of dinner—a stag affair, I imagine—the night before the day of the wedding,” said Hatch.

“And I dare say young Farrar, Miss Farrar’s brother, was with him?”

“Yes, he was. You didn’t give me time.”

The Thinking Machine passed into the adjoining room, and Hatch heard the telephone bell. Fifteen minutes later he came out.

“Devore and Farrar spent the night—that is from midnight until eight o’clock in the morning of the murder—in adjoining rooms at a hotel in Troy,” explained the scientist. “They were asleep there. So that makes the affair perfectly clear.”

“Perfectly clear?” exclaimed Hatch. “Perfectly clear? I don’t see how you make that out, when—”

The Thinking Machine started out, with Hatch following. They went straight to the Hotel Bellevoir, and sent their cards to Langham. He was staring blankly at a telegram when they entered. He recognized The Thinking Machine by name as a physician who had called on his daughter.

“Your daughter is engaged to be married, isn’t she, Mr. Langham?” inquired the scientist.

“Yes, she was,” he replied wonderingly. “Why?”

“And she was, I believe, on her way to visit some friends in a small city just beyond Albany when this—this unhappy event occurred?”

“Yes,” Langham assented again.

“Perhaps the family of the man to whom she was betrothed?”

Again Langham assented.

“And what is the man of this man, please?”

“J. Charles Wingate,” was the reply. “I’ve just got a telegram from him. Here it is.”

The Thinking Machine glanced at the yellow slip of paper. The message was dated at New York city, and said tersely:

Wedding impossible. I cannot explain.     Wingate.

“It’s an outrage,” declared Langham.

“It’s a confession,” remarked The Thinking Machine.

“When we remove Miss Langham as a possibility,” The Thinking Machine told Hatch and Detective Mallory, “we inevitably bring the murder of Miss Farrar down to a man. And I may say that I personally demonstrated Miss Langham’s innocence by a little experiment in mechanical hypnotism. She confessed that she had a revolver on the train. But her revolver was a twenty-two caliber, and the bullet that killed Miss Farrar was a thirty-two. So there was no further need to consider her.

“I also removed Devore by establishing an alibi for him even after he had lied to the police as to his whereabouts on the night of the crime. Why he lied doesn’t appear, and is of no consequence now. I proved his whereabouts conclusively by telephone, and at the same time proved the whereabouts of Miss Farrar’s brother, thus eliminating both at the same time. Then what?

“Everyone had presumed—and I also did at first—that the person who killed Miss Farrar was in the private compartment with her. And yet, if that was true, why didn’t the shot awake Miss Langham? When I knew that she was innocent the logic of the thing indicated that the shot came from the outside.

“It was a warm night, and we shall suppose the window was open. Was the screen in it? It did not have a hole in it; so I presumed it was not. Then the possibilities became infinite. The first thing to do was dispose of Devore and Miss Farrar’s brother. I did that. Both you gentlemen recall, I dare say, the peculiar circumstances surrounding the murder of the young woman in a box at the opera? Yes. Instantly that came to me—perhaps the wrong woman had been killed. If so, we must look for a motive for the murder of Miss Langham.

“Well, we know that there had once been a love affair between Miss Langham and Devore. Was it possible that, despite her engagement to another man, Miss Langham still loved Devore?—that she learned Miss Farrar’s story, and then and there decided to jilt the man to whom she was engaged, because of this love for Devore, who was now, by the act of Miss Farrar, cast aside? If so, would she have telegraphed to him this change of mind? If we suppose that she was expecting to meet him in a few hours—in other words, visit his family—we can imagine her telegraphing from the train, while her intention was to go no further than Albany, where she would turn back.

“That hypothesis made the entire matter perfectly clear. She did telegraph her decision to J. Charles Wingate, and a motive for her murder was instantly created—revenge. Now, he probably knew what train she was on, that she had taken the private compartment in a certain sleeping car on that train, and it is not only possible but probable that he took a train to meet it.

“Some time between the moment he received the telegram and met the train on which she was a passenger he resolved upon murder. The method? What better than firing through the window while the train was standing at some small station? The shot might not attract attention, particularly as the sleeping car was the last on the train, and it was, say, four o’clock in the morning. He did fire through the window; therefore the shot, being outside, did not disturb Miss Langham, already accustomed to the roar and clatter of the train. Wingate merely looked in, saw a woman asleep, and fired. He did not know that he had killed the wrong woman, perhaps, until the matter got into the newspapers.”

There was a long silence. Detective Mallory and Hatch exchanged glances; then the detective turned to The Thinking Machine.

“And where is Wingate?” he inquired.

“Mr. Langham received a telegram from him dated at New York,” was the reply. “I imagine it was sent on the eve of his flight, perhaps abroad. I should advise, anyway, that a watch be kept on the steamers as they arrive on the other side.”

And eight days later J. Charles Wingate was arrested as he walked down the gangplank of a steamer at Liverpool. He had gone over in the steerage.

________________

4. The Problem of the Red Rose

Through the open windows of a pleasantly sunny little sitting room a lazy breath of early summer drifted in, and gently stirred the wayward hair of a girl who leaned forward over a small writing desk with her head resting upon one white fore arm, and her face hidden. Her attitude was one of utter collapse, complete abandonment perhaps to grief or perhaps to actual physical suffering; yet there was no movement of the slender, graceful body, nothing to indicate even a passive interest in her surroundings—just this silent, motionless figure, alone.

One arm, the left, swung down listlessly at her side, and in that hand she held a single red rose, a splendid, full blown crimson blossom. The thorny stem touched the floor, and the leaves swayed rhythmically, playthings of the caressing breeze. On the green stem, just below the girl’s tightly clenched hand, was a single stain—a drop of blood—as if the thorn had pierced the delicate flesh. On the desk, from which dainty writing trinkets had been pushed back, was a florist’s box, open. It was from this box evidently that the red rose had been taken. The wax paper which had been wrapped round the flower was torn.

A Dresden clock on the mantel whirred faintly and chimed the hour of five; but the girl gave not the slightest indication of having heard. And then after a moment a door opened and a maid appeared. She paused as her eyes fell upon the figure of the young woman, made as if to speak, then instead silently withdrew, leaving the door slightly open. She did not seem surprised that no notice was taken of her. A dozen times she had found her young mistress like this, and it was always after the box had come from the florist’s with the single red rose. She sighed a little as she went out.

The hands of the clock crept on round the dial slowly, to five minutes past the hour, then to ten, and finally to fifteen. Then there came a scampering of soft feet along the hall, and a white, shaggy little dog thrust his head in at the door inquisitively. Helterskelter he came tumbling in and planted two soiled fore feet in the girl’s lap as he awaited the caress which was always ready for him. Now it didn’t come. He backed away and regarded her thoughtfully. It must be some new sort of game she was playing. He crouched on the floor and barked playfully; but she didn’t look round.

Evidently this was not what was expected of him. He scampered back and forth across the room twice, then returned to the motionless figure and placed his feet in her lap again. She wouldn’t look. He barked, whined softly, then off like the wind round the room again. He stopped on her left side this time—the side where the arm swung down, and the hand clutched the rose. His moist tongue caressed the closed hand, and sniffed at it insistently. Suddenly he seemed dazed, and reeled uncertainly as if from an unexpected blow. He whined again as if choking; there was a rattle in his shaggy throat; and then began a violent whirling, twisting, which continued till he fell. After awhile he lay still with all four feet turned upward and glazed, staring eyes. And yet the girl hadn’t moved.

The hands of the clock crept on. At five minutes of six o’clock the maid appeared at the door again, paused for a moment, then ventured in. “Will you dress for dinner, ma’am?” she inquired.

The girl didn’t answer.

“It’s nearly six o’clock, ma’am,” said the maid.

Still there was no answer.

The maid approached her young mistress and touched her lightly on the shoulder. “You’ll be late, unless——” she began.

And then something about the unresisting, impassive figure frightened her. She shook the girl sharply and called her name many times. Finally with an effort she raised the shapely head. What she saw in the upturned face wrung scream after scream from her lips, now suddenly ashen, and turning she staggered toward the door with unutterable horror in her widely distended eyes. She clutched at the door frame to steady herself, screamed again, and fell forward, fainting. There they found them: Miss Edna Burdock dead with hideously distorted face,—a face upon which was written some awful agony,—and the rose still clasped so fiercely in her hand that the thorns had pierced the palm; her little dog Tatters dead beside her; and the maid, Goodwin, unconscious. For half an hour two servants worked over the maid; but when at last she opened her eyes she only screamed and babbled incoherently. There were no marks on Miss Burdock’s body save the prick of thorns in her left hand—nothing that would indicate the manner of death; nor was there the slightest thing to explain the death of the dog.

“The police are not at all certain that Miss Burdock’s death was due to anything more mysterious than heart failure,” Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, was explaining. “In that event, of course——”

“In that event, of course,” interrupted Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen—The Thinking Machine—crabbedly, “their theory must be that the pet dog died at the same time of the same disease?”

“That seems to be about the way they look at it, although there are several curious features,” the reporter went on; “for instance, the expression on her face.” He shuddered a little. “I saw her. It was awful. The dog too. There was not a mark or scratch on the dog—not even the prick of a thorn like that in the girl’s palm, therefore heart failure seems to be the only thing that will cover the case, unless——”

“Fidldesticks!” exclaimed the irritable little scientist. “Persons who die of heart failure don’t show suffering in their faces, and little dogs don’t have heart failure. What did the autopsy show?”

“Nothing illuminating,” responded the reporter. “There was no trace of poison in Miss Burdock’s system; a blood test showed her blood to be about normal, and yet she was dead. There was a peculiar constriction of the heart, and the same thing was true of the dog. The medical examiner’s report brought out these facts; but there was no poison—they were just dead.”

“When did this happen, Mr. Hatch?”

“Yesterday afternoon, Monday.”

“You tell me the maid found the body. Has she said anything about noticing any odor when she entered the room?”

“Not a word; but there are curious things——”

“In a minute, Mr. Hatch,” interrupted The Thinking Machine impatiently. “Were the windows open?”

“Yes,” replied the reporter. “She was sitting at her desk, between two open windows.”

The man of science dropped back in his chair, and for a long time sat silent with the perpetually squinting eyes turned upward, and slender white fingers pressed tip to tip. Hatch lighted a cigarette, smoked it, and threw the butt away before he spoke.

“There are peaches in the market, I think, Mr. Hatch,” said the scientist at last. “When you go out, buy one, cut the meat off, crush the kernel, take it to the maid, and ask her to smell it. Ask her if she noticed yesterday any odor similar to that when she entered the room and was near the girl’s body.”

Hatch absorbed the instructions wonderingly, then ventured a remark. “I presume you are thinking of poison. Isn’t there a chance that despite the normal condition of her blood some sort of poison was introduced into her system—I mean that the thorns of the rose might have been poisoned, for instance.”

“You say there was no scratch or thorn prick on the dog?” asked The Thinking Machine in answer.

“No mark of any sort.”

“And the dog is dead. That answers your question, Mr. Hatch.” He relapsed into silence.

“Poison on the thorns could not have killed both of them, because only the woman’s hand showed the marks?” Hatch asked.

“Precisely,” was the reply. “Unless we allow for coincidence, and that has never been reduced to a scientific law, we must say that both the woman and the dog died of the same cause. When we know that, we prove that the thorn prick had nothing to do with the woman’s death. Two and two make four, Mr. Hatch, not sometimes but all the time. And so what have we left?”

“I don’t see that we have anything left,” remarked Hatch frankly. “If there is no outward cause, how can we——”

“The mere fact that there is no apparent cause, or outward cause, as you term it, makes the manner of death of both the woman and the dog perfectly plain,” declared The Thinking Machine belligerently. “There is no mystery about that at all—it’s obvious. Our problem is not what killed her, but who killed her.”

“Yes, that seems quite clear,” the reporter admitted.

Minute after minute passed while the scientist sat staring upward. Finally he lowered his eyes to the face of the newspaper man. “Where did this red rose come from?” he demanded.

“I was going to tell you about that,” responded Hatch. “It came from Lamperti’s, a florist. The police are investigating it now. It seems, according to a statement of the manager of the shop, that on June 16 he received a special delivery letter from Washington with only a typewritten, unsigned slip of paper inclosed. This directed that one dozen red roses be sent to Miss Burdock, one at a time on specified days, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. They accepted the order,—there was no way to return the money anyway,—and so——”

He paused to gaze curiously into the eyes of The Thinking Machine. They were drawn down to mere slits of watery blue and some subtle change had altered the straight line of the lips.

“Well, well!” grumbled the scientist. “Go on!”

“As a rule the long box with the one rose was delivered at the house by one of the wagons of the company,” the reporter continued; “but some days when the wagon was not going in that direction the box was sent by a messenger boy. This last rose went to her by messenger.”

“And have all the roses been sent?”

“So the manager says.”

“And where is the red rose—the one she had in her hand when found?”

“Detective Mallory has it in charge, I suppose,” explained the reporter. “He has an idea that Miss Burdock was killed by poison on the thorns; so he stripped them off and sent them to a chemist to see if any trace of poison could be found. I presume he kept the flower and the box it came in.”

“That’s just like Mallory,” commented the scientist testily. “Whenever the police want to keep a cat’s teeth from falling out they cut off its tail. Now tell me something about Miss Burdock herself. Who was she? What was she? What were her circumstances?” He settled back in his chair for a categorical answer.

“She was the only daughter of Plympton Burdock; a man who is not wealthy, but who is well to do,” answered Hatch. “She lived at home with her father, her mother, and a younger brother, a chap about eighteen or nineteen years old. She was something of a social favorite, although not yet quite twenty-one, and went about a great deal; so——”

“So naturally a great many men, some of whom admired her,” The Thinking Machine finished for him. “Now who are the men? Tell me about her love affairs?”

“It hasn’t appeared yet that there was a love affair, in the sense you mean. At least, if there was no one knew of it.”

“Doesn’t the maid Goodwin know?” insisted the scientist.

“She says she doesn’t.”

“But somebody sent the rose. The mere fact that she received the one rose a dozen times indicates that some one was interested in her. Therefore, who was it? Who?”

“That’s what the police are trying to find out now.”

The Thinking Machine arose suddenly, picked up his hat and planted it aggressively on his enormous yellow head. “I’m going to the florist’s,” he said. “You get the peach and see the maid Goodwin. Meet me at police headquarters in an hour.”

It required ten minutes for The Thinking Machine to reach the florist’s shop, and in five minutes more the manager was at liberty.

“All I want to know,” the scientist explained, “is the day you sent the first rose of that dozen to Miss Burdock, and I should like to see your records of delivery. That is, when a package is delivered either by your wagon or by messenger you get a receipt for it? Yes. I should like to see those, please.”

The manager obligingly consulted his records. “The letter with the inclosure was received on June 16,” he explained as he ran his finger down the book. “It came in the morning mail. June 16 was Monday; therefore the first rose of the dozen was sent that afternoon, Monday.”

“Are you absolutely certain of that?” demanded The Thinking Machine. “A—a person’s life may depend on that record.”

The manager stared at him in frank astonishment, then arose. “I can make sure,” he said. He went to a cabinet and took out another book—a delivery receipt book, and fluttered the leaves through his fingers. At last he laid it before The Thinking Machine and indicated an entry with his finger. “There it is,” he said. “Monday, June 16, at five-thirty in the afternoon. The book was signed by Edna Burdock in person. See.”

The Thinking Machine squinted down at the entry for a minute or more in silence. “From that date forward one rose was sent every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday without a break until the dozen were delivered?” he asked at last.

“Yes; that was the direction. Run through the book on the dates it should have been sent and see, if you like.”

The scientist heeded the suggestion, and for ten minutes or so was engrossed in the record. “These slips?” he inquired, as he looked up. “I find three of them.”

“Those were the occasions when we didn’t happen to have a wagon going in that direction,” the manager explained; “so the box was sent by special messenger. Each messenger took a receipt and returned it here. In that way those receipts became a part of our record.”

The Thinking Machine scrutinized the slips carefully, made a note of the dates on them, then closed the record book. That seemed to be all. Fifteen minutes later Plympton Burdock, father of the dead girl, received a card from a servant, glanced at it, nodded, and The Thinking Machine was ushered in.

“I should not have disturbed you, believe me, if the necessity for it had not been pressing in the interest of justice,” the scientist apologized. “Just one or two questions, please.”

Burdock regarded the little man curiously, and motioned to a seat.

“First,” began The Thinking Machine, “was your daughter engaged to be married at the time of her—her death?”

“No,” replied Burdock.

“She did receive attention, however?”

“Certainly. All girls of her age do. Really, Mr.—Mr.,” and he glanced at the card,—“Mr. Van Dusen, this matter is entirely beyond discussion. We believe, my wife and I, that death was due to natural causes, and have so informed the police. I hope it may go no further.”

The Thinking Machine looked at him sharply with some strange new expression in his squint eyes. “The investigation won’t stop now, Mr. Burdock,” he said coldly. “I don’t know your object in—in seeking to stop it.”

“I don’t want to stop it,” declared Burdock quickly. “We are convinced that no good can come of an investigation, because there is no ground for suspicion, and certainly it is not pleasant to have one’s family affairs constantly pawed over when it is a foregone conclusion that nothing will result except unpleasant notoriety which merely adds to the burden that we now have to bear.”

The Thinking Machine understood and nodded. It was almost an apology. “Well, just one more question, please,” he said. “What is the name of the man whose attentions to your daughter you in person forbade?”

“How do you know of that?” blazed Burdock quickly.

“What is his name?” repeated The Thinking Machine.

“I will not discuss the matter further with you,” was the reply.

“In the interests of justice I demand his name!” The Thinking Machine insisted.

Burdock stared at the slight figure before him with growing horror in his face. “You don’t mean to say you suspect——” He stopped. “My God! if I thought that I’d—— How was she killed, if she was killed?” he concluded.

“His name, please,” urged The Thinking Machine. “If you don’t give it to me, you will place me under the necessity of asking the police to compel you to give it. I’d prefer not to.”

Burdock seemed not to heed the speech. His face had gone perfectly white, and he stood staring past the scientist, out the window. His hands were clenched tightly and the fingers were working. “If he did! If he did!” he repeated fiercely. Suddenly he recovered himself and glared down at his visitor. “I beg your pardon,” he said simply. His name is—is Paul K. Darrow.”

“Of this city,” said The Thinking Machine. It was not a question; it was a statement of fact.

“Of this city,” repeated Burdock,—“at least formerly of this city. He left here, I am informed, four or five weeks ago.”

The Thinking Machine went his way, leaving Burdock sitting with his face in his hands. A few minutes later he appeared in Detective Mallory’s office at police headquarters. The officer was sitting with his feet on his desk, smoking furiously, with a dozen deep wrinkles in his brow. He hailed the scientist almost cordially, something unusual for him.

“What do you make of it?” he demanded as he arose.

“Let me see your directory for a moment, please,” replied The Thinking Machine. He bent over the book, ran down a page or so of the D’s, then finally looked up.

“We don’t seem to be able to establish a crime, even,” Detective Mallory confessed. “I had the thorns examined, and the chemist reports that there is not a trace of poison about them.”

“Silly in the first place,” remarked The Thinking Machine ungraciously enough. “Is the rose here?”

The detective produced it from a drawer of his desk, whereupon The Thinking Machine did several things with it which he didn’t understand. First he waved it about in the air at arm’s length, then took two steps forward and sniffed. Then he waved it about much closer to him and sniffed. Detective Mallory looked on in mingled curiosity and disgust. Finally the scientist held it close to his nose and sniffed, then examined the petals closely, after which he laid it on the desk again.

“And the box the rose was delivered in?” queried the scientist.

Silently the detective produced that. The Thinking Machine sniffed at it cautiously, then turned it over to examine the handwriting on the address.

“Know who wrote this?” he inquired.

“Some one at the florist’s,” was the reply.

“Can you lend me a man for half an hour or so?” asked the scientist next.

“Oh, I suppose so,” grumbled Detective Mallory. “But what’s it all about, anyway?”

“Perhaps I may be able to tell you at the end of the half hour,” The Thinking Machine assured him. “Meanwhile lend me the man you said I could have.”

Detective Downey was called in, and the diminutive scientist led him into the hall, where he gave him some definite directions. Downey went out the front door at full speed. The Thinking Machine returned to Detective Mallory’s private room, to find the officer sulking, like a boy.

“Where’d you send him?” he growled.

“Wait till he comes back and I’ll tell you,” was the reply. “It isn’t necessary to get excited about something that we know nothing of. I’m saving you some excitement.”

He dropped back into a chair and sat there idly twiddling his thumbs while Detective Mallory glared at him. After a few minutes the door was thrown open violently and Hutchinson Hatch entered. He was frankly excited.

“Well?” demanded The Thinking Machine without looking round.

“When she smelled that crushed kernel she fainted!” said Hatch explosively.

“Fainted?” repeated the scientist. “Fainted?” The tone was hardly one of surprise, and yet——

“Yes, she took one whiff, and screamed and went right over,” the reporter rushed on.

“Dear me! Dear me!” commented The Thinking Machine. He sat still looking up. “Wait a few minutes,” he advised. “Let’s see what Downey gets.”

At the end of fifteen minutes Downey returned. His chief glared at him curiously as he entered and handed a piece of paper to The Thinking Machine. That imperturbable man of science examined the paper closely, then handed it to Detective Mallory.

“Is that the handwriting on the flower box?” he asked.

Mallory, Downey, and Hatch compared it together. The verdict was unanimous: “Yes.”

“Then the man who wrote it is the man you want,” declared The Thinking Machine flatly. “His name is Paul K. Darrow. Detective Downey knows his address.”

Two days passed. Professor Van Dusen stood beside his laboratory table poking idly at the dismembered legs of a frog with a short copper wire. Each time the point touched the flesh there was a spasmodic twitching of the limbs, a simulation of living contraction and extension. There beside the table Hutchinson Hatch found him.

“Watch this a moment, Mr. Hatch,” requested the scientist. “It bears, in a way, on our problem in hand.”

Then began a rhythmic swinging of his slender hand, not unlike the beat of the musician’s baton, the wire touching the frog’s legs at each downward swing. Hatch had seen a similar demonstration before.

“Watch the strokes,” said the scientist, “and watch the legs after the twentieth.”

“Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” Hatch counted. Each time the wire touched, and each time came the spasmodic motion. “Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.”

The Thinking Machine, instead of touching the twenty-first time, held the wire aloft. At the instant it would have touched the flesh, according to the beat, there came the same quick, spasmodic twitch, and then the legs were still.

“You see the effect is precisely as if I had touched them the twenty-first time,” explained The Thinking Machine, “and that, Mr. Hatch, is one of the things science doesn’t attempt to explain. It can be explained some day—it will be explained, but——” He paused. “Darrow hasn’t been captured yet?” he said.

“No; no trace of him yet,” was the reply. “The police have sent out a general alarm for him all over the country, and to-day Burdock increased the reward he offered from five thousand to ten thousand dollars.”

“One of my objections to dealing with the police is that they are prone to jump at conclusions,” remarked The Thinking Machine. “I didn’t say, of course, that Darrow was a murderer. He may have killed Miss Burdock,—he probably did,—but it isn’t conclusive at all. Still he is the next link in the chain, so his presence is necessary.”

Hatch gazed at him in amazement, and a hundred questions rushed to his lips. They were stilled by the sudden appearance in the doorway of a young man. A soft hat was pulled down over his eyes, and he was crouching as if about to spring. One hand, the right, was in his coat pocket, clutching something fiercely. His face was perfectly pallid, and roving, glittering eyes blazed with madness.

“Come in,” suggested The Thinking Machine calmly.

“I—I must talk to you, quick!” the young man burst out. “It’s a matter of the most vital importance, and——”

“I’m at your service, Mr. Darrow,” remarked The Thinking Machine pleasantly. “Have a seat.”

Darrow! Hatch was startled, made speechless, by the uncanny appearance of this man whom the police of the entire continent were seeking. Darrow was still crouching there in the doorway, staring at them.

“I risked everything to come here,” declared the young man—and there was a menace in his tone. “I was on the stoop about to ring the bell when I glanced back and saw Detective Mallory turn the corner. I didn’t wait to ring—the door was unfastened and I came on in. Mallory is probably coming here. I must talk to you—and I won’t be taken alive. Do you understand what I say?”

“Perfectly,” replied The Thinking Machine. “Mr. Mallory won’t see you. Come in out of the door.”

“No tricks!” warned Darrow fiercely.

“No tricks. Sit down.”

With furtive glances to right and left along the hall, the young man entered and dropped into a seat in a corner, facing them. There was a long, tense silence, and finally the door bell rang. Darrow half rose and made as if to take his right hand from his pocket.

“That’s Mallory,” remarked The Thinking Machine, and he started toward the door.

Darrow took one step forward, blocking his way. “Understand, please,” he began in a low, even voice. “I am utterly desperate, and I won’t be taken! If you attempt to betray me, I——” He stopped.

The Thinking Machine walked round him to the door leading into the hall. Martha, his aged servant, was just passing.

“Mr. Mallory is at the door, Martha,” said the scientist. “Tell him I am not in; but that I shall be at police headquarters within an hour, and Mr. Darrow will come with me.”

He stepped back into the laboratory and closed the door, without even a glance at his visitor. They heard Martha open the front door, then they heard Mallory’s heavy voice, finally Martha’s answer, then the door was closed, and Martha’s footsteps passed along the hall. Darrow suddenly rushed to the window and glanced out.

“All right, Mr. Darrow,” remarked the little scientist, as he sat down. “I know now you are innocent; I know why you have been hiding out, I know why you came here to see me, and I understand too your deep grief; so we can come immediately to the vital things.”

The young man turned and glared at the small, impassive figure. “You said I would be at police headquarters with you in an hour,” he said accusingly.

“Certainly,” agreed the scientist impatiently. “As an innocent man you will go there of your own free will, with me.”

The young man dropped into a chair and sat there for a long time with his face in his hands. After awhile Hatch saw a teardrop trickle through the unsteady fingers, and the shoulders moved convulsively. The Thinking Machine sat with head tilted back, squinting upward and fingers at rest, tip to tip.

“This trouble between you and Mr. Burdock?” suggested the scientist at last.

“You don’t know the malignant hatred he has for me,” said Darrow suddenly. “He is not a man of great wealth, but he is a man of great power, great influence, and if I should fall into the hands of the police with the circumstantial case against me that now exists he would bring all that power and influence to bear against me, with the result that I should be railroaded to a felon’s grave. I don’t know just how he would do it; but he would do it. I’m afraid of him—that’s why I came here to see you when I wouldn’t dare go to the police. I won’t be taken by the police until I know I can prove my innocence; then I will surrender.”

The Thinking Machine nodded.

“The enmity existing between us is of years’ standing, and is not of importance here,” Darrow went on. “But I know this man’s power,—I have felt it all my life,—he has brought me to the edge of starvation half a dozen times, pursued me in every walk of life, until now—now if I should have to commit murder, he would be the victim. I’m telling you this because——”

“All this is of no consequence,” interrupted The Thinking Machine shortly. “Who poisoned the rose?”

“I don’t know,” replied Darrow helplessly.

“You must have some idea,” insisted The Thinking Machine.

“I did have an idea,” was the reply. “I went this morning to a place to see a—a person whom I intended to accuse openly of the crime, taking the chance of capture myself, much as I dreaded it; but there was no one there. The door was locked; a servant connected with the apartment house told me that the—the person had not been there for a day or so.”

The Thinking Machine turned quickly in his chair and glared at Darrow curiously.

“What’s her name?” he demanded sharply.

“I don’t know that she could have had anything to do with it,” warned Darrow. “It seems awful to suggest such a thing, and yet——” He stopped. “I will go there with you to see her if you wish.”

“Mr. Hatch,” directed The Thinking Machine, “step into the next room there and telephone for a cab.” He turned again to Darrow. “She threatened you, or Miss Burdock, I imagine?”

“Yes,” said Darrow reluctantly.

“And now, please, one last question,” said the little scientist. “What relation existed between you and Miss Burdock?”

“She was my wife,” Darrow replied in a low voice. “We were secretly married four months ago.”

“Um-m,” mused the scientist. “I imagined as much.”

Detective Mallory impatiently strode back and forth across his private office, his brain turbulent with conjecture. The telephone bell rang; The Thinking Machine was at the other end of the wire.

“Come at once and bring the medical examiner to the Craddock apartments!” commanded the irritable voice of the little scientist.

“Another murder?” demanded the detective, aghast.

“No, a suicide,” was the reply. “Good by.”

Detective Mallory and Medical Examiner Francis found The Thinking Machine, Hutchinson Hatch, and Paul K. Darrow in the sitting room of a small apartment on the fourth floor. Some sinister thing lay outstretched on a couch, covered with a sheet.

“Mr. Mallory, this is Mr. Darrow,” the scientist remarked. “And here,” he indicated the couch, “is the woman who murdered Miss Burdock, or rather Mrs. Darrow. Her name is Maria di Peculini. Here is a full confession in her own handwriting,” he passed an envelope to the detective, “and here are several torn pieces of paper which show how assiduously she practised before show forged Mr. Darrow’s handwriting in addressing the box in which the red rose was sent to Miss—I should say Mrs. Darrow. I may add that Signorina di Peculini killed herself by inhaling hydrocyanic acid—perhaps you know it better as Prussic acid—in a bottle from which came the single drop, allowed to settle in the bloom of the rose, which killed Mrs.Darrow.”

Detective Mallory remained standing still for a long time to take it all in. At last he opened the confession—only a dozen lines—and read it from end to end. It was a pitiful, disjointed, almost incoherent, revelation of a woman’s distorted soul. She too had loved Darrow, and this had changed to hate when he drifted away from her. Then, when by her own hand she had removed the woman he had made his wife, and had sought subtly to place the blame on him by the little forgery,—then had come a revulsion of feeling. She loved again, and overcome by remorse sought relief in death.

“There was no mystery whatever as to the cause of death,” The Thinking Machine told Detective Mallory and Hatch a little while later. “Murder by poison was obvious from the fact that both the woman and the dog were dead; and when we knew that there was no mark or scratch on the dog, and the autopsy revealed nothing, we knew by the simplest rule of logic that the poison had been inhaled. The most powerful poison to inhale is hydrocyanic acid,—it kills instantly,—therefore it occurred to me first. It is so powerful that it is never made pure, at least in this country. The strongest you can buy in a drug store, for instance, is about a two per cent solution. One drop of a stronger solution than that, on a rose bloom, would have killed Miss Burdock, and the dog if he sniffed at it, as he must have.

“Therefore, from the very first, we knew the manner of death. When we knew further that hydrocyanic acid is extremely volatile, we see how that single drop on the rose evaporated, was dissipated in the air, as the windows of the room where the young woman was found were open. Still there was a faint odor of it left,—it smells precisely like crushed peach kernels,—and the maid Goodwin was unconsciously affected by it.

“Knowing these things,” he continued, “I went to the florist’s. Only twelve roses had been bought, paid for, and delivered from there, and the rose that killed Miss Burdock was the thirteenth rose. The roses went from the florist’s Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays for four weeks, making twelve roses. They had all been delivered, as the receipt books there showed; but Miss Burdock was killed on Monday; therefore that was the thirteenth rose, and it didn’t come direct from the florist’s. It was sent by messenger, and the date didn’t correspond with any date in the receipt book; therefore it came from another source.

“Incidentally the fact that the roses were sent in that way,—that is one at a time without a card or suggestion of by whom they were sent,—suggested a clandestine arrangement with the girl. In other words, the roses were being sent by some one she knew, in all probability; but no one else must know. It was, I saw, a method of correspondence, I might say a love token of some sort, which would not attract attention at her home as a letter would.

“Thus I established a relationship between Miss Burdock and some one else—unknown. The logic of it all informed me that the reason that unknown didn’t communicate with her was because of some objection in her home. Her father! Do you see? I simply asked him about it, and instantly his hatred for a single individual came out, that individual being Mr. Darrow. Thus, things pointed toward Mr. Darrow, who was away. The letter to the florist was from Washington. The joints were fitting nicely.

“At police headquarters I saw the rose, and by cautious experiments detected a faint odor of peach kernels. Then I saw the handwriting on the box. It seemed to be a man’s; yet I knew by the receipt book there that it did not come from the florist’s, therefore was not addressed by anyone there. Did Mr. Darrow address it? Mr. Downey got for me a sample of Mr. Darrow’s writing (I don’t know how he got it), and the two were compared. They seemed to be the same. This fact was connecting with all the others. Clandestine communication—poison—Darrow! Do you see? This development made Darrow’s presence necessary, and I told you, Mr. Mallory, that he was the man we must find. Yet, from the fact that the handwriting on the box was his I had a first suggestion that he was not guilty of the crime. No intelligent man would address a box like that in his own handwriting.

“The matter rested at this point. Mr. Burdock accepted a murder theory and offered rewards, and then Mr. Darrow in person came to see me. The moment he stepped inside my door, to tell me an improbable story, I knew he was innocent. Mr. Burdock’s hatred of him (the cause of the feud between them is not of consequence) told me why he had disappeared; and his mere appearance before me accounted for his not going to the police. So—so that’s all. He told me of calling to see Signorina di Peculini, and she was not in. We came here, found the door locked, went in with a pass key, and found the things as I delivered them to you, Mr. Mallory.” He stopped and sat silently staring for a little while.

“Briefly,” he supplemented, “the woman who killed herself knew of the rose being sent regularly, then determined on revenge, bought one, and sent it herself after dropping a single drop of poison in the bloom. The wax paper which surrounded the flower prevented evaporation, and when it was opened,—— We know the rest.”

Neither Detective Mallory nor Hatch spoke for a long time. But the reporter had one more question to ask; and at last he put it.

“That peach kernel that you sent me to Goodwin with——” he began.

“Oh, yes,” interrupted The Thinking Machine. “That was a little psychological experiment, and the result of it disconcerted me a little. It is one of the many things science doesn’t fully understand, Mr. Hatch—like the little experiment with the frog. For instance, nitrite of amyl is a powerful heart stimulant. It smells precisely like banana oil. A person who has used nitrite of amyl, or to whom it has been administered without their knowledge by inhalation, is momentarily affected the same way when they come suddenly upon the odor of banana oil. Prussic acid has an odor like a peach kernel. I sent you to Goodwin, therefore, to prove definitely whether or not prussic acid had been used, and if she had inhaled it unconsciously. The result gave the proof I wanted.”

________________

5. The Roswell Tiara

Had it not been for the personal interest of a fellow savant in the case it is hardly likely that the problem of the Roswell tiara would ever have come to the attention of The Thinking Machine. And had the problem not come to his attention it would inevitably have gone to the police. Then there would have been a scandal in high places, a disrupted home and everlasting unhappiness to at least four persons. Perhaps it was an inkling of this latter possibility that led The Thinking Machine to take initial steps in the solution of a mystery which seemed to have only an obvious ending.

When he was first approached in the matter The Thinking Machine was in his small laboratory from which had gone forth truths that shocked and partially readjusted at least three of the exact sciences. His enormous head, with its long yellow hair, bobbed up and down over a little world of chemical apparatus, and the narrow, squint eyes peered with disagreeable satisfaction at a blue flame which spouted from a brazier. Martha, an aged woman who was the scientist’s household staff, entered. She was not tall yet she towered commandingly above the slight figure of her eminent master. Professor Van Dusen turned to her impatiently.

“Well? Well?” he demanded shortly.

Martha handed him two cards. On one was the name Charles Wingate Field, and on the other Mrs. Richard Watson Roswell. Charles Wingate Field was a name to juggle with in astronomy—The Thinking Machine knew him well; the name of the woman was strange to him.

“The gentleman said it was very important,” Martha explained, “and the poor lady was crying.”

“What about?” snapped the scientist.

“Lord, sir, I didn’t ask her,” exclaimed Martha.

“I’ll be there in a moment.”

A few minutes later The Thinking Machine appeared at the door of the little reception room, which he regarded as a sort of useless glory, and the two persons there arose to meet him. One was a woman apparently of forty-five years, richly gowned, splendid of figure and with a distinct, matured beauty. Her eyes showed she had been weeping but now her tears were dried and she caught herself staring curiously at the pallid face, the keen blue eyes and the long slender hands of the scientist. The other person was Mr. Field.

There was an introduction and the scientist motioned them to seats. He himself dropped into a large cushioned chair, and looked from one to the other with a question in his eyes.

“I have been telling Mrs. Roswell some of the things you have done, Van Dusen,” began Mr. Field. “Now I have brought her to you because here is a mystery, a problem, an abstruse problem, and it isn’t the kind of thing one cares to take to the police. If you——”

“If Mrs. Roswell will tell me about it?” interrupted the scientist. He seemed to withdraw even further into the big chair. With head tilted back, eyes squinting steadily upward and white fingers pressed tip to tip he waited.

“Briefly,” said Mrs. Roswell, “it has to do with the disappearance of a single small gem from a diamond tiara which I had locked in a vault—a vault of which no living person knew the combination except myself. Because of family reasons I could not go to the police, and——”

“Please begin at the beginning,” requested The Thinking Machine. “Remember I know nothing whatever of you or your circumstances.”

It was not unnatural that Mrs. Roswell should be surprised. Her social reign was supreme, her name was constantly to be seen in the newspapers, her entertainments were gorgeous, her social doings on an elaborate scale. She glanced at Mr. Field inquiringly, and he nodded.

“My first husband was Sidney Grantham, an Englishman,” she explained. “Seven years ago he left me a widow with one child—a son Arthur—now twenty-two years old and just out of Harvard. Mr. Grantham died intestate and his whole fortune together with the family jewels, came to me and my son. The tiara was among these jewels.

“A year ago I was married to Mr. Roswell. He, too, is a man of wealth, with one daughter, Jeanette, now nineteen years old. We live on Commonwealth Avenue and while there are many servants I know it impossible——”

“Nothing is impossible, Madam,” interposed The Thinking Machine positively. “Don’t say that please. It annoys me exceedingly.”

Mrs. Roswell stared at him a moment then resumed:

“My bed room is on the second floor. Adjoining and connecting with it is the bed room of my step-daughter. This connecting door is always left unlocked because she is timid and nervous. I keep the door from my room into the hall bolted at night and Jeanette keeps the hall door of her room similarly fastened. The windows, too, are always secured at night in both rooms.

“My maid and my daughter’s maid both sleep in the servants’ quarters. I arranged for this because, as I was about to state, I keep about half a million dollars worth of jewels in my bed room locked in a small vault built into the wall. This little vault opens with a combination. Not one person knows that combination except myself. It so happens that the man who set it is dead.

“Last night, Thursday, I attended a reception and wore the tiara. My daughter remained at home. At four o’clock this morning I returned. The maids had retired; Jeanette was sleeping soundly. I took off the tiara and placed it, with my other jewels, in the vault. I know that the small diamond now missing was in its setting at that time. I locked the vault, shot the bolt and turned the combination. Afterwards I tried the vault door to make certain it was fastened. It was then—then——”

For no apparent reason Mrs. Roswell suddenly burst into tears. The two men were silent and The Thinking Machine looked at her uneasily. He was not accustomed to women anyway, and women who wept were hopelessly beyond him.

“Well, well, what happened?” he asked brusquely at last.

“It was perhaps five o’clock when I fell asleep,” Mrs. Roswell continued after a moment. “About twenty minutes later I was aroused by a scream of ‘Jeanette, Jeanette, Jeanette.’ Instantly I was fully awake. The screaming was that of a cockatoo which I have kept in my room for many years. It was in its usual place on a perch near the window, and seemed greatly disturbed.

“My first impression was that Jeanette had been in the room. I went into her room and even shook her gently. She was asleep so far as I could ascertain. I returned to my own room and then was amazed to see the vault door standing open. All the jewels and papers from the vault were scattered over the floor. My first thought was of burglars who had been frightened away by the cockatoo. I tried every door and every window in both Jeanette’s room and mine. Everything was securely fastened.

“When I picked up the tiara I found that a diamond was missing. It had evidently been torn out of the setting. I searched for it on the floor and inside the vault. I found nothing. Then of course I could only associate its disappearance with some act of—of my step-daughter’s. I don’t believe the cockatoo would have called her name if she had not been in my room. Certainly the bird could not have opened the vault. Therefore I—I——”

There was a fresh burst of tears and for a long time no one spoke.

“Do you burn a night lamp?” asked The Thinking Machine finally.

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Roswell.

“Did the bird ever disturb you at any time previous to last night—that is I mean at night?”

“No.”

“Has it any habit of speaking the word ‘Jeanette.’ ”

“No. I don’t think I ever heard it pronounce the word more than three or four times before. It is stupid and seems to dislike her.”

“Was there anything else missing—any letter or paper or jewels?”

“Nothing but the one small stone.”

The Thinking Machine took down a volume of an encyclopædia which he studied for a moment.

“Have you any record anywhere of that combination?” he inquired.

“Yes, but it would have been impossi——”

The scientist made a little impatient gesture with his hands.

“Where is this record?”

“The combination begins with the figure three,” Mrs. Roswell hastened to explain. “I jotted it down in a French copy of ‘Les Misérables’ which I keep in my room with a few other books. The first number, three, appears on Page 3, the second on Page 33, and the third on Page 333. The combination in full is 3-14-9. No person could possibly associate the numbers in the book with the combination even if they should notice them.”

Again there was the quick, impatient gesture of the hands. Mr. Field interpreted it aright as annoyance.

“You say your daughter is nervous,” The Thinking Machine said. “Is it serious? Is there any somnambulistic tendency that you know of?”

Mrs. Roswell flushed a little.

“She has a nervous disorder,” she confessed at last. “But I know of no somnambulistic tendency. She has been treated by half a dozen specialists. Two or three times we feared—feared——”

She faltered and stopped. The Thinking Machine squinted at her oddly, then turned his eyes toward the ceiling again.

“I understand,” he said. “You feared for her sanity. And she may have the sleep-walking habit without your knowledge?”

“Yes, she may have,” faltered Mrs. Roswell.

“And now your son. Tell me something about him. He has an allowance, I suppose? Is he inclined to be studious or other wise? Has he any love affair?”

Again Mrs. Roswell flushed. Her entire manner resented this connection of her son’s name with the affair. She looked inquiringly at Mr. Field.

“I don’t see——” Mr. Field began, remonstratingly.

“My son could have nothing——” Mrs. Roswell interrupted.

“Madam, you have presented an abstract problem,” broke in The Thinking Machine impatiently. “I presumed you wanted a solution. Of course, if you do not——” and he made as if to arise.

“Please pardon me,” said Mrs. Roswell quickly, almost tearfully. “My son has an allowance of ten thousand a year; my daughter has the same. My son is inclined to be studious along political lines, while my daughter is interested in charity. He has no love affair except—except a deep attachment for his step-sister. It is rather unfortunate——”

“I know, I know,” interrupted the scientist again. “Naturally you object to any affection in that direction because of a fear for the girl’s mental condition. May I ask if there is any further prejudice on your part to the girl?”

“Not the slightest,” said Mrs. Roswell quickly. “I am deeply attached to her. It is only a fear for my son’s happiness.”

“I presume your son understands your attitude in the matter?”

“I have tried to intimate it to him without saying it openly,” she explained. “I don’t think he knows how serious her condition has been, and is for that matter.”

“Of your knowledge has either your son or the girl ever handled or looked into the book where the combination is written?”

“Not that I know of, or ever heard of.”

“Or any of your servants?”

“No.”

“Does it happen that you have this tiara with you?”

Mrs. Roswell produced it from her hand bag. It was a glittering, glistening thing, a triumph of the jeweller’s art, intricate and marvellously delicate in conception yet wonderfully heavy with the dead weight of pure gold. A single splendid diamond of four or five carats blazed at its apex, and radiating from this were strings of smaller stones. One was missing from its setting. The prongs which had held it were almost straight from the force used to pry out the stone. The Thinking Machine studied the gorgeous ornament in silence.

“It is possible for you to clear up this matter without my active interference,” he said at last. “You do not want it to become known outside your own family, therefore you must watch for this thief—yourself in person. Take no one into your confidence, least of all your son and step-daughter. Given the same circumstances, the A B C rules of logic—and logic is inevitable—indicate that another may disappear.”

Mrs. Roswell was frankly startled, and Mr. Field leaned forward with eager interest.

“If you see how this second stone disappears,” continued The Thinking Machine musingly, without heeding in the slightest the effect of his words on the others, “you will know what became of the first and will be able to recover both.”

“If another attempt is to be made,” exclaimed Mrs. Roswell apprehensively, “would it not be better to send the jewels to a safe deposit? Would I not be in danger myself?”

“It is perfectly possible that if the jewels were removed the vault would be opened just the same,” said The Thinking Machine quietly, enigmatically while his visitors stared. “Leave the jewels where they are. You may be assured that you are in no personal danger whatever. If you learn what you seek you need not communicate with me again. If you do not I will personally investigate the matter. On no condition whatever interrupt or attempt to prevent anything that may happen.”

Mr. Field arose; the interview seemed to be at an end. He had one last question.

“Have you any theory of what actually happened?” he asked. “How was the jewel taken?”

“If I told you you wouldn’t believe it,” said The Thinking Machine, curtly. “Good day.”

It was on the third day following that Mrs. Roswell hurriedly summoned The Thinking Machine to her home. When he arrived she was deeply agitated.

“Another of the small stones has been stolen from the tiara,” she told him hurriedly. “The circumstances were identical with those of the first theft, even to the screaming of the cockatoo. I watched as you suggested, have been watching each night but last night was so weary that I fell asleep. The cockatoo awoke me. Why would Jeanette——”

“Let me see the apartments,” suggested the scientist. Thus he was ushered into the room which was the centre of the mystery. Again he examined the tiara, then studied the door of the vault. Afterwards he casually picked up and verified the record of the combination, locked and unlocked the vault twice after which he examined the fastenings of the door and the windows. This done he went over and peered inquisitively at the cockatoo on its perch.

The bird was a giant of its species, pure white, with a yellow crest which drooped in exaggerated melancholy. The cockatoo resented the impertinence and had not The Thinking Machine moved quickly would have torn off his spectacles.

A door from another room opened and a girl—Jeanette—entered. She was tall, slender and exquisitely proportioned with a great cloud of ruddy gold hair. Her face was white with the dead white of illness and infinite weariness was in her eyes. She was startled at sight of a stranger.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I didn’t know——” and started to retire.

Professor Van Dusen acknowledged an introduction to her by a glance and a nod then turned quickly and looked at the cockatoo which was quarrelling volubly with crest upraised. Mrs. Roswell’s attention, too, was attracted by the angry attitude of her pet. She grasped the scientist’s arm quickly.

“The bird!” she exclaimed.

“Jeanette, Jeanette, Jeanette,” screamed the cockatoo, shrilly.

Jeanette dropped wearily into a chair, heeding neither the tense attitude of her step-mother nor the quarrellings of the cockatoo.

“You don’t sleep well, Miss Roswell?” asked The Thinking Machine.

“Oh, yes,” the girl replied. “I seem to sleep enough, but I am always very tired. And I dream constantly, nearly always my dreams are of the cockatoo. I imagine he calls my name.”

Mrs. Roswell looked quickly at Professor Van Dusen. He crossed to the girl and examined her pulse.

“Do you read much?” he asked. “Did you ever read this?” and he held up the copy of “Les Misérables.”

“I don’t read French well enough,” she replied. “I have read it in English.”

The conversation was desultory for a time and finally The Thinking Machine arose. In the drawing room down stairs he gave Mrs. Roswell some instructions which amazed her exceedingly, and went his way.

Jeanette retired about eleven o’clock that night and in an hour was sleeping soundly. But Mrs. Roswell was up when the clock struck one. She had previously bolted the doors of the two rooms and fastened the windows. Now she arose from her seat, picked up a small jar from her table, and crept cautiously, even stealthily to the bed whereon Jeanette lay, pale almost as the sheets. The girl’s hands were outstretched in an attitude of utter exhaustion. Mrs. Roswell bent low over them a moment, then stole back to her own room. Half an hour later she was asleep.

Early next morning Mrs. Roswell ’phoned to The Thinking Machine, and they talked for fifteen minutes. She was apparently explaining something and the scientist gave crisp, monosyllabic answers. When the wire was disconnected he called up two other persons on the ’phone. One of them was Dr. Henderson, noted alienist; the other was Dr. Forrester, a nerve specialist of international repute. To both he said:

“I want to show you the most extraordinary thing you have ever seen.”

* * *

The dim light of the night lamp cast strange, unexpected shadows, half revealing yet half hiding, the various objects in Mrs. Roswell’s room. The bed made a great white splotch in the shadows, and the only other conspicuous point was the bright silver dial of the jewel vault. From the utter darkness of Jeanette Roswell’s room came the steady, regular breathing of a person asleep; the cockatoo was gone from his perch. Outside was the faint nightthrob of a city at rest. In the distance a clock boomed four times.

Finally the stillness was broken by a faint creaking, the tread of a light foot and Jeanette, robed mystically in white, appeared in the door of her room. Her eyes were wide open, staring, her face was chalk-like, her hair tumbled in confusion about her head and here and there was flecked with the glint of the night-light.

The girl paused and from somewhere in the shadow came a quick gasp, instantly stifled. Then, unhearing, she moved slowly but without hesitation across the room to a table whereon lay several books. She stooped over this and when she straightened up again she held “Les Misérables” in her hand. Several times the leaves fluttered through her fingers, and thrice she held the book close to her eyes in the uncertain light, then nodded as if satisfied and carefully replaced it as she had found it.

From the table she went straight toward the silver dial which gleamed a reflection of light. As she went another figure detached itself noiselessly from the shadows and crept toward her from behind. As the girl leaned forward to place her hand on the dial a steady ray of light from an electric bell struck her full in the face. She did not flinch nor by the slightest sign show that she was aware of it. From her face the light travelled to each of her hands in turn.

The dial whirled in her fingers several times and then stopped with a click, the bolt snapped and the vault door opened. Conspicuously in front lay the tiara glittering mockingly. Again from the shadows there came a quick gasp as the girl lifted the regal toy and tumbled it on the floor. Again the gasp was stifled.

With quick moving, nervous hands she dragged the jewels out permitting them to fall. She seemed to be seeking something else, seeking vainly, apparently, for after awhile she rose with a sigh, staring into the vault hopelessly. She stood thus for a dozen heart beats, then the low, guarded voice of the second figure was heard—low yet singularly clear of enunciation.

“What is it you seek?”

“The letters,” she replied dreamily yet distinctly. There was a pause and she turned suddenly as if to re-enter her room. As she did so the light again flashed in her glassy eyes, and the second figure laid a detaining hand on her arm. She started a little, staggered, her eyes closed suddenly to open again in abject terror as she stared into the face before her. She screamed wildly, piercingly, gazed a moment then sank down fainting.

“Dr. Forrester, she needs you now.”

It was the calm, unexcited, impersonal voice of The Thinking Machine. He touched a button in the wall and the room was flooded with light. Drs. Forrester and Henderson, suddenly revealed with Mr. and Mrs. Roswell and Arthur Grantham, came forward and lifted the senseless body. Grantham, too, rushed to her with pained, horror-stricken face. Mrs. Roswell dropped limply into a chair; her husband stood beside her helplessly stroking her hair.

“It’s all right,” said The Thinking Machine. “It’s only shock.”

Grantham turned on him savagely, impetuously and danger lay in the boyish eyes.

“It’s a lie!” he said fiercely. “She didn’t steal those diamonds.”

“How do you know?” asked The Thinking Machine coldly.

“Because—because I took them myself,” the young man blurted. “If I had known there was to be any such trick as this I should never have consented to it.”

His mother stared up at him in open eyed wonder.

“How did you remove the jewels from the setting?” asked The Thinking Machine, still quietly.

“I—I did it with my fingers.”

“Take out one of these for me,” and The Thinking Machine offered him the tiara.

Grantham snatched it from his hand and tugged at it frantically while the others stared, but each jewel remained in its setting. Finally he sank down on the bed beside the still figure of the girl he loved. His face was crimson.

“Your intentions are good, but you’re a fool,” commented The Thinking Machine tartly. “I know you did not take the jewels—you have proven it yourself—and I may add that Miss Roswell did not take them.”

The stupefied look on Grantham’s face was reflected in those of his mother and step-father. Drs. Forrester and Henderson were busy with the girl heedless of the others.

“Then where are the jewels?” Mrs. Roswell demanded.

The Thinking Machine turned and squinted at her with a slight suggestion of irritable reproach in his manner.

“Safe and easily found,” he replied impatiently. He lifted the unconscious girl’s hand and allowed his fingers to rest on her pulse for a moment, then turned to the medical men. “Would you have believed that somnambulistic sub-consciousness would have taken just this form?” he asked curtly.

“Not unless I had seen it,” replied Dr. Henderson, frankly.

“It’s a remarkable mental condition—remarkable,” commented Dr. Forrester.

It was a weirdly simple recital of the facts as he had found them that The Thinking Machine told downstairs in the drawing room an hour later. Dawn was breaking over the city, and the faces of those who had waited and watched for just what had happened showed weariness. Yet they listened, listened with all their faculties as the eminent scientist talked. Young Grantham sat white faced and nervous; Jeanette was sleeping quietly upstairs with her maid on watch.

“The problem in itself was not a difficult one,” The Thinking Machine began as he lounged in a big chair with eyes upturned. “The unusual, not to say strange features, which seemed to make it more difficult served to simplify it as a matter of fact. When I had all the facts I had the solution in the main. It was adding a fact to a fact to get a result as one might add two and two to get four.

“In the first place burglars were instantly removed as a possibility. They would have taken everything, not one small stone. Then what? Mr. Grantham here? His mother assured me that he was quiet and studious of habit, and had an allowance of ten thousand a year. There was no need for him to steal. Then remember always that he no more than anyone else could have entered the rooms. The barred doors excluded the servants too.

“Then we had only you, Mrs. Roswell, and your step-daughter. There would have been no motive for you to remove the jewel unless your object was to throw suspicion on the girl. I didn’t believe you capable of this. So there was left somnambulism or a wilful act of your step-daughter’s. There was no motive for the last—your daughter has ten thousand a year. Then sleep-walking alone remained. Sleep-walking it was. I am speaking now of the opening of the vault.”

Grantham leaned forward in his chair gripping its arms fiercely. The mother saw, and one of her white hands was laid gently on his. He glanced at her impatiently then turned to The Thinking Machine. Mr. Roswell, the alienist, and the specialist, followed the cold clear logic as if fascinated.

“If somnambulism, then who was the somnambulist?” The Thinking Machine resumed after a moment. “It did not seem to be you, Mrs. Roswell. You are not of a nervous temperament; you are a normal healthy woman. If we accept as true your statement that you were aroused in bed by the cockatoo screaming ‘Jeanette’ we prove that you were not the somnambulist. Your step-daughter? She suffered from a nervous disorder so pronounced that you had fears for her mental condition. With everyone else removed she was the somnambulist. Even the cockatoo said that.

“Now let us see how it would have been possible to open the vault. We admit that no one except yourself knew the combination. But a record of that combination did appear therefore it was possible for some one else to learn it. Your step-daughter does not know that combination when she is in a normal condition. I won’t say that she knows it when in the sommambulistic state, but I will say that when in that condition she knows where there is a record of it. How she learned this I don’t know. It is not a legitimate part of the problem.

“Be that as it may she was firmly convinced that something she was seeking, something of deep concern to her, was in that vault. It might not have been in the vault but in her abnormal condition she thought it was. She was not after jewels—her every act even tonight showed that. What else? Letters. I knew it was a letter, or letters, before she said so herself. What was in these letters is of no consequence here. You, Mrs. Roswell, considered it your duty to hide them—possibly destroy them.”

Both husband and son turned on Mrs. Roswell inquiringly. She stared from one to the other helplessly, pleadingly.

“The letters contained——” she started to explain.

“Never mind that, it’s none of our business,” curtly interrupted The Thinking Machine. “If there is a family skeleton, it’s yours.”

“I won’t believe anything against her,” burst out Grantham passionately.

“Even with the practical certain knowledge that Miss Roswell did open the vault,” The Thinking Machine resumed placidly, “and that she opened it in precisely the manner you saw tonight, I took one more step to prove it. This was after the second stone had disappeared. I instructed Mrs. Roswell to place a little strawberry jam on her step-daughter’s hands while she was sleeping. If this jam appeared on the book the next time the vault was found open it proved finally and conclusively that Miss Roswell opened it. I chose strawberry jam because it was unusual. I dare say no one who might have a purpose in opening that vault would go around with strawberry jam on his hands. This jam did appear on the book, and then I summoned you, Dr. Forrester, and you, Dr. Henderson. You know the rest. I may add that Mr. Grantham in attempting to take the theft upon himself merely made a fool of himself. No person with bare fingers could have torn out one of the stones.”

There was a long pause, and deep silence while the problem as seen by The Thinking Machine was considered in the minds of his hearers. Grantham at last broke the silence.

“Where are the two stones that are missing?”

“Oh yes,” said The Thinking Machine easily, as if that trivial point had escaped him. “Mrs. Roswell, will you please have the cockatoo brought in?” he asked, and then explained to the others: “I had the bird removed from the room tonight for fear it would interrupt at the wrong moment.”

Mrs. Roswell arose and gave some instructions to a servant who was waiting outside. He went away and returned later with a startled expression on his graven face.

“The bird is dead, madam,” he reported.

“Dead?” repeated Mrs. Roswell.

“Good!” said The Thinking Machine rubbing his hands briskly together. “Bring it in anyhow.”

“Why, what could have killed it?” asked Mrs. Roswell, bewildered.

“Indigestion,” replied the scientist. “Here is the thief.”

He turned suddenly to the servant who had entered bearing the cockatoo in state on a silver tray.

“Who? I?” gasped the astonished servant.

“No, this fellow,” replied The Thinking Machine as he picked up the dead bird. “He had the opportunity; he had the pointed instrument necessary to pry out a stone—note the sharp hooked bill; and he had the strength to do it. Besides all that he confessed a fondness for bright things when he tried to snatch my eyeglasses. He saw Miss Roswell drop the tiara on the floor, its brightness fascinated him. He pried out the stone and swallowed it. It pained him, and he screamed ‘Jeanette.’ This same thing happened on two occasions. Your encyclopædia will tell you that the cockatoo has more strength in that sharp beak than you could possibly exercise with two fingers unless you had a steel instrument.”

Later that day The Thinking Machine sent to Mrs. Roswell the two missing diamonds, the glass head of a hat pin and a crystal shoe button which he had recovered from the dead bird. His diagnosis of the case was acute indigestion.

_____________________

6. The Mystery of the Scarlet Thread

1

The Thinking Machine—Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D, LL. D., F. R. S., M. D., etc., scientist and logician—listened intently and without comment to a weird, seemingly inexplicable story. Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, was telling it. The bowed figure of the savant lay at ease in a large chair. The enormous head with its bushy yellow hair was thrown back, the thin, white fingers were pressed tip to tip and the blue eyes, narrowed to mere slits, squinted aggressively upward. The scientist was in a receptive mood.

“From the beginning, every fact you know,” he had requested.

“It’s all out in the Back Bay,” the reporter explained. “There is a big apartment house there, a fashionable establishment, in a side street, just off Commonwealth Avenue. It is five stories in all, and is cut up into small suites, of two and three rooms with a bath. These suites are handsomely, even luxuriously furnished, and are occupied by people who can afford to pay big rents. Generally these are young unmarried men, although in several cases they are husband and wife. It is a house of every modern improvement, elevator service, hall boys, liveried door men, spacious corridors and all that. It has both the gas and electric systems of lighting. Tenants are at liberty to use either or both.

“A young broker, Weldon Henley, occupies one of the handsomest of these suites, being on the second floor, in front. He has met with considerable success in the Street. He is a bachelor and lives there alone. There is no personal servant. He dabbles in photography as a hobby, and is said to be remarkably expert.

“Recently there was a report that he was to be married this Winter to a beautiful Virginia girl who has been visiting Boston from time to time, a Miss Lipscomb—Charlotte Lipscomb, of Richmond. Henley has never denied or affirmed this rumor, although he has been asked about it often. Miss Lipscomb is impossible of access even when she visits Boston. Now she is in Virginia, I understand, but will return to Boston later in the season.”

The reporter paused, lighted a cigarette and leaned forward in his chair, gazing steadily into the inscrutable eyes of the scientist.

“When Henley took the suite he requested that all the electric lighting apparatus be removed from his apartments,” he went on. “He had taken a long lease of the place, and this was done. Therefore he uses only gas for lighting purposes, and he usually keeps one of his gas jets burning low all night.”

“Bad, bad for his health,” commented the scientist.

“Now comes the mystery of the affair,” the reporter went on. “It was five weeks or so ago Henley retired as usual—about midnight. He locked his door on the inside—he is positive of that—and awoke about four o’clock in the morning nearly asphyxiated by gas. He was barely able to get up and open the window to let in the fresh air. The gas jet he had left burning was out, and the suite was full of gas.”

“Accident, possibly,” said The Thinking Machine. “A draught through the apartments; a slight diminution of gas pressure; a hundred possibilities.”

“So it was presumed,” said the reporter. “Of course it would have been impossible for——”

“Nothing is impossible,” said the other, tartly. “Don’t say that. It annoys me exceedingly.”

“Well, then, it seems highly improbable that the door had been opened or that anyone came into the room and did this deliberately,” the newspaper man went on, with a slight smile. “So Henley said nothing about this; attributed it to accident. The next night he lighted his gas as usual, but he left it burning a little brighter. The same thing happened again.”

“Ah,” and The Thinking Machine changed his position a little. “The second time.”

“And again he awoke just in time to save himself,” said Hatch. “Still he attributed the affair to accident, and determined to avoid a recurrence of the affair by doing away with the gas at night. Then he got a small night lamp and used this for a week or more.”

“Why does he have a light at all?” asked the scientist, testily.

“I can hardly answer that,” replied Hatch. “I may say, however, that he is of a very nervous temperament, and gets up frequently during the night. He reads occasionally when he can’t sleep. In addition to that he has slept with a light going all his life; it’s a habit.”

“Go on.”

“One night he looked for the night lamp, but it had disappeared—at least he couldn’t find it—so he lighted the gas again. The fact of the gas having twice before gone out had been dismissed as a serious possibility. Next morning at five o’clock a bell boy, passing through the hall, smelled gas and made a quick investigation. He decided it came from Henley’s place, and rapped on the door. There was no answer. It ultimately developed that it was necessary to smash in the door. There on the bed they found Henley unconscious with the gas pouring into the room from the jet which he had left lighted. He was revived in the air, but for several hours was deathly sick.”

“Why was the door smashed in?” asked The Thinking Machine. “Why not unlocked?”

“It was done because Henley had firmly barred it,” Hatch explained. “He had become suspicious, I suppose, and after the second time he always barred his door and fastened every window before he went to sleep. There may have been a fear that some one used a key to enter.”

“Well?” asked the scientist. “After that?”

“Three weeks or so elapsed, bringing the affair down to this morning,” Hatch went on. “Then the same thing happened a little differently. For instance, after the third time the gas went out Henley decided to find out for himself what caused it, and so expressed himself to a few friends who knew of the mystery. Then, night after night, he lighted the gas as usual and kept watch. It was never disturbed during all that time, burning steadily all night. What sleep he got was in daytime.

“Last night Henley lay awake for a time; then, exhausted and tired, fell asleep. This morning early he awoke; the room was filled with gas again. In some way my city editor heard of it and asked me to look into the mystery.”

That was all. The two men were silent for a long time, and finally The Thinking Machine turned to the reporter.

“Does anyone else in the house keep gas going all night?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” was the reply. “Most of them, I know, use electricity.”

“Nobody else has been overcome as he has been?”

“No. Plumbers have minutely examined the lighting system all over the house and found nothing wrong.”

“Does the gas in the house all come through the same meter?”

“Yes, so the manager told me. I supposed it possible that some one shut it off there on these nights long enough to extinguish the lights all over the house, then turned it on again. That is, presuming that it was done purposely. Do you think it was an attempt to kill Henley?”

“It might be,” was the reply. “Find out for me just who in the house uses gas; also if anyone else leaves a light burning all night; also what opportunity anyone would have to get at the meter, and then something about Henley’s love affair with Miss Lipscomb. Is there anyone else? If so, who? Where does he live? When you find out these things come back here.”

* * *

That afternoon at one o’clock Hatch returned to the apartments of The Thinking Machine, with excitement plainly apparent on his face.

“Well?” asked the scientist.

“A French girl, Louise Regnier, employed as a maid by Mrs. Standing in the house, was found dead in her room on the third floor to-day at noon,” Hatch explained quickly. “It looks like suicide.”

“How?” asked The Thinking Machine.

“The people who employed her—husband and wife—have been away for a couple of days,” Hatch rushed on. “She was in the suite alone. This noon she had not appeared, there was an odor of gas and the door was broken in. Then she was found dead.”

“With the gas turned on?”

“With the gas turned on. She was asphyxiated.”

“Dear me, dear me,” exclaimed the scientist. He arose and took up his hat. “Let’s go and see what this is all about.”

2

When Professor Van Dusen and Hatch arrived at the apartment house they had been preceded by the Medical Examiner and the police. Detective Mallory, whom both knew, was moving about in the apartment where the girl had been found dead. The body had been removed and a telegram sent to her employers in New York.

“Too late,” said Mallory, as they entered.

“What was it, Mr. Mallory?” asked the scientist.

“Suicide,” was the reply. “No question of it. It happened in this room,” and he led the way into the third room of the suite. “The maid, Miss Regnier, occupied this, and was here alone last night. Mr. and Mrs. Standing, her employers, have gone to New York for a few days. She was left alone, and killed herself.”

Without further questioning The Thinking Machine went over to the bed, from which the girl’s body had been taken, and, stooping beside it, picked up a book. It was a novel by “The Duchess.” He examined this critically, then, standing on a chair, he examined the gas jet. This done, he stepped down and went to the window of the little room. Finally The Thinking Machine turned to the detective.

“Just how much was the gas turned on?” he asked.

“Turned on full,” was the reply.

“Were both the doors of the room locked?”

“Both, yes.”

“Any cotton, or cloth, or anything of the sort stuffed in the cracks of the window?”

“No. It’s a tight-fitting window, anyway. Are you trying to make a mystery out of this?”

“Cracks in the doors stuffed?” The Thinking Machine went on.

“No.” There was a smile about the detective’s lips.

The Thinking Machine, on his knees, examined the bottom of one of the doors, that which led into the hall. The lock of this door had been broken when employees burst into the room. Having satisfied himself here and at the bottom of the other door, which connected with the bedroom adjoining, The Thinking Machine again climbed on a chair and examined the doors at the top.

“Both transoms closed, I suppose?” he asked.

“Yes,” was the reply. “You can’t make anything but suicide out of it,” explained the detective. “The Medical Examiner has given that as his opinion—and everything I find indicates it.”

“All right,” broke in The Thinking Machine abruptly. “Don’t let us keep you.”

After awhile Detective Mallory went away. Hatch and the scientist went down to the office floor, where they saw the manager. He seemed to be greatly distressed, but was willing to do anything he could in the matter.

“Is your night engineer perfectly trustworthy?” asked The Thinking Machine.

“Perfectly,” was the reply. “One of the best and most reliable men I ever met. Alert and wide-awake.”

“Can I see him a moment? The night man, I mean?”

“Certainly,” was the reply. “He’s downstairs. He sleeps there. He’s probably up by this time. He sleeps usually till one o’clock in the daytime, being up all night.”

“Do you supply gas for your tenants?”

“Both gas and electricity are included in the rent of the suites. Tenants may use one or both.”

“And the gas all comes through one meter?”

“Yes, one meter. It’s just off the engine room.”

“I suppose there’s no way of telling just who in the house uses gas?”

“No. Some do and some don’t. I don’t know.”

This was what Hatch had told the scientist. Now together they went to the basement, and there met the night engineer, Charles Burlingame, a tall, powerful, clean-cut man, of alert manner and positive speech. He gazed with a little amusement at the slender, almost childish figure of The Thinking Machine and the grotesquely large head.

“You are in the engine room or near it all night every night?” began The Thinking Machine.

“I haven’t missed a night in four years,” was the reply.

“Anybody ever come here to see you at night?”

“Never. It’s against the rules.”

“The manager or a hall boy?”

“Never.”

“In the last two months?” The Thinking Machine persisted.

“Not in the last two years,” was the positive reply. “I go on duty every night at seven o’clock, and I am on duty until seven in the morning. I don’t believe I’ve seen anybody in the basement here with me between those hours for a year at least.”

The Thinking Machine was squinting steadily into the eyes of the engineer, and for a time both were silent. Hatch moved about the scrupulously clean engine room and nodded to the day engineer, who sat leaning back against the wall. Directly in front of him was the steam gauge.

“Have you a fireman?” was The Thinking Machine’s next question.

“No. I fire myself,” said the night man. “Here’s the coal,” and he indicated a bin within half a dozen feet of the mouth of the boiler.

“I don’t suppose you ever had occasion to handle the gas meter?” insisted The Thinking Machine.

“Never touched it in my life,” said the other. “I don’t know anything about meters, anyway.”

“And you never drop off to sleep at night for a few minutes when you get lonely? Doze, I mean?”

The engineer grinned good-naturedly.

“Never had any desire to, and besides I wouldn’t have the chance,” he explained. “There’s a time check here,”—and he indicated it. “I have to punch that every half hour all night to prove that I have been awake.”

“Dear me, dear me,” exclaimed The Thinking Machine, irritably. He went over and examined the time check—a revolving paper disk with hours marked on it, made to move by the action of a clock, the face of which showed in the middle.

“Besides there’s the steam gauge to watch,” went on the engineer. “No engineer would dare go to sleep. There might be an explosion.”

“Do you know Mr. Weldon Henley?” suddenly asked The Thinking Machine.

“Who?” asked Burlingame.

“Weldon Henley?”

“No-o,” was the slow response. “Never heard of him. Who is he?”

“One of the tenants, on the second floor, I think.”

“Lord, I don’t know any of the tenants. What about him?”

“When does the inspector come here to read the meter?”

“I never saw him. I presume in daytime, eh Bill?” and he turned to the day engineer.

“Always in the daytime—usually about noon,” said Bill from his corner.

“Any other entrance to the basement except this way—and you could see anyone coming here this way I suppose?”

“Sure I could see ’em. There’s no other entrance to the cellar except the coal hole in the sidewalk in front.”

“Two big electric lights in front of the building, aren’t there?”

“Yes. They go all night.”

A slightly puzzled expression crept into the eyes of The Thinking Machine. Hatch knew from the persistency of the questions that he was not satisfied; yet he was not able to fathom or to understand all the queries. In some way they had to do with the possibility of some one having access to the meter.

“Where do you usually sit at night here?” was the next question.

“Over there where Bill’s sitting. I always sit there.”

The Thinking Machine crossed the room to Bill, a typical, grimy-handed man of his class.

“May I sit there a moment?” he asked.

Bill arose lazily, and The Thinking Machine sank down into the chair. From this point he could see plainly through the opening into the basement proper—there was no door—the gas meter of enormous proportions through which all the gas in the house passed. An electric light in the door made it bright as daylight. The Thinking Machine noted these things, arose, nodded his thanks to the two men and, still with the puzzled expression on his face, led the way upstairs. There the manager was still in his office.

“I presume you examine and know that the time check in the engineer’s room is properly punched every half-hour during the night?” he asked.

“Yes. I examine the dial every day—have them here, in fact, each with the date on it.”

“May I see them?”

Now the manager was puzzled. He produced the cards, one for each day, and for half an hour The Thinking Machine studied them minutely. At the end of that time, when he arose and Hatch looked at him inquiringly, he saw still the perplexed expression.

After urgent solicitation, the manager admitted them to the apartments of Weldon Henley. Mr. Henley himself had gone to his office in State Street. Here The Thinking Machine did several things which aroused the curiosity of the manager, one of which was to minutely study the gas jets. Then The Thinking Machine opened one of the front windows and glanced out into the street. Below fifteen feet was the sidewalk; above was the solid front of the building, broken only by a flagpole which, properly roped, extended from the hall window of the next floor above out over the sidewalk a distance of twelve feet or so.

“Ever use that flagpole?” he asked the manager.

“Rarely,” said the manager. “On holidays sometimes—Fourth of July and such times. We have a big flag for it.”

From the apartments The Thinking Machine led the way to the hall, up the stairs and to the flagpole. Leaning out of this window, he looked down toward the window of the apartments he had just left. Then he inspected the rope of the flagpole, drawing it through his slender hands slowly and carefully. At last he picked off a slender thread of scarlet and examined it.

“Ah,” he exclaimed. Then to Hatch: “Let’s go, Mr. Hatch. Thank you,” this last to the manager, who had been a puzzled witness.

Once on the street, side by side with The Thinking Machine, Hatch was bursting with questions, but he didn’t ask them. He knew it would be useless. At last The Thinking Machine broke the silence.

“That girl, Miss Regnier, was murdered,” he said suddenly, positively. “There have been four attempts to murder Henley.”

“How?” asked Hatch, startled.

“By a scheme so simple that neither you nor I nor the police have ever heard of it being employed,” was the astonishing reply. “It is perfectly horrible in its simplicity.”

“What was it?” Hatch insisted, eagerly.

“It would be futile to discuss that now,” was the rejoinder. “There has been murder. We know how. Now the question is—who? What person would have a motive to kill Henley?”

3

There was a pause as they walked on.

“Where are we going?” asked Hatch finally.

“Come up to my place and let’s consider this matter a bit further,” replied The Thinking Machine.

Not another word was spoken by either until half an hour later, in the small laboratory. For a long time the scientist was thoughtful—deeply thoughtful. Once he took down a volume from a shelf and Hatch glanced at the title. It was “Gases: Their Properties.” After awhile he returned this to the shelf and took down another, on which the reporter caught the title, “Anatomy.”

“Now, Mr. Hatch,” said The Thinking Machine in his perpetually crabbed voice, “we have a most remarkable riddle. It gains this remarkable aspect from its very simplicity. It is not, however, necessary to go into that now. I will make it clear to you when we know the motives.

“As a general rule, the greatest crimes never come to light because the greatest criminals, their perpetrators, are too clever to be caught. Here we have what I might call a great crime committed with a subtle simplicity that is wholly disarming, and a greater crime even than this was planned. This was to murder Weldon Henley. The first thing for you to do is to see Mr. Henley and warn him of his danger. Asphyxiation will not be attempted again, but there is the possibility of poison, a pistol shot, a knife, anything almost. As a matter of fact, he is in great peril.

“Superficially, the death of Miss Regnier, the maid, looks to be suicide. Instead it is the fruition of a plan which has been tried time and again against Henley. There is a possibility that Miss Regnier was not an intentional victim of the plot, but the fact remains that she was murdered. Why? Find the motive for the plot to murder Mr. Henley and you will know why.”

The Thinking Machine reached over to the shelf, took a book, looked at it a moment, then went on:

“The first question to determine positively is: Who hated Weldon Henley sufficiently to desire his death? You say he is a successful man in the Street. Therefore there is a possibility that some enemy there is at the bottom of the affair, yet it seems hardly probable. If by his operations Mr. Henley ever happened to wreck another man’s fortune find this man and find out all about him. He may be the man. There will be innumerable questions arising from this line of inquiry to a man of your resources. Leave none of them unanswered.

“On the other hand there is Henley’s love affair. Had he a rival who might desire his death? Had he any rival? If so, find out all about him. He may be the man who planned all this. Here, too, there will be questions arising which demand answers. Answer then—all of them—fully and clearly before you see me again.

“Was Henley ever a party to a liason of any kind? Find that out, too. A vengeful woman or a discarded sweetheart of a vengeful woman, you know, will go to any extreme. The rumor of his engagement to Miss—Miss——”

“Miss Lipscomb,” Hatch supplied.

“The rumor of his engagement to Miss Lipscomb might have caused a woman whom he had once been interested in or who was once interested in him to attempt his life. The subtler murders—that is, the ones which are most attractive as problems—are nearly always the work of a cunning woman. I know nothing about women myself,” he hastened to explain; “But Lombroso has taken that attitude. Therefore, see if there is a woman.”

Most of these points Hatch had previously seen—seen with the unerring eye of a clever newspaper reporter—yet there were several which had not occurred to him. He nodded his understanding.

“Now the center of the affair, of course,” The Thinking Machine continued, “is the apartment house where Henley lives. The person who attempted his life either lives there of has ready access to the place, and frequently spends the night there. This is a vital question for you to answer. I am leaving all this to you because you know better how to do these things than I do. That’s all, I think. When these things are all learned come back to me.”

The Thinking Machine arose as if the interview were at an end, and Hatch also arose, reluctantly. An idea was beginning to dawn in his mind.

“Does there occur to you that there is any connection whatever between Henley and Miss Regnier?” he asked.

“It is possible,” was the reply. “I had thought of that. If there is a connection it is not apparent yet.”

“Then how—how was it she—she was killed, or killed herself, whichever may be true, and——”

“The attempt to kill Henley killed her. That’s all I can say now.”

“That all?” asked Hatch, after a pause.

“No. Warn Mr. Henley immediately that he is in grave danger. Remember the person who has planned this will probably go to any extreme. I don’t know Mr. Henley, of course, but from the fact that he always had a light at night I gather that he is a timid sort of man—not necessarily a coward, but a man lacking in stamina—therefore, one who might better disappear for a week or so until the mystery is cleared up. Above all, impress upon him the importance of the warning.”

The Thinking Machine opened his pocketbook and took from it the scarlet thread which he had picked from the rope of the flagpole.

“Here, I believe, is the real clew to the problem,” he explained to Hatch. “What does it seem to be?”

Hatch examined it closely.

“I should say a strand from a Turkish bath robe,” was his final judgement.

“Possibly. Ask some cloth expert what he makes of it, then if it sounds promising look into it. Find out if by any possibility it can be any part of any garment worn by any person in the apartment house.”

“But it’s so slight——” Hatch began.

“I know,” the other interrupted, tartly. “It’s slight, but I believe it is a part of the wearing apparel of the person, man or woman, who has four times attempted to kill Mr. Henley and who did kill the girl. Therefore, it is important.”

Hatch looked at him quickly.

“Well, how—in what manner—did it come where you found it?”

“Simple enough,” said the scientist. “It is a wonder that there were not more pieces of it—that’s all.”

Perplexed by his instructions. But confident of results, Hatch left The Thinking Machine. What possible connection could this tiny bit of scarlet thread, found on a flagpole, have with one shutting off the gas in Henley’s rooms? How did anyone go into Henley’s rooms to shut off the gas? How was it Miss Regnier was dead? What was the manner of her death?

A cloth expert in a great department store turned his knowledge on the tiny bit of scarlet for the illumination of Hatch, but he could go no further than to say that it seemed to be part of a Turkish bath robe.

“Man or woman’s?” asked Hatch.

“The material from which bath robes are made is the same for both men and women,” was the reply. “I can say nothing else. Of course there’s not enough of it to even guess at the pattern of the robe.”

Then Hatch went to the financial district and was ushered into the office of Weldon Henley, a slender, handsome man of thirty-two or three years, pallid of face and nervous in manner. He still showed the effect of the gas poisoning, and there was even a trace of a furtive fear—fear of something, he himself didn’t know what—in his actions.

Henley talked freely to the newspaper man of certain things, but of other things he was resentfully reticent. He admitted his engagement to Miss Lipscomb, and finally even admitted that Miss Lipscomb’s hand had been sought by another man, Regnault Cabell, formerly of Virginia.

“Could you give me his address?” asked Hatch.

“He lives in the same apartment house with me—two floors above,” was the reply.

Hatch was startled; startled more than he would have cared to admit.

“Are you on friendly terms with him?” he asked.

“Certainly,” said Henley. “I won’t say anything further about this matter. It would be unwise for obvious reasons.”

“I suppose you consider that this turning on of the gas was an attempt on your life?”

“I can’t suppose anything else.”

Hatch studied the pallid face closely as he asked the next question.

“Do you know Miss Regnier was found dead to-day?”

“Dead?” exclaimed the other, and he arose. “Who—what—who is she?”

It seemed a distinct effort for him to regain control of himself.

The reporter detailed then the circumstances of the finding of the girl’s body, and the broker listened without comment. From that time forward all the reporter’s questions were either parried or else met with a flat refusal to answer. Finally Hatch repeated to him the warning which he had from The Thinking Machine, and feeling that he had accomplished little, went away.

At eight o’clock that night—a night of complete darkness—Henley was found unconscious, lying in a little used walk in the Common. There was a bullet hole through his left shoulder, and he was bleeding profusely. He was removed to the hospital, where he regained consciousness for just a moment.

“Who shot you?” he was asked.

“None of your business,” he replied, and lapsed into unconsciousness.

4

Entirely unaware of this latest attempt on the life of the broker, Hutchinson Hatch steadily pursued his investigations. They finally led him to an intimate friend of Regnault Cabell. The young Southerner had apartments on the fourth floor of the big house off Commonwealth Avenue, directly over those Henley occupied, but two flights higher up. This friend was a figure in the social set of the Back Bay. He talked to Hatch freely of Cabell.

“He’s a good fellow,” he explained, “one of the best I ever met, and comes of one of the best families Virginia ever had—a true F. F. V. He’s pretty quick tempered and all that, but an excellent chap, and everywhere he has gone here he has made friends.”

“He used to be in love with Miss Lipscomb of Virginia, didn’t he?” asked Hatch, casually.

“Used to be?” the other repeated with a laugh. “He is in love with her. But recently he understood that she was engaged to Weldon Henley, a broker—you may have heard of him?—and that, I suppose, has dampened his ardor considerably. As a matter of fact, Cabell took the thing to heart. He used to know Miss Lipscomb in Virginia—she comes from another famous family there—and he seemed to think he had a prior claim on her.”

Hatch heard all these things as any man might listen to gossip, but each additional fact was sinking into his mind, and each additional fact led his suspicions on deeper into the channel they had chosen.

“Cabell is pretty well to do,” his informant went on, “not rich as we count riches in the North, but pretty well to do, and I believe he came to Boston because Miss Lipscomb spent so much of her time here. She is a beautiful young woman of twenty-two and extremely popular in the social world everywhere, particularly in Boston. Then there was the additional fact that Henley was here.”

“No chance at all for Cabell?” Hatch suggested.

“Not the slightest,” was the reply. “Yet despite the heartbreak he had, he was the first to congratulate Henley on winning her love. And he meant it, too.”

“What’s his attitude toward Henley now?” asked Hatch. His voice was calm, but there was an underlying tense note imperceptible to the other.

“They meet and speak and move in the same set. There’s no love lost on either side, I don’t suppose, but there is no trace of any ill feeling.”

“Cabell doesn’t happen to be a vindictive sort of man?”

“Vindictive?” and the other laughed. “No. He’s like a big boy, forgiving, and all that; hot-tempered, though. I could imagine him in a fit of anger making a personal matter of it with Henley, but I don’t think he ever did.”

The mind of the newspaper man was rapidly focusing on one point; the rush of thoughts, questions and doubts silenced him for a moment. Then:

“How long has Cabell been in Boston?”

“Seven or eight months—that is, he has had apartments here for that long—but he has made several visits South. I suppose it’s South. He has a trick of dropping out of sight occasionally. I understand that he intends to go South for good very soon. If I’m not mistaken, he is trying now to rent his suite.”

Hatch looked suddenly at his informant; an idea of seeing Cabell and having a legitimate excuse for talking to him had occurred to him.

“I’m looking for a suite,” he volunteered at last. “I wonder if you would give me a card of introduction to him? We might get together on it.”

Thus it happened that half an hour later, about ten minutes past nine o’clock, Hatch was on his way to the big apartment house. In the office he saw the manager.

“Heard the news?” asked the manager.

“No,” Hatch replied. “What is it?”

“Somebody’s shot Mr. Henley as he was passing through the Common early to-night.”

Hatch whistled in amazement.

“Is he dead?”

“No, but he is unconscious. The hospital doctors say it is a nasty wound, but not necessarily dangerous.”

“Who shot him? Do they know?”

“He knows, but he won’t say.”

Amazed and alarmed by this latest development, an accurate fulfillment of The Thinking Machine’s prophecy, Hatch stood thoughtful for a moment, then recovering his composure a little asked for Cabell.

“I don’t think there’s much chance of seeing him,” said the manager. “He’s going away on the midnight train—going South, to Virginia.”

“Going away to-night?” Hatch gasped.

“Yes; it seems to have been rather a sudden determination. He was talking to me here half an hour or so ago, and said something about going away. While he was here the telephone boy told me that Henley had been shot; they had ’phoned from the hospital to inform us. Then Cabell seemed greatly agitated. He said he was going away to-night, if he could catch the midnight train, and now he’s packing.”

“I suppose the shooting of Henley upset him considerably?” the reporter suggested.

“Yes, I guess it did,” was the reply. “They moved in the same set and belonged to the same clubs.”

The manager sent Hatch’s card of introduction to Cabell’s apartments. Hatch went up and was ushered into a suite identical with that of Henley’s in every respect save in minor details of furnishings. Cabell stood in the middle of the floor, with his personal belongings scattered about the room; his valet, evidently a Frenchman, was busily engaged in packing.

Cabell’s greeting was perfunctorily cordial; he seemed agitated. His face was flushed and from time to time he ran his fingers through his long, brown hair. He stared at Hatch in a preoccupied fashion, then they fell into conversation about the rent of the apartments.

“I’ll take almost anything reasonable,” Cabell said hurriedly. “You see, I am going away to-night, rather more suddenly than I had intended, and I am anxious to get the lease off my hands. I pay two hundred dollars a month for these just as they are.”

“May I looked them over?” asked Hatch.

He passed from the front room into the next. Here, on a bed, was piled a huge lot of clothing, and the valet, with deft fingers, was brushing and folding, preparatory to packing. Cabell was directly behind him.

“Quite comfortable, you see,” he explained. “There’s room enough if you are alone. Are you?”

“Oh, yes,” Hatch replied.

“This other room here,” Cabell explained, “is not in very tidy shape now. I have been out of the city for several weeks, and—— What’s the matter?” he demanded suddenly.

Hatch had turned quickly at the words and stared at him, then recovered himself with a start.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “I rather thought I saw you in town here a week or so ago—of course I didn’t know you—and I was wondering if I could have been mistaken.”

“Must have been,” said the other easily. “During the time I was away a Miss ——, a friend of my sister’s, occupied the suite. I’m afraid some of her things are here. She hasn’t sent for them as yet. She occupied this room, I think; when I came back a few days ago she took another place and all her things haven’t been removed.”

“I see,” remarked Hatch, casually. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of her returning here unexpectedly if I should happen to take her apartments?”

“Not the slightest. She knows I am back, and thinks I am to remain. She was to send for these things.”

Hatch gazed about the room ostentatiously. Across a trunk lay a Turkish bath robe with a scarlet stripe in it. He was anxious to get hold of it, to examine it closely. But he didn’t dare to, then. Together they returned to the front room.

“I rather like the place,” he said, after a pause, “but the price is——”

“Just a moment,” Cabell interrupted. “Jean, before you finish packing that suit case be sure to put my bath robe in it. It’s in the far room.”

Then one question was settled for Hatch. After a moment the valet returned with the bath robe, which had been in the far room. It was Cabell’s bath robe. As Jean passed the reporter an end of the robe caught on a corner of the trunk, and, stopping, the reporter unfastened it. A tiny strand of thread clung to the metal; Hatch detached it and stood idly twirling it in his fingers.

“As I was saying,” he resumed, “I rather like the place, but the price is too much. Suppose you leave it in the hands of the manager of the house——”

“I had intended doing that,” the Southerner interrupted.

“Well, I’ll see him about it later,” Hatch added.

With a cordial, albeit pre-occupied, handshake, Cabell ushered him out. Hatch went down in the elevator with a feeling of elation; a feeling that he had accomplished something. The manager was waiting to get into the lift.

“Do you happen to remember the name of the young lady who occupied Mr. Cabell’s suite while he was away?” he asked.

“Miss Austin,” said the manager, “but she’s not young. She was about forty-five years old, I should judge.”

“Did Mr. Cabell have his servant Jean with him?”

“Oh, no,” said the manager. “The valet gave up the suite to Miss Austin entirely, and until Mr. Cabell returned occupied a room in the quarters we have for our own employees.”

“Was Miss Austin ailing in any way?” asked Hatch. “I saw a large number of medicine bottles upstairs.”

“I don’t know what was the matter with her,” replied the manager, with a little puzzled frown. “She certainly was not a woman of sound mental balance—that is, she was eccentric, and all that. I think rather it was an act of charity for Mr. Cabell to let her have the suite in his absence. Certainly we didn’t want her.”

Hatch passed out and burst in eagerly upon The Thinking Machine in his laboratory.

“Here,” he said, and triumphantly he extended the tiny scarlet strand which he had received from The Thinking Machine, and the other of the identical color which came from Cabell’s bath robe. “Is that the same?”

The Thinking Machine placed them under the microscope and examined them immediately. Later he submitted them to a chemical test.

“It is the same,” he said, finally.

“Then the mystery is solved,” said Hatch, conclusively.

5

The Thinking Machine stared steadily into the eager, exultant eyes of the newspaper man until Hatch at last began to fear that he had been precipitate. After awhile, under close scrutiny, the reporter began to feel convinced that he had made a mistake—he didn’t quite see where, but it must be there, and the exultant manner passed. The voice of The Thinking Machine was like a cold shower.

“Remember, Mr. Hatch,” he said, critically, “that unless every possible question has been considered one cannot boast of a solution. Is there any possible question lingering yet in your mind?”

The reporter silently considered that for a moment, then:

“Well, I have the main facts, anyway. There may be one or two minor questions left, but the principal ones are answered.”

“Then tell me, to the minutest detail, what you have learned, what has happened.”

Professor Van Dusen sank back in his old, familiar pose in the large arm chair and Hatch related what he had learned and what he surmised. He related, too, the peculiar circumstances surrounding the wounding of Henley, and right on down to the beginning and end of the interview with Cabell in the latter’s apartments. The Thinking Machine was silent for a time, then there came a host of questions.

“Do you know where the woman—Miss Austin—is now?” was the first.

“No,” Hatch had to admit.

“Or her precise mental condition?”

“No.”

“Or her exact relationship to Cabell?”

“No.”

“Do you know, then, what the valet, Jean, knows of the affair?”

“No, not that,” said the reporter, and his face flushed under the close questioning. “He was out of the suite every night.”

“Therefore might have been the very one who turned on the gas,” the other put in testily.

“So far as I can learn, nobody could have gone into that room and turned on the gas,” said the reporter, somewhat aggressively. “Henley barred the doors and windows and kept watch, night after night.”

“Yet the moment he was exhausted and fell asleep the gas was turned on to kill him,” said The Thinking Machine; “thus we see that he was watched more closely than he watched.”

“I see what you mean now,” said Hatch, after a long pause.

“I should like to know what Henley and Cabell and the valet knew of the girl who was found dead,” The Thinking Machine suggested. “Further, I should like to know if there was a good-sized mirror—not one set in a bureau or dresser—either in Henley’s room or the apartments where the girl was found. Find out this for me and—never mind. I’ll go with you.”

The scientist left the room. When he returned he wore his coat and hat. Hatch arose mechanically to follow. For a block or more they walked along, neither speaking. The Thinking Machine was the first to break the silence:

“You believe Cabell is the man who attempted to kill Henley?”

“Frankly, yes,” replied the newspaper man.

“Why?”

“Because he had the motive—disappointed love.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” Hatch confessed. “The doors of the Henley suite were closed. I don’t see how anybody passed them.”

“And the girl? Who killed her? How? Why?”

Disconsolately Hatch shook his head as he walked on. The Thinking Machine interpreted his silence aright.

“Don’t jump at conclusions,” he advised sharply. “You were confident Cabell was to blame for this—and he might have been, I don’t know yet—but you can suggest nothing to show how he did it. I have told you before that imagination is half of logic.”

At last the lights of the big apartment house where Henley lived came in sight. Hatch shrugged his shoulders. He had grave doubts—based on what he knew—whether The Thinking Machine would be able to see Cabell. It was nearly eleven o’clock and Cabell was to leave for the South at midnight.

“Is Mr. Cabell here?” asked the scientist of the elevator boy.

“Yes, just about to go, though. He won’t see anyone.”

“Hand him this note,” instructed The Thinking Machine, and he scribbled something on a piece of paper. “He’ll see us.”

The boy took the paper and the elevator shot up to the fourth floor. After awhile he returned.

“He’ll see you,” he said.

“Is he unpacking?”

“After he read your note twice he told his valet to unpack,” the boy replied.

“Ah, I thought so,” said The Thinking Machine.

With Hatch, mystified and puzzled, following, The Thinking Machine entered the elevator to step out a second or so later on the fourth floor. As they left the car they saw the door of Cabell’s apartment standing open; Cabell was in the door. Hatch traced a glimmer of anxiety in the eyes of the young man.

“Professor Van Dusen?” Cabell inquired.

“Yes,” said the scientist. “It was of the utmost importance that I should see you, otherwise I should not have come at this time of night.”

With a wave of his hand Cabell passed that detail.

“I was anxious to get away at midnight,” he explained, “but, of course, now I shan’t go, in view of your note. I have ordered my valet to unpack my things, at least until to-morrow.”

The reporter and the scientist passed into the luxuriously furnished apartments. Jean, the valet, was bending over a suit case as they entered, removing some things he had been carefully placing there. He didn’t look back or pay the least attention to the visitors.

“This is your valet?” asked The Thinking Machine.

“Yes,” said the young man.

“French, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Speak English at all?”

“Very badly,” said Cabell. “I use French when I talk to him.”

“Does he know that you are accused of murder?” asked The Thinking Machine, in a quiet, conversational tone.

The effect of the remark on Cabell was startling. He staggered back a step or so as if he had been struck in the face, and a crimson flush overspread his brow. Jean, the valet, straightened up suddenly and looked around. There was a queer expression, too, in his eyes; an expression which Hatch could not fathom.

“Murder?” gasped Cabell, at last.

“Yes, he speaks English all right,” remarked The Thinking Machine. “Now, Mr. Cabell, will you please tell me just who Miss Austin is, and where she is, and her mental condition? Believe me, it may save you a great deal of trouble. What I said in the note is not exaggerated.”

The young man turned suddenly and began to pace back and forth across the room. After a few minutes he paused before The Thinking Machine, who stood impatiently waiting for an answer.

“I’ll tell you, yes,” said Cabell, firmly. “Miss Austin is a middle-aged woman whom my sister befriended several times—was, in fact, my sister’s governess when she was a child. Of late years she has not been wholly right mentally, and has suffered a great deal of privation. I had about concluded arrangements to put her in a private sanitarium. I permitted her to remain in these rooms in my absence, South. I did not take Jean—he lived in the quarters of the other employees of the place, and gave the apartment entirely to Miss Austin. It was simply an act of charity.”

“What was the cause of your sudden determination to go South to-night?” asked the scientist.

“I won’t answer that question,” was the sullen reply.

There was a long, tense silence. Jean, the valet, came and went several times.

“How long has Miss Austin known Mr. Henley?”

“Presumably since she has been in these apartments,” was the reply.

“Are you sure you are not Miss Austin?” demanded the scientist.

The question was almost staggering, not only to Cabell, but to Hatch. Suddenly, with flaming face, the young Southerner leaped forward as if to strike down The Thinking Machine.

“That won’t do any good,” said the scientist, coldly. “Are you sure you are not Miss Austin?” he repeated.

“Certainly I am not Miss Austin,” responded Cabell, fiercely.

“Have you a mirror in these apartments about twelve inches by twelve inches?” asked The Thinking Machine, irrelevantly.

“I—I don’t know,” stammered the young man. “I—have we, Jean?”

“Oui,” replied the valet.

“Yes,” snapped The Thinking Machine. “Talk English, please. May I see it?”

The valet, without a word but with a sullen glance at the questioner, turned and left the room. He returned after a moment with the mirror. The Thinking Machine carefully examined the frame, top and bottom and on both sides. At last he looked up; again the valet was bending over a suit case.

“Do you use gas in these apartments?” the scientist asked suddenly.

“No,” was the bewildered response. “What is all this, anyway?”

Without answering, The Thinking Machine drew a chair up under the chandelier where the gas and electric fixtures were and began to finger the gas tips. After awhile he climbed down and passed into the next room, with Hatch and Cabell, both hopelessly mystified, following. There the scientist went through the same process of fingering the gas jets. Finally, one of the gas tips came out in his hand.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, suddenly, and Hatch knew the note of triumph in it. The jet from which the tip came was just on a level with his shoulder, set between a dressing table and a window. He leaned over and squinted at the gas pipe closely. Then he returned to the room where the valet was.

“Now, Jean,” he began, in an even, calm voice, “please tell me if you did or did not kill Miss Regnier purposely?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said the servant sullenly, angrily, as he turned on the scientist.

“You speak very good English now,” was The Thinking Machine’s terse comment. “Mr. Hatch, lock the door and use this ’phone to call the police.”

Hatch turned to do as he was bid and saw a flash of steel in young Cabell’s hand, which was drawn suddenly from a hip pocket. It was a revolver. The weapon glittered in the light, and Hatch flung himself forward. There was a sharp report, and a bullet was buried in the floor.

6

Then came a fierce, hard fight for possession of the revolver. It ended with the weapon in Hatch’s hand, and both he and Cabell blowing from the effort they had expended. Jean, the valet, had turned at the sound of the shot and started toward the door leading into the hall. The Thinking Machine had stepped in front of him, and now stood there with his back to the door. Physically he would have been a child in the hands of the valet, yet there was a look in his eyes which stopped him.

“Now, Mr. Hatch,” said the scientist quietly, a touch of irony in his voice, “hand me the revolver, then ’phone for Detective Mallory to come here immediately. Tell him we have a murderer—and if he can’t come at once get some other detective whom you know.”

“Murderer!” gasped Cabell.

Uncontrollable rage was blazing in the eyes of the valet, and he made as if to throw The Thinking Machine aside, despite the revolver, when Hatch was at the telephone. As Jean started forward, however, Cabell stopped him with a quick, stern gesture. Suddenly the young Southerner turned on The Thinking Machine; but it was with a question.

“What does it all mean?” he asked, bewildered.

“It means that that man there,” and The Thinking Machine indicated the valet by a nod of his head, “is a murderer—that he killed Louise Regnier; that he shot Welden Henley on Boston Common, and that, with the aid of Miss Regnier, he had four times previously attempted to kill Mr. Henley. Is he coming, Mr. Hatch?”

“Yes,” was the reply. “He says he’ll be here directly.”

“Do you deny it?” demanded The Thinking Machine of the valet.

“I’ve done nothing,” said the valet sullenly. “I’m going out of here.”

Like an infuriated animal he rushed forward. Hatch and Cabell seized him and bore him to the floor. There, after a frantic struggle, he was bound and the other three men sat down to wait for Detective Mallory. Cabell sank back in his chair with a perplexed frown on his face. From time to time he glanced at Jean. The flush of anger which had been on the valet’s face was gone now; instead there was the pallor of fear.

“Won’t you tell us?” pleaded Cabell impatiently.

“When Detective Mallory comes and takes his prisoner,” said The Thinking Machine.

Ten minutes later they heard a quick step in the hall outside and Hatch opened the door. Detective Mallory entered and looked from one to another inquiringly.

“That’s your prisoner, Mr. Mallory,” said the scientist, coldly. “I charge him with the murder of Miss Regnier, whom you were so confident committed suicide; I charge him with five attempts on the life of Weldon Henley, four times by gas poisoning, in which Miss Regnier was his accomplice, and once by shooting. He is the man who shot Mr. Henley.”

The Thinking Machine arose and walked over to the prostate man, handing the revolver to Hatch. He glared down at Jean fiercely.

“Will you tell how you did it or shall I?” he demanded.

His answer was a sullen, defiant glare. He turned and picked up the square mirror which the valet had produced previously.

“That’s where the screw was, isn’t it?” he asked, as he indicated a small hole in the frame of the mirror. Jean stared at it and his head sank forward hopelessly. “And this is the bath robe you wore, isn’t it?” he demanded again, and from the suit case he pulled out the garment with the scarlet stripe.

“I guess you got me all right,” was the sullen reply.

“It might be better for you if you told the story then?” suggested The Thinking Machine.

“You know so much about it, tell it yourself.”

“Very well,” was the calm rejoinder. “I will. If I make any mistake you will correct me.”

For a long time no one spoke. The Thinking Machine had dropped back into a chair and was staring through his thick glasses at the ceiling; his finger tips were pressed tightly together. At last he began:

“There are certain trivial gaps which only the imagination can supply until the matter is gone into more fully. I should have supplied these myself, but the arrest of this man, Jean, was precipitated by the attempted hurried departure of Mr. Cabell for the South to-night, and I did not have time to go into the case to the fullest extent.

“Thus, we begin with the fact that there were several clever attempts made to murder Mr. Henley. This was by putting out the gas which he habitually left burning in his room. It happened four times in all; thus proving that it was an attempt to kill him. If it had been only once it might have been accident, even twice it might have been accident, but the same accident does not happen four times at the same time of night.

“Mr. Henley finally grew to regard the strange extinguishing of the gas as an effort to kill him, and carefully locked and barred his door and windows each night. He believed that some one came into his apartments and put out the light, leaving the gas flow. This, of course, was not true. Yet the gas was put out. How? My first idea, a natural one, was that it was turned off for an instant at the meter, when the light would go out, then turned on again. This, I convinced myself, was not true. Therefore still the question—how?

“It is a fact—I don’t know how widely known it is—but it is a fact that every gas light in this house might be extinguished at the same time from this room without leaving it. How? Simply by removing that gas jet tip and blowing into the gas pipe. It would not leave a jet in the building burning. It is due to the fact that the lung power is greater than the pressure of the gas in the pipes, and forces it out.

“Thus we have the method employed to extinguish the light in Mr. Henley’s rooms, and all the barred and locked doors and windows would not stop it. At the same time it threatened the life of every other person in the house—that is, every other person who used gas. It was probably for this reason that the attempt was always made late at night, I should say three or four o’clock. That’s when it was done, isn’t it?” he asked suddenly of the valet.

Staring at The Thinking Machine in open-mouthed astonishment the valet nodded his acquiescence before he was fully aware of it.

“Yes, that’s right,” The Thinking Machine resumed complacently. “This was easily found out—comparatively. The next question was how was a watch kept on Mr. Henley? It would have done no good to extinguish the gas before he was asleep, or to have turned it on when he was not in his rooms. It might have led to a speedy discovery of just how the thing was done.

“There’s a spring lock on the door of Mr. Henley’s apartment. Therefore it would have been impossible for anyone to peep through the keyhole. There are no cracks through which one might see. How was this watch kept? How was the plotter to satisfy himself positively of the time when Mr. Henley was asleep? How was it that the gas was put out at no time of the score or more nights Mr. Henley himself kept watch? Obviously he was watched through a window.

“No one could climb out on the window ledge and look into Mr. Henley’s apartments. No one could see into that apartment from the street—that is, could see whether Mr. Henley was asleep or even in bed. They could see the light. Watch was kept with the aid offered by the flagpole, supplemented with a mirror—this mirror. A screw was driven into the frame—it has been removed now—it was swung on the flagpole rope and pulled out to the end of the pole, facing the building. To a man standing in the hall window of the third floor it offered precisely the angle necessary to reflect the interior of Mr. Henley’s suite, possibly even showed him in bed through a narrow opening in the curtain. There is no shade on the windows of that suite; heavy curtains instead. Is that right?”

Again the prisoner was surprised into a mute acquiescence.

“I saw the possibility of these things, and I saw, too, that at three or four o’clock in the morning it would be perfectly possible for a person to move about the upper halls of this house without being seen. If he wore a heavy bath robe, with a hood, say, no one would recognize him even if he were seen, and besides the garb would not cause suspicion. This bath robe has a hood.

“Now, in working the mirror back and forth on the flagpole at night a tiny scarlet thread was pulled out of the robe and clung to the rope. I found this thread; later Mr. Hatch found an identical thread in these apartments. Both came from that bath robe. Plain logic shows that the person who blew down the gas pipes worked the mirror trick; the person who worked the mirror trick left the thread; the thread comes back to the bath robe—that bath robe there,” he pointed dramatically. “Thus the person who desired Henley’s death was in these apartments, or had easy access to them.”

He paused for a moment and there was a tense silence. A great light was coming to Hatch, slowly but surely. The brain that had followed all this was unlimited in possibilities.

“Even before we traced the origin of the crime to this room,” went on the scientist, quietly now, “attention had been attracted here, particularly to you, Mr. Cabell. It was through the love affair, of which Miss Lipscomb was the center. Mr. Hatch learned that you and Henley had been rivals for her hand. It was that, even before this scarlet thread was found, which indicated that you might have some knowledge of the affair, directly or indirectly.

“You are not a malicious or revengeful man, Mr. Cabell. But you are hot-tempered—extremely so. You demonstrated that just now, when, angry and not understanding, but feeling that your honor was at stake, you shot a hole in the floor.”

“What?” asked Detective Mallory.

“A little accident,” explained The Thinking Machine quickly. “Not being a malicious or revengeful man, you are not the man to deliberately go ahead and make elaborate plans for the murder of Henley. In a moment of passion you might have killed him—but never deliberately as the result of premeditation. Besides you were out of town. Who was then in these apartments? Who had access to these apartments? Who might have used your bath robe? Your valet, possibly Miss Austin. Which? Now, let’s see how we reached this conclusion which led to the valet.

“Miss Regnier was found dead. It was not suicide. How did I know? Because she had been reading with the gas light at its full. If she had been reading by the gas light, how was it then that it went out and suffocated her before she could arise and shut it off? Obviously she must have fallen asleep over her book and left the light burning.

“If she was in this plot to kill Henley, why did she light the jet in her room? There might have been some defect in the electric bulb in her room which she had just discovered. Therefore she lighted the gas, intending to extinguish it—turn it off entirely—later. But she fell asleep. Therefore when the valet here blew into the pipe, intending to kill Mr. Henley, he unwittingly killed the woman he loved—Miss Regnier. It was perfectly possible, meanwhile, that she did not know of the attempt to be made that particular night, although she had participated in the others, knowing that Henley had night after night sat up to watch the light in his rooms.

“The facts, as I knew them, showed no connection between Miss Regnier and this man at that time—nor any connection between Miss Regnier and Henley. It might have been that the person who blew the gas out of the pipe from these rooms knew nothing whatever of Miss Regnier, just as he didn’t know who else he might have killed in the building.

“But I had her death and the manner of it. I had eliminated you, Mr. Cabell. Therefore there remained Miss Austin and the valet. Miss Austin was eccentric—insane, if you will. Would she have any motive for killing Henley? I could imagine none. Love? Probably not. Money? They had nothing in common on that ground. What? Nothing that I could see. Therefore, for the moment, I passed Miss Austin by, after asking you, Mr. Cabell, if you were Miss Austin.

“What remained? The valet. Motive? Several possible ones, one or two probable. He is French, or says he is. Miss Regnier is French. Therefore I had arrived at the conclusion that they knew each other as people of the same nationality will in a house of this sort. And remember, I had passed by Mr. Cabell and Miss Austin, so the valet was the only one left; he could use the bath robe.

“Well, the motive. Frankly that was the only difficult point in the entire problem—difficult because there were so many possibilities. And each possibility that suggested itself suggested also a woman. Jealousy? There must be a woman. Hate? Probably a woman. Attempted extortion? With the aid of a woman. No other motive which would lead to so elaborate a plot of murder would come forward. Who was the woman? Miss Regnier.

“Did Miss Regnier know Henley? Mr. Hatch had reason to believe he knew her because of his actions when informed of her death. Knew her how? People of such relatively different planes of life can know each other—or do know each other—only on one plane. Henley is a typical young man, fast, I dare say, and liberal. Perhaps, then, there had been a liason. When I saw this possibility I had my motive.”

________________

7. The Case of the Scientific Murderer

Certainly no problem that ever came to the attention of The Thinking Machine required in a greater degree subtlety of mind, exquisite analytical sense, and precise knowledge of the marvels of science than did that singular series of events which began with the death of the Honorable Violet Danbury, only daughter and sole heir of the late Sir Duval Danbury, of Leamington, England. In this case The Thinking Machine—more properly, Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D., M. D., F. R. S., et cetera, et cetera—brought to bear upon an extraordinary mystery of crime that intangible genius of logic which had made him the court of last appeal in his profession. “Logic is inexorable,” he has said; and no greater proof of his assertion was possible than in this instance where literally he seemed to pluck a solution of the riddle from the void.

Shortly after eleven o’clock on the morning of Thursday, May 4, Miss Danbury was found dead, sitting in the drawing-room of apartments she was temporarily occupying in a big family hotel on Beacon Street. She was richly gowned, just as she had come from the opera the night before; her marble-white bosom and arms aglitter with jewels. On her face, dark in death as are the faces of those who die of strangulation, was an expression of unspeakable terror. Her parted lips were slightly bruised, as if from a light blow; in her left cheek was an insignificant, bloodless wound. On the floor at her feet was a shattered goblet. There was nothing else unusual, no disorder, no sign of a struggle. Obviously she had been dead for several hours.

All these things considered, the snap judgement of the police—specifically, the snap judgement of Detective Mallory, of the bureau of criminal investigation—was suicide by poison. Miss Danbury had poured some deadly drug into a goblet, sat down, drained it off, and died. Simple and obvious enough. But the darkness in her face? Oh, that! Probably some effect of a poison he didn’t happen to be acquainted with. But it looked as if she might have been strangled! Pooh! Pooh! There were no marks on her neck, of fingers or anything else. Suicide, that’s what it was—the autopsy would disclose the nature of the poison.

Cursory questions of the usual nature were asked and answered. Had Miss Danbury lived alone? No; she had a companion upon whom, too, devolved the duties of chaperon—a Mrs. Cecelia Montgomery. Where was she? She’d left the city the day before to visit friends in Concord; the manager of the hotel had telegraphed the facts to her. No servants? No. She had availed herself of the service in the hotel. Who had last seem Miss Danbury alive? The elevator attendant the night before, when she had returned form the opera, about half past eleven o’clock. Had she gone alone? No. She had been accompanied by Professor Charles Meredith, of the university. He had returned with her, and left her at the elevator.

“How did she come to know Professor Meredith?” Mallory inquired. “Friend, relative——”

“I don’t know,” said the hotel manager. “She knew a great many people here. She’d only been in the city two months this time, but once, three years ago, she spent six months here.”

“Any particular reason for her coming over? Business, for instance, or merely a visit?”

“Merely a visit, I imagine.”

The front door swung open, and there entered at the moment a middle-aged man, sharp-featured, rather spare, brisk in his movements, and distinctly well groomed. He went straight to the inquiry desk.

“Will you please phone to Miss Danbury, and ask her if she will join Mr. Herbert Willing for luncheon at the country club?” he requested. “Tell her I am below with my motor.”

At mention of Miss Danbury’s name both Mallory and the house manager turned. The boy behind the inquiry desk glanced at the detective blankly. Mr. Willing rapped upon the desk sharply.

“Well, well?” he demanded impatiently. “Are you asleep?”

“Good morning, Mr. Willing,” Mallory greeted him.

“Hello, Mallory,” and Mr. Willing turned to face him. “What are you doing here?”

“You don’t know that Miss Danbury is”—the detective paused a little—“is dead?”

“Dead!” Mr. Willing gasped. “Dead!” he repeated incredulously. “What are you talking about?” He seized Mallory by the arm, and shook him. “Miss Danbury is——”

“Dead,” the detective assured him again. “She probably committed suicide. She was found in her apartments two hours ago.”

For half a minute Mr. Willing continued to stare at him as if without comprehension, then he dropped weakly into a chair, with his head in his hands. When he glanced up again there was deep grief in his keen face.

“It’s my fault,” he said simply. “I feel like a murderer. I gave her some bad news yesterday, but I didn’t dream she would——” He stopped.

“Bad news?” Mallory urged.

“I’ve been doing some legal work for her,” Mr. Willing explained. “She’s been trying to sell a huge estate in England, and just at the moment the deal seemed assured it fell through. I—I suppose it was a mistake to tell her. This morning I received another offer from an unexpected quarter, and I came by to inform her of it.” He stared tensely into Mallory’s face for a moment without speaking. “I feel like her murderer!” he said again.

“But I don’t understand why the failure of the deal——” the detective began; then: “She was rich, wasn’t she? What did it matter particularly if the deal did fail?”

“Rich, yes; but land poor,” the lawyer elucidated. “The estates to which she held title were frightfully involved. She had jewels and all those things, but see how simply she lived. She was actually in need of money. It would take me an hour to make you understand. How did she die? When? What was the manner of her death?”

Detective Mallory placed before him those facts he had, and finally went away with him in his motor car to see Professor Meredith at the university. Nothing bearing on the case developed as the result of that interview. Mr. Meredith seemed greatly shocked, and explained that his acquaintance with Miss Danbury dated some weeks back, and friendship had grown out of it through a mutual love of music. He had accompanied her to the opera half a dozen times.

“Suicide!” the detective declared, as he came away. “Obviously suicide by poison.”

On the following day he discovered for the first time that the obvious is not necessarily true. The autopsy revealed absolutely no trace of poison, either in the body or clinging to the shattered goblet, carefully gathered up and examined. The heart was normal, showing neither constriction nor dilation, as would have been the case had poison been swallowed, or even inhaled.

“It’s the small wound in her cheek, then,” Mallory asserted. “Maybe she didn’t swallow or inhale poison—she injected it directly into her blood through that wound.”

“No,” one of the examining physicians pointed out. “Even that way the heart would have shown constriction or dilation.”

“Oh, maybe not,” Mallory argued hopefully.

“Besides,” the physician went on, “that wound was made after death. That is proven by the fact that it did not bleed.” His brow clouded in perplexity. “There doesn’t seem to be the slightest reason for that wound, anyway. It’s really a hole, you know. It goes straight through her cheek. It looks as if it might have been made with a large hatpin.”

The detective was staring at him. If that wound had been made after death, certainly Miss Danbury didn’t make it—she had been murdered! And not murdered for robbery, since her jewels had been undisturbed.

“Straight through her cheek!” he repeated blankly. “By George! Say, if it wasn’t poison, what killed her?”

The three examining physicians exchanged glances.

“I don’t know that I can make you understand,” said one. “She died of absence of air in her lungs, if you follow me.”

“Absence of air—well, that’s illuminating!” the detective sneered heavily. “You mean she was strangled, or choked to death?”

“I mean precisely what I say,” was the reply. “She was not strangled—there is no mark on her throat; or choked—there is no obstruction in her throat. Literally she died of absence of air in her lungs.”

Mallory stood silently glowering at them. A fine lot of physicians, these!

“Let’s understand one another,” he said at last. “Miss Danbury did not die a natural death?”

“No!” emphatically.

“She wasn’t poisoned? Or strangled? Or shot? Or stabbed? Or run over by a truck? Or blown up by dynamite? Or kicked by a mule? Nor,” he concluded, “did she fall from an aeroplane?”

“No.”

“In other words, she just quit living?”

“Something like that,” the physician admitted. He seemed to be seeking a means of making himself more explicit. “You know the old nursery theory that a cat will suck a sleeping baby’s breath?” he asked. “Well, the death of Miss Danbury was like that, if you understand. It is as if some great animal or—or thing had——” He stopped.

Detective Mallory was an able man, the ablest, perhaps, in the bureau of criminal investigation, but a yellow primrose by the river’s brim was to him a yellow primrose, nothing more. He lacked imagination, a common fault of that type of sleuth who combines, more or less happily, a number eleven shoe and a number six hat. The only vital thing he had to go on was the fact that Miss Danbury was dead—murdered, in some mysterious, uncanny way. Vampires were something like that, weren’t they? He shuddered a little.

“Regular vampire sort of thing,” the youngest of the three physicians remarked, echoing the thought in the detective’s mind. “They’re supposed to make a slight wound, and——”

Detective Mallory didn’t hear the remainder of it. He turned abruptly, and left the room.

On the following Monday morning, one Henry Sumner, a longshoreman in Atlantic Avenue, was found dead sitting in his squalid room. On his face, dark in death, as are the faces of those who die of strangulation, was an expression of unspeakable terror. His parted lips were slightly bruised, as if from a light blow; in his left cheek was an insignificant, bloodless wound. On the floor at his feet was a shattered drinking glass!

’Twas Hutchinson Hatch, newspaper reporter, long, lean, and rather prepossessing in appearance, who brought this double mystery to the attention of The Thinking Machine. Martha, the eminent scientist’s one servant, admitted the newspaper man, and he went straight to the laboratory. As he opened the door The Thinking Machine turned testily from his worktable.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Hatch. Glad to see you. Sit down. What is it?” That was his idea of extreme cordiality.

“If you can spare me five minutes?” the reporter began apologetically.

“What is it?” repeated The Thinking Machine, without raising his eyes.

“I wish I knew,” the reporter said ruefully. “Two persons are dead—two persons as widely apart as the poles, at least in social position, have been murdered in precisely the same manner, and it seems impossible that——”

“Nothing is impossible,” The Thinking Machine interrupted, in the tone of perpetual irritation which seemed to be a part of him. “You annoy me when you say it.”

“It seems highly improbable,” Hatch corrected himself, “that there can be the remotest connection between the crimes, yet——”

“You’re wasting words,” the crabbed little scientist declared impatiently. “Begin at the beginning. Who was murdered? When? How? Why? What was the manner of death?”

“Taking the last question first,” the reporter explained, “we have the most singular part of the problem. No one can say the manner of death, not even the physicians.”

“Oh!” For the first time The Thinking Machine lifted his petulant, squinting, narrowed eyes, and stared into the face of the newspaper man. “Oh!” he said again. “Go on.”

As Hatch talked, the lure of a material problem laid hold of the master mind, and after a little The Thinking Machine dropped into a chair. With his great, grotesque head tilted back, his eyes turned steadily upward, and slender fingers placed precisely tip to tip, he listened in silence to the end.

“We come now,” said the newspaper man, “to the inexplicable after developments. We have proven that Mrs. Cecelia Montgomery, Miss Danbury’s companion, did not go to Concord to visit friends; as a matter of fact, she is missing. The police have been able to find no trace of her, and to-day are sending out a general alarm. Naturally, her absence at this particular moment is suspicious. It is possible to conjecture her connection with the death of Miss Danbury, but what about——”

“Never mind conjecture,” the scientist broke in curtly. “Facts, facts!”

“Further,” and Hatch’s bewilderment was evident on his face, “mysterious things have been happening in the rooms where Miss Danbury and this man Henry Sumner were found dead. Miss Danbury was found dead last Thursday. Immediately after the body was removed, Detective Mallory ordered her room locked, his idea being that nothing should be disturbed at least for the present, because of the strange circumstances surrounding her death. When the nature of the Henry Sumner affair became known, and the similarity of the cases recognized, he gave the same order regarding Sumner’s room.”

Hatch stopped, and stared vainly into the pallid, wizened face of the scientist. A curious little chill ran down his spinal column.

“Some time Tuesday night,” he continued, after a moment, “Miss Danbury’s room was entered and ransacked; and some time that same night Henry Sumner’s room was entered and ransacked. This morning, Wednesday, a clearly defined hand print in blood was found in Miss Danbury’s room. It was on the wooden top of a dressing table. It seemed to be a woman’s hand. Also, an indistinguishable smudge of blood, which may have been a hand print, was found in Sumner’s room!” He paused; The Thinking Machine’s countenance was inscrutable. “What possible connection can there be between this young woman of the aristocracy, and this—this longshoreman? Why should——”

“What chair,” questioned The Thinking Machine, “does Professor Meredith hold in the university?”

“Greek,” was the reply.

“Who is Mr. Willing?”

“One of the leading lawyers of the city.”

“Did you see Miss Danbury’s body?”

“Yes.”

“Did she have a large mouth, or a small mouth?”

The irrelevancy of the questions, to say nothing of their disjointedness, brought a look of astonishment to Hatch’s face; and he was a young man who was rarely astonished by the curious methods of The Thinking Machine. Always he had found that the scientist approached a problem from a new angle.

“I should say a small mouth,” he ventured. “Her lips were bruised as if—as if something round, say the size of a twenty-five-cent piece, had been crushed against them. There was a queer, drawn, caved-in look to her mouth and cheeks.”

“Naturally,” commented The Thinking Machine enigmatically. “And Sumner’s was the same?”

“Precisely. You say ‘naturally.’ Do you mean——” There was eagerness in the reporter’s question.

It passed unanswered. For half a minute The Thinking Machine continued to stare into nothingness. Finally:

“I dare say Sumner was of the English type? His name is English?”

“Yes; a splendid physical man, a hard drinker, I hear, as well as a hard worker.”

Again a pause.

“You don’t happen to know if Professor Meredith is now or ever has been particularly interested in physics—that is, in natural philosophy?”

“I do not.”

“Please find out immediately,” the scientist directed tersely. “Willing has handled some legal business for Miss Danbury. Learn what you can from him to the general end of establishing some connection, a relationship possibly, between Henry Sumner and the Honorable Violet Danbury. That, at the moment, is the most important thing to do. Neither of them may have been aware of the relationship, if relationship it was, yet it may have existed. If it doesn’t exist, there’s only one answer to the problem.”

“And that is?” Hatch asked.

“The murders are the work of a madman,” was the tart rejoinder. “There’s no mystery, of course, in the manner of the deaths of these two.”

“No mystery?” the reporter echoed blankly. “Do you mean you know how they——”

“Certainly I know, and you know. The examining physicians know, only they don’t know that they know.” Suddenly his tone became didactic. “Knowledge that can’t be applied is utterly useless,” he said. “The real difference between a great mind and a mediocre mind is only that the great mind applies its knowledge.” He was silent a moment. “The only problem remaining here is to find the person who was aware of the many advantages of this method of murder.”

“Advantages?” Hatch was puzzled.

“From the viewpoint of the murderer there is always a good way and a bad way to kill a person,” the scientist told him. “This particular murderer chose a way that was swift, silent, simple, and sure as the march of time. There was no scream, no struggle, no pistol shot, no poison to be traced, nothing to be seen except——”

“The hole in the left cheek, perhaps?”

“Quite right, and that leaves no clew. As a matter of fact, the only clew we have at all is the certainty that the murderer, man or woman, is well acquainted with physics, or natural philosophy.”

“Then you think,” the newspaper man’s eyes were about to start from his head, “that Professor Meredith——”

“I think nothing,” The Thinking Machine declared briefly. “I want to know what he knows of physics, as I said; also I want to know if there is any connection between Miss Danbury and the longshoreman. If you’ll attend to——”

Abruptly the laboratory door opened and Martha entered, pallid, frightened, her hands shaking.

“Something most peculiar, sir,” she stammered in her excitement.

“Well?” the little scientist questioned.

“I do believe,” said Martha, “that I’m a-going to faint!”

And as an evidence of good faith she did, crumpling up in a little heap before their astonished eyes.

“Dear me! Dear me!” exclaimed The Thinking Machine petulantly. “Of all the inconsiderate things! Why couldn’t she have told us before she did that?”

It was a labor of fifteen minutes to bring Martha around, and then weakly she explained what had happened. She had answered a ring of the telephone, and some one had asked for Professor Van Dusen. She inquired the name of the person talking.

“Never mind that,” came the reply. “Is he there? Can I see him?”

“You’ll have to explain what you want, sir,” Martha had told him. “He always has to know.”

“Tell him I know who murdered Miss Danbury and Henry Sumner,” came over the wire. “If he’ll receive me I’ll be right up.”

“And then, sir,” Martha explained to The Thinking Machine, “something must have happened at the other end, sir. I heard another man’s voice, then a sort of a choking sound, sir, and then they cursed me, sir. I didn’t hear any more. They hung up the receiver or something, sir.” She paused indignantly. “Think of him, sir, a-swearing at me!”

For a moment the eyes of the two men met; the same thought had come to them both. The Thinking Machine voiced it.

“Another one!” he said. “The third!”

With no other word he turned and went out; Martha followed him grumblingly. Hatch shuddered a little. The hand of the clock went on to half past seven, to eight. At twenty minutes past eight the scientist re-entered the laboratory.

“That fifteen minutes Martha was unconscious probably cost a man’s life, and certainly lost to us an immediate solution of the riddle,” he declared peevishly. “If she had told us before she fainted there is a chance that the operator would have remembered the number. As it is, there have been fifty calls since, and there’s no record.” He spread his slender hands helplessly. “The manager is trying to find the calling number. Anyway, we’ll know to-morrow. Meanwhile, try to see Mr. Willing to-night, and find out about what relationship, if any, exists between Miss Danbury and Sumner; also, see Professor Meredith.”

The newspaper man telephoned to Mr. Willing’s home in Melrose to see if he was in; he was not. On a chance he telephoned to his office. He hardly expected an answer, and he got none. So it was not until four o’clock in the morning that the third tragedy in the series came to light.

The scrubwomen employed in the great building where Mr. Willing had his law offices entered the suite to clean up. They found Mr. Willing there, gagged, bound hand and foot, and securely lashed to a chair. He was alive, but apparently unconscious from exhaustion. Directly facing him his secretary, Maxwell Pittman, sat dead in his chair. On his face, dark in death, as are the faces of those who die of strangulation, was an expression of unspeakable terror. His parted lips were slightly bruised, as if from a light blow; in his left cheek was an insignificant, bloodless wound!

Within an hour Detective Mallory was on the scene. By that time Mr. Willing, under the influence of stimulants, was able to talk.

“I have no idea what happened,” he explained. “It was after six o’clock, and my secretary and I were alone in the offices, finishing up some work. He had stepped into another room for a moment, and I was at my desk. Some one crept up behind me, and held a drugged cloth to my nostrils. I tried to shout, and struggled, but everything grew black, and that’s all I know. When I came to myself poor Pittman was there, just as you see him.”

Snooping about the offices, Mallory came upon a small lace handkerchief. He seized upon it tensely, and as he raised it to examine it he became conscious of a strong odor of drugs. In one corner of the handkerchief there was a monogram.

“ ‘C. M.,’ ” he read; his eyes blazed. “Cecelia Montgomery!”

In the grip of an uncontrollable excitement Hutchinson Hatch bulged in upon The Thinking Machine in his laboratory.

“There was another,” he announced.

“I know it,” said The Thinking Machine, still bent over his worktable. “Who was it?”

“Maxwell Pittman,” and Hatch related the story.

“There may be two more,” the scientist remarked. “Be good enough to call a cab.”

“Two more?” Hatch gasped in horror. “Already dead?”

“There may be, I said. One, Cecelia Montgomery, the other the unknown who called on the telephone last night.” He started away, then returned to his worktable. “Here’s rather an interesting experiment,” he said. “See this tube,” and he held aloft a heavy glass vessel, closed at one end, and with a stopcock at the other. “Observe. I’ll place this heavy piece of rubber over the mouth of the tube, and then turn the stopcock.” He suited the action to the word. “Now take it off.”

The reporter tugged at it until the blood rushed to his face, but was unable to move it. He glanced up at the scientist in perplexity.

“What hold it there?”

“Vacuum,” was the reply. “You may tear it to pieces, but no human power can pull it away whole.” He picked up a steel bodkin, and thrust it through the rubber into the mouth of the tube. As he withdrew it, came a sharp, prolonged, hissing sound. Half a minute later the rubber fell off. “The vacuum is practically perfect—something like one-millionth of an atmosphere. The pin hole permits the air to fill the tube, the tremendous pressure against the rubber is removed, and——” He waved his slender hands.

In that instant a germ of comprehension was born in Hatch’s brain; he was remembering some college experiments.

“If I should place that tube to your lips,” The Thinking Machine resumed, “and turn the stopcock, you would never speak again, never scream, never struggle. It would jerk every particle of air out of your body, paralyze you; within two minutes you would be dead. To remove the tube I should thrust the bodkin through your cheek, say your left, and withdraw it——”

Hatch gasped as the full horror of the thing burst upon him. “Absence of air in the lungs,” the examining physicians had said.

“You see, there was no mystery in the manner of the deaths of these three,” The Thinking Machine pointed out. “You knew what I have shown you, the physicians knew it, but neither of you knew you knew it. Genius is the ability to apply the knowledge you may have, not the ability to acquire it.” His manner changed abruptly. “Please call a cab,” he said again.

Together they were driven straight to the university, and shown into Professor Meredith’s study. Professor Meredith showed his astonishment plainly at the visit, and astonishment became indignant amazement at the first question.

“Mr. Meredith, can you account for every moment of your time from mid-afternoon yesterday until four o’clock this morning?” The Thinking Machine queried flatly. “Don’t misunderstand me—I mean every moment covering the time in which it is possible that Maxwell Pittman was murdered?”

“Why, it’s a most outrageous——” Professor Meredith exploded.

“I’m trying to save you from arrest,” the scientist explained curtly. “If you can account for all that time, and prove your statement, believe me, you had better prepare to do so. Now, if you could give me any information as to——”

“Who the devil are you?” demanded Professor Meredith belligerently. “What do you mean by daring to suggest——”

“My name is Van Dusen,” said The Thinking Machine, “Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen. Long before your time I held the chair of philosophy in this university. I vacated it by request. Later the university honored me with a degree of LL. D.”

The result of the self-introduction was astonishing. Professor Meredith, in the presence of the master mind in the sciences, was a different man.

“I beg you pardon,” he began.

“I’m curious to know if you are at all acquainted with Miss Danbury’s family history,” the scientist went on. “Meanwhile, Mr. Hatch, take the cab, and go straight and measure the precise width of the bruise on Pittman’s lips; also, see Mr. Willing, if he is able to receive you, and ask him what he can give you as to Miss Danbury’s history—I mean her family, her property, her connections, all about everything. Meet me at my house in a couple of hours.”

Hatch went out, leaving them together. When he reached the scientist’s home The Thinking Machine was just coming out.

“I’m on my way to see Mr. George Parsons, the so-called copper king,” he volunteered. “Come along.”

From that moment came several developments so curious, and bizarre, and so widely disassociated that Hatch could make nothing of them at all. Nothing seemed to fit into anything else. For instance, The Thinking Machine’s visit to Mr. Parsons’ office.

“Please ask Mr. Parsons if he will see Mr. Van Dusen?” he requested of an attendant.

“What about?” the query came from Mr. Parsons.

“It is a matter of life and death,” the answer went back.

“Whose?” Mr. Parsons wanted to know.

“His!” The scientist’s answer was equally short.

Immediately afterward The Thinking Machine disappeared inside. Ten minutes later he came out, and he and Hatch went off together, stopping at a toy shop to buy a small, high-grade, hard-rubber ball; and later at a department store to purchase a vicious-looking hatpin.

“You failed to inform me, Mr. Hatch, of the measurement of the bruise?”

“Precisely one and a quarter inches.”

“Thanks! And what did Mr. Willing say?”

“I didn’t see him as yet. I have an appointment to see him in an hour from now.”

“Very well,” and The Thinking Machine nodded his satisfaction. “When you see him, will you be good enough to tell him, please, that I know—I know, do you understand?—who killed Miss Danbury, and Sumner, and Pittman. You can’t make it too strong. I know—do you understand?”

“Do you know?” Hatch demanded quickly.

“No,” frankly. “But convince him that I do, and add that to-morrow at noon I shall place the extraordinary facts I have gathered in possession of the police. At noon, understand; and I know!” He was thoughtful a moment. “You might add that I have informed you that the guilty person is a person of high position, whose name has been in no way connected with the crimes—that is, unpleasantly. You don’t know that name; no one knows it except myself. I shall give it to the police at noon to-morrow.”

“Anything else?”

“Drop in on me early to-morrow morning, and bring Mr. Mallory.”

Events were cyclonic on that last morning. Mallory and Hatch had hardly arrived when there came a telephone message for the detective from police headquarters. Mrs. Cecelia Montgomery was there. She had come in voluntarily, and asked for Mr. Mallory.

“Don’t rush off now,” requested The Thinking Machine, who was pottering around among the retorts, and microscopes and what not on his worktable. “Ask them to detain her until you get there. Also, ask her just what relationship existed between Miss Danbury and Henry Sumner.” The detective went out; the scientist turned to Hatch. “Here is a hatpin,” he said. “Some time this morning we shall have another caller. If, during the presence of that person in this room, I voluntarily put anything to my lips, a bottle, say, or anything is forced upon me, and I do not remove it in just thirty seconds, you will thrust this hatpin through my cheek. Don’t hesitate.”

“Thrust it through?” the reporter repeated. An uncanny chill ran over him as he realized the scientist’s meaning. “Is it absolutely necessary to take such a chance to——”

“I say if I don’t remove it!” The Thinking Machine interrupted shortly. “You and Mallory will be watching from another room; I shall demonstrate the exact manner of the murders.” There was a troubled look in the reporter’s face. “I shall be in no danger,” the scientist said simply. “The hatpin is merely a precaution if anything should go wrong.”

After a little Mallory entered, with clouded countenance.

“She denies the murders,” he announced, “but admits that the hand prints in blood are hers. According to her yarn, she searched Miss Danbury’s room and Sumner’s room after the murders to find some family papers which were necessary to establish claims to some estate—I don’t quite understand. She hurt her hand in Miss Danbury’s room, and it bled a lot, hence the hand print. From there she went straight to Sumner’s room, and presumably left the smudge there. It seems that Sumner was a distant cousin of Miss Danbury’s—the only son of a younger brother who ran away years ago after some wild escapade, and came to this country. George Parsons, the copper king, is the only other relative in this country. She advises us to warn him to be on his guard—seems to think he will be the next victim.”

“He’s already warned,” said The Thinking Machine, “and he has gone West on important business.”

Mallory stared.

“You seem to know more about this case than I do,” he sneered.

“I do,” asserted the scientist, “quite a lot more.”

“I think the third degree will change Mrs. Montgomery’s story some,” the detective declared. “Perhaps she will remember better——”

“She is telling the truth.”

“Then why did she run away? How was it we found her handkerchief in Mr. Willing’s office after the Pittman affair? How was it——”

The Thinking Machine shrugged his shoulders, and was silent. A moment later the door opened, and Martha appeared, her eyes blazing with indignation.

“That man who swore at me over the telephone,” she announced distinctly, “wants to see you, sir.”

Mallory’s keen eyes swept the faces of the scientist and the reporter, trying to fathom the strange change that came over them.

“You are sure, Martha?” asked The Thinking Machine.

“Indeed I am, sir.” She was positive about it. “I’d never forget his voice, sir.”

For an instant her master merely stared at her, then dismissed her with a curt, “Show him in,” after which he turned to the detective and Hatch.

“You will wait in the next room,” he said tersely. “If anything happens, Mr. Hatch, remember.”

The Thinking Machine was sitting when the visitor entered—a middle-aged man, sharp-featured, rather spare, brisk in his movements, and distinctly well groomed. It was Herbert Willing, attorney. In one hand he carried a small bag. He paused an instant, and gazed at the diminutive scientist curiously.

“Come in, Mr. Willing,” The Thinking Machine greeted. “You want to see me about——” He paused questioningly.

“I understand,” said the lawyer suavely, “that you have interested yourself in these recent—er—remarkable murders, and there are some points I should like to discuss with you. I have some papers in my bag here, which”—he opened it—“may be of interest. Some er—newspaper man informed me that you have certain information indicating the person——”

“I know the name of the murderer,” said The Thinking Machine.

“Indeed! May I ask who it is?”

“You may. His name is Herbert Willing.”

Watching tensely Hatch saw The Thinking Machine pass his hand slowly across his mouth as if to stifle a yawn; saw Willing leap forward suddenly with what seemed to be a bottle in his hand; saw him force the scientist back into his chair, and thrust the bottle against his lips. Instantly came a sharp click, and some hideous change came over the scientist’s wizened face. His eyes opened wide in terror, his cheeks seemed to collapse. Instinctively he grasped the bottle with both hands.

For a scant second Willing stared at him, his countenance grown demoniacal; then he swiftly took something else from the small bag, and smashed it on the floor. It was a drinking glass!

After which the scientist calmly removed the bottle from his lips.

“The broken drinking glass,” he said quietly, “completes the evidence.”

Hutchinson Hatch was lean and wiry, and hard as nails; Detective Mallory’s bulk concealed muscles of steel, but it took both of them to overpower the attorney. Heedless of the struggling trio The Thinking Machine was curiously scrutinizing the black bottle. The mouth was blocked by a small rubber ball, which he had thrust against it with his tongue a fraction of an instant before the dreaded power the bottle held had been released by pressure upon a cunningly concealed spring. When he raised his squinting eyes at last, Willing, manacled, was glaring at him in impotent rage. Fifteen minute later the four were at police headquarters; Mrs. Montgomery was awaiting them.

“Mrs. Montgomery, why,”—and the petulant pale-blue eyes of The Thinking Machine were fixed upon her face—“why didn’t you go to Concord, as you had said?”

“I did go there,” she replied. “It was simply that when news came of Miss Danbury’s terrible death I was frightened, I lost my head; I pleaded with my friends not to let it be known that I was there, and they agreed. If any one had searched their house I would have been found; no one did. At last I could stand it no longer. I came to the city, and straight here to explain everything I knew in connection with the affair.”

“And the search you made of Miss Danbury’s room? And of Sumner’s room?”

“I’ve explained that,” she said. “I knew of the relationship between poor Harry Sumner and Violet Danbury, and I knew each of them had certain papers which were of value as establishing their claims to a great estate in England now in litigation. I was sure those papers would be valuable to the only other claimant, who was——”

“Mr. George Parsons, the copper king,” interposed the scientist. “You didn’t find the papers you sought because Willing had taken them. That estate was the thing he wanted, and I dare say by some legal jugglery he would have gotten it.” Again he turned to face Mrs. Montgomery. “Living with Miss Danbury, as you did, you probably held a key to her apartment? Yes. You had only the difficulty then, of entering the hotel late at night, unseen, and that seemed to be simple. Willing did it the night he killed Miss Danbury, and left it unseen, as you did. Now, how did you enter Sumner’s room?”

“It was a terrible place,” and she shuddered slightly. “I went in alone, and entered his room through a window from a fire escape. The newspapers, you will remember, described its location precisely, and——”

“I see,” The Thinking Machine interrupted. He was silent a moment. “You’re a shrewd man, Willing, and your knowledge of natural philosophy is exact if not extensive. Of course, I knew if you thought I knew too much about the murders you would come to me. You did. It was a trap, if that’s any consolation to you. You fell into it. And, curiously enough, I wasn’t afraid of a knife or a shot; I knew the instrument of death you had been using was too satisfactory and silent for you to change. However, I was prepared for it, and—I think that’s all.” He arose.

“All?” Hatch and Mallory echoed the word. “We don’t understand——”

“Oh!” and The Thinking Machine sat down again. “It’s logic. Miss Danbury was dead—neither shot, stabbed, poisoned, nor choked; ‘absence of air in her lungs,’ the physicians said. Instantly the vacuum bottle suggested itself. That murder, as was the murder of Sumner, was planned to counterfeit suicide, hence the broken goblet on the floor. Incidentally the murder of Sumner informed me that the crimes were the work of a madman, else there was an underlying purpose which might have arisen through a relationship. Ultimately I established that relationship through Professor Meredith, in whom Miss Danbury had confided to a certain extent; at the same time he convinced me of his innocence in the affair.

“Now,” he continued, after a moment, “we come to the murder of Pittman. Pittman learned, and tried to phone me, who the murderer was. Willing heard that message. He killed Pittman, then bound and gagged himself, and waited. It was a clever ruse. His story of being overpowered and drugged is absurd on the face of it, yet he asked us to believe that by leaving a handkerchief of Mrs. Montgomery’s on the floor. That was reeking with drugs. Mr. Hatch can give you more of these details.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m due at a luncheon, where I am to make an address to the Society of Psychical Research. If you’ll excuse me——”

He went out; the others sat staring after him.

____________________

8. The Problem of the Souvenir Cards

There were three of the post cards. The first one was a vividly colored picture of the Capitol at Washington. It was postmarked, “Philadelphia, November 12, 2:30 p.m.” Below the picture, in a small copperplate hand, were these figures and symbols: “I-28-38-4 x 47-30-2 x 21-19-8 x 65-5-3 x 29-32-11 x 40-2-9x.”

The second post card was a picture of Park Square, Boston, with the majestic figures of Lincoln and the slave in the foreground. This, too, was postmarked Philadelphia, but the date was November 13. The symbols and figures were unquestionably written by the same hand as those on the first: “II-155-19-9 x 205-2-8 x agree x 228-31-2 x present tense x 235-13-4.”

The third card was a colored reproduction of an idyllic bayou near New Orleans. Again the postmark was Philadelphia, but the date was November 14. This card contained only: “III-41-1-9 x 181-15-10 x press.”

Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen—The Thinking Machine—turned and twisted the post cards in his slender fingers while he studied them through squinting, watery, blue eyes. At last he laid them on a table beside him, and sank back into his chair, with long white fingers pressed tip to tip. He was in a receptive mood.

“Well?” he demanded abruptly.

The bearded stranger who had offered the cards for his scrutiny was gazing at the diminutive figure and the drawn, petulant face of the scientist, seemingly in mingled wonder and amusement. It was difficult for him to associate this crabbed little man with those achievements which had placed his name so high in the sciences. After a moment the visitor’s gaze wavered a little and dropped.

“My name is William C. Colgate,” he began. “Sometime since—four weeks and three days, to be exact—a diamond was stolen from my house in this city, and no trace of it has ever been found. It was one I bought uncut in South Africa five years ago, and its weight is about thirty carats. When cut I imagine it will be eighteen to twenty carats, and it is, as it stands now, worth about forty thousand dollars. You may have read something of the theft in the newspapers?”

“I never read the newspapers,” remarked The Thinking Machine.

“Well, in that event,” and Colgate smiled, “I can briefly state the facts in the case. I have for several years had in my employment a secretary, Charles Travers. He is about twenty-five years old. Within the last four or five months I have noticed a change in his manner. Where formerly he had been quiet and unassuming, he has, through evil associations I dare say, grown to be a little wild, and, I believe, has lived beyond his income. I took occasion twice to remonstrate with him. The first time he seemed contrite and repentant; the second time he grew angry, and the following day disappeared. The diamond went with him.”

“Do you know that?” demanded The Thinking Machine.

“I know it as well as one may know anything,” replied Colgate positively. “I doubt if anyone except Travers knew where I kept the jewel. Certainly my servants did not, and certainly my wife and two daughters did not. Besides my wife and daughters have been in Europe for two months. The police seem to be unable to learn anything, so I came to you.”

“Just where did you keep the jewel?”

“In a drawer of my desk,” was the reply. “Ultimately I had intended to have it cut and present it to my oldest daughter, possibly on the occasion of her marriage. Now——” Colgate waved his hand.

The Thinking Machine sat silent for several minutes. His squint eyes were turned steadily upward and several tiny lines appeared in the domelike brow. “The problem then seems to be merely one of finding your secretary,” he stated at last. “The diamond is of course so large that it would be absurd to attempt to dispose of it in its present shape. Travers is an intelligent man; we shall give him credit for realizing this. And yet if it should be cut up into smaller stones its value would dwindle to a tenth part of what it is now. Under those circumstances, would he have it cut up?”

“That is one of the questions which I should like to have answered.”

For the second time The Thinking Machine picked up and examined the three post cards. “And what have these to do with it?” he demanded.

“That’s another question I should like to have answered,” said Colgate. “I can only believe that they in someway bear on the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the gem. Perhaps they give a clue to where it is now.”

“This is Travers’s handwriting?”

“Yes.”

“The cards obviously constitute a cipher of some sort,” explained the scientist. “Were you and Travers accustomed to communicating in cipher?”

“Not at all.”

“Then why is this in cipher?” demanded The Thinking Machine belligerently. He glared at Colgate much as if he held him to blame.

Colgate shrugged his shoulders.

“Of course,” continued the scientist, “I can find out what it means. It is elementary in character, and yet I doubt if, after we know what is in it, it will be particularly illuminating. Still, giving Travers credit for intelligence, I should imagine this to be an offer to return the diamond, probably for a consideration. But why in cipher?”

Colgate did not seem to be able to add to what he had already said, and after a few minutes took his leave, with instructions from The Thinking Machine to return on the following day, after the scientist had had an opportunity to study the post cards. He called at the appointed hour.

“Have you three-volume book of any sort that you read or refer to frequently?”

For some reason Colgate seemed a little startled. It was only momentary, however. “I suppose I have several books of three volumes,” he replied.

“No particular one that your secretary would know that you read frequently?” insisted the scientist.

Again some strange impalpable expression flitted across Colgate’s face. “No,” he said after a moment.

The Thinking Machine arose. “It will be necessary then,” he said, “for me to go over your library and see if I can’t find the book to which this cipher refers.”

“Book?” asked Colgate curiously. “If the cipher has no relation to the diamond, I don’t see that—”

“Of course you don’t see!” snapped The Thinking Machine. “Come along and let me see.”

Colgate seemed a little perturbed by the suggestion. He folded his immaculate gloves over and over as he stared at the inscrutable face before him. “It would be impossible,” he said at last, “to find anything in my library just now. As I said, my wife and daughters are abroad, and during their absence I have taken occasion to have my library and one or two other rooms redecorated and refinished. All my books meanwhile are packed away, helter skelter.”

The Thinking Machine sat down again and stared at him inquiringly. “Then when your library is in order again you may call,” he said tersely. “I can do nothing until I see the books.”

“But—but——” stammered Colgate.

“Good day,” said The Thinking Machine curtly.

Colgate went away. It was not till three days later that he reappeared. If one might have judged by his manner, he had achieved something in his absence; yet when he spoke it was in the same exquisitely modulated tone of the first visit.

“The work of redecorating has been completed,” he told The Thinking Machine. “My library is again in order, and you may examine it at your leisure. If you care to go now, my carriage is at the door.”

The Thinking Machine stared at him for a moment, then picked up his hat. At the door of the Colgate mansion Colgate and the scientist were met by a graven-faced footman, who received their hats and coats in silence. Colgate conducted his guest straight into the library. It was a magnificently appointed place, reflecting in its every detail the splendid purchasing power of money. To this sheer luxury, however, The Thinking Machine was oblivious. His undivided attention was on the book shelves.

From one end of the long room to the other he walked time after time, reading the titles of the books as he passed. There were Dickens, Balzac, Kipling, Stevenson, Thackeray, Zola—all of them. Three or four times he paused to draw out a volume and examine it. Each time he replaced it without a word and continued his search. Colgate stood by, watching him curiously.

The Thinking Machine had just paused to draw out one of the Dumas books when the stolid-faced footman appeared in the door with a telegram.

“Is this for you, sir?” he asked of Colgate.

“Yes,” replied Colgate.

He drew out the yellow sheet and permitted the envelope to fall to the floor. The Thinking Machine picked it up with something like eagerness in his manner. It was directed to “William C. Colgate.” The scientist looked almost astonished as he turned again to the book shelves.

It was ten minutes later that The Thinking Machine took out three volumes together. These comprised the famous old English novel, “Ten Thousand a Year,” a rare and valuable first edition. The leaves of volume 1 fluttered through his fingers until he came to page 28. After a moment he said “Ah!” Then he went on to page 47. He studied that for a moment or more, after which he said “Ah!” once again.

“What is it?” inquired Colgate quickly.

The Thinking Machine turned his cold, squint eyes up into the eager face above him. “It is the key to the cipher,” he said.

“What is it? Read it!” commanded Colgate. His clear, alert eyes were fastened on the, to him, meaningless page. He sought vainly there something to account for the scientist’s exclamation. But he saw only words—a page of words with no apparent meaning beyond the text of the story. “What is it?” he demanded again, and there was a little glitter in his eye. “Does it say where the diamond is?”

“Considering the fact that I have seen only two words of a possible twenty or thirty, I don’t know what it says,” declared The Thinking Machine aggressively. “The best I can say now is that with the aid of these books I shall find the diamond.”

For half an hour or more the scientist was busy running through the books in an aimless sort of way. Finally he closed the third volume with a snap and stood up.

“Travers says that he will return the gem for ten thousand dollars,” he announced.

“Oh, he does, does he?” Colgate’s tone was a sneer. Again in his face The Thinking Machine read some subtle quality which brought a slight wrinkle of perplexity to his brow.

“You don’t have to pay it, you know,” he explained tartly. “I can get it without the ten thousand dollars, of course.”

“Well, get it, then!” said Colgate a little impatiently. “I want the diamond, and it is absurd to suppose that I shall pay ten thousand dollars for my own property. Come on! Let’s do what is to be done immediately.”

“I’ll do what is to be done immediately; but I will do it without your assistance,” remarked The Thinking Machine. “I shall send for you to-morrow. When you come the diamond will be in my possession. Good day.”

Colgate stared after him blankly as he went out.

The Thinking Machine was talking over the telephone with Hutchinson Hatch, reporter.

“Do you know William C. Colgate by sight?” he demanded.

“Very well,” Hatch replied.

“Is he red-headed?”

“No.”

“Good by.”

On the following morning a short advertisement appeared in all the city newspapers. It was simply:

Will give ten thousand dollars. Matter is not in hands of the police. To insure your safety, telephone 1103 Bay and arrange details.

It was only a few minutes past nine o’clock that morning when The Thinking Machine was called to the telephone. For some reason he had difficulty in understanding, possibly due to the spluttering of the receiver. Then he did understand, and sat down for some time, apparently to consider what he had heard. Later he telephoned to Hutchinson Hatch.

“It’s about this theft of the Colgate diamond,” he explained. “The secretary, Travers, who is wanted for the theft, is now somewhere in the North End, either drunk or drugged, and possibly disguised. I imagine his photograph has been in all the newspapers. I have been talking to him over the telephone, and he is to call me again about eleven o’clock. Go down to the North End near the corner of Hanover and Blank Streets, hire a telephone for the morning, and call me. Remain at the phone from half-past ten until I call you. You are to get Travers. When you get him bring him here. Don’t notify the police.”

“But will I get him?” asked the reporter.

“If you don’t you are stupid,” retorted The Thinking Machine.

At five minutes of eleven o’clock the scientist’s telephone rang. He was sitting staring at it at the moment, but instead of answering stepped to the door and called Martha, his aged servant.

“Answer the telephone,” he directed, “and tell whoever is there that I am not here. Tell them I shall return in ten minutes, and to be sure to call me again.”

Martha followed the instructions and hung up the receiver. Instantly The Thinking Machine went to the telephone.

“Can you tell me, please, the number of the telephone which just called me?” he asked quickly. “No, I don’t want a connection. Number 34710 North, in a café at Hanover and Blank Streets? Thanks.”

A minute later he had Hatch on the wire again. “Travers will call me in five minutes from 34710 North, in a café at Hanover and Blank Streets,” he said. “Get him and bring him here as quickly as you can. Good by.”

So it came about that within less than an hour a cab rushed up to the door, and Hutchinson Hatch, accompanied by a young man, entered. The man was Travers. A week’s scrubby beard was on his chin, his face was perfectly pallid; the fever of drink and fear glittered in his eyes. Hatch had to support him to a chair, in which he dropped back limply. The Thinking Machine scowled down into the young man’s face, and was met by a fishy, imbecilic stare in return.

“Are you Mr. Travers?” inquired The Thinking Machine.

“That’s all right—that’s all right,” murmured the young man, and overcome by the exertion of speech his head dropped back and in a moment he was sound asleep.

Without apparent compunction The Thinking Machine searched his pockets. After a moment he found what seemed to be a rough rock crystal. He squinted at it closely as he turned and twisted it back and forth in his hand, then passed it to Hatch for inspection.

“That’s worth forty thousand dollars,” he remarked casually.

“Is this the——”

“It’s the Colgate diamond,” interrupted The Thinking Machine. “I surmised that he would have it somewhere about him, because he would have no place to hide it. And now for the second man—the brains of the theft. First I shall telephone for Colgate. Look at him when he enters; for I think you will be greatly surprised. And above all, remember to be careful.”

Looking deeply into the quiet, squint eyes of the scientist, Hatch read a warning. He understood and nodded. Travers, stupefied, was removed to an adjoining room.

A few minutes later there was a rattle of carriage wheels, the door bell rang, and Colgate entered. Hatch glanced at him, then turned quickly to look out of a window.

“You have the diamond?” burst out Colgate suddenly.

“I said I would have it when you came,” retorted The Thinking Machine. “Now for these post cards,” and the scientist produced the three cards that had been handed to him at first. “Perhaps you would be interested to know what was really on them?”

“I haven’t the slightest curiosity,” said Colgate impatiently. “All I want is the diamond. If you will give me that, I think perhaps that will terminate this affair, and there will be no necessity of taking up more of your time.”

“Of course you have no desire to prosecute Travers?” asked The Thinking Machine. There was a velvety note in the crabbed voice. Hatch glanced at him.

“I don’t think I care to prosecute him,” said Colgate steadily.

“I thought perhaps you would not,” rejoined The Thinking Machine enigmatically. “But as to these post cards. They constitute what is known as the book cipher. For your information I may state that it is always possible to know a book cipher by the fact that a small number, rarely above twelve or fourteen, always precedes the X; the X merely divides the words. For instance, on the first card we have I-28-38-4; in other words, volume one, page 28, line 38, and the fourth word of that line. Unless one knows or can learn the name of the book which is the basis of the cipher, it is perhaps the most difficult of all. Any ordinary cipher may be solved precisely as Poe solved his great cipher in ‘The Gold Bug.’ ”

“But I am not at all interested——” protested Colgate.

“So really all that was necessary for me to do was to find out what book was the basis of this particular cipher,” continued The Thinking Machine to Hatch, without heeding his visitor’s remark. “I knew of course it was some book in Mr. Colgate’s home. The clue to what book was given, either wittingly or unwittingly, by the single I, the two I’s and the three I’s on the first, second, and third cards. Did these represent volumes? I found a dozen three volume books in Mr. Colgate’s library, but in each instance there was no connection in the first three or four words which I found in accordance with the numbers given; that is, until I came to ‘Ten Thousand a Year.’ The first word I found in that was ‘will’; the second, page 47, line 30, second word, was ‘return’; the third was ‘diamond.’ So I knew that was the book I wanted. Here is the full meaning of the cipher as it appears on the three cards, as I have transcribed it.”

He handed Colgate a slip of paper, on which was written:

Will return diamond for ten thousand. If you agree informed [present tense—i.e., inform] me in daily press.

“This all seems very clever and very curious indeed,” commented Colgate; “but really I do not think——”

“The book of Mr. Colgate’s is a first edition—there is also a first edition in the public library,” the scientist went on placidly; “so Travers had no difficulty on that score. We shall admit that the cards were mailed in Philadelphia; perhaps he went there and later returned to this city. The manner in which I got possession of the diamond—by first discovering Travers through an advertisement and then keeping him at the telephone until he was inveigled here by my assistant—is possibly of no interest; it was all very easily done by a prearranged plan with the telephone exchange; so now, Mr.—Mr.——”

“Colgate,” his visitor supplied, as if surprised at the hesitancy.

“I mean your real name,” said the scientist quietly.

There was a sudden tense silence; Hatch had come a little closer, and was staring at the stranger with keen, inquiring eyes.

“This is not the Mr. William C. Colgate you know, Mr. Hatch?”

“No.”

“Do you happen to have an idea who he is?”

“If I am not mistaken,” Hatch replied calmly, “this is a gentleman I have met before on an exceedingly interesting occasion—Mr. Bradlee Cunnyngham Leighton.”

At the name the erstwhile Colgate turned upon the reporter with a snarl. There was a quick movement of his right hand, and Hatch found himself blinking down the barrel of a revolver, as Leighton slowly moved backward toward the door.

The Thinking Machine moved around behind the aggressor. “Now, Mr. Leighton,” he said almost pleasantly, “if you don’t lower that revolver I’ll blow your brains out.”

For one instant Leighton hesitated, then glanced back quickly toward the scientist. That diminutive man stood calmly, with his hands in his pockets. Instantly Hatch leaped. There was a quick, sharp struggle, a few muttered curses, and then the discomfited Leighton, in his turn, was gazing down the revolver barrel.

“Won’t you gentlemen sit down?” suggested The Thinking Machine.

They were all sitting down when Detective Mallory rushed up from police headquarters. Leighton was farthest from the door. The Thinking Machine sat staring at him with the revolver held in position for quick use.

“Ah, Mr. Mallory,” he said, without turning his head or glancing back. “This is Mr. Bradlee Cunnyngham Leighton. You may have heard of him before?”

“Do you mean the Englishman who brought the Varron necklace to this country?” blurted out the detective.

“The same man of the carrier pigeon case,” said Hatch grimly.

“I should like particularly to call your attention to Mr. Leighton,” continued The Thinking Machine. “He is a man of accomplishments. We know how he distinguished himself by the simple expedient of using carrier pigeons in the Varron necklace affair. In this case, he has risen to greater heights. First—I am assuming some things—he plotted with young Travers to steal the Colgate diamond. In some manner, which is not essential here, Travers got the diamond and sought to profit by the theft alone by negotiating its return for ten thousand dollars. Travers wrote a cipher to Mr. Colgate making the proposition—it was possible he knew Mr. Colgate would understand his cipher. I shall give Leighton credit for anticipating just this possibility and intercepting the post cards. They meant nothing to him; so—please note this—he came to me as Mr. Colgate, knowing that Mr. Colgate was in Europe with his family, and sought my assistance in recovering the jewel from his fellow conspirator. The sublime audacity of all these conceptions marks Mr. Leighton as little short of a genius in his particular profession.

“Only once was Mr. Leighton embarrassed. That was when I told him I should have to visit his library. But he even rose to this necessity brilliantly. He delayed my visit for a day or so, and in some manner, possibly by forgery, secured an entrance to Mr. Colgate’s home, perhaps as a cousin of the same name. There he received me. Two or three things had happened to arouse a doubt in my mind as to whether he was the real Mr. Colgate.

“First was his hesitancy in connection with my visit to the library; then while I was in the house a telegram came for Mr. William C. Colgate. A servant asked Mr. Leighton in my presence if the telegram was for him. That question would never have been asked if he had been the real William C. Colgate. Then finally I asked Mr. Hatch over the phone if William C. Colgate was red-headed. William C. Colgate is not red-headed. This gentleman is, therefore he is not William C. Colgate. I only knew this much. Mr. Hatch recognized him as Leighton. He saw him at the time you were all interested in his escape from a Scotland Yard man—Conway, who wanted him for stealing a necklace. That is all, I think.”

“But the diamond and Travers?” asked the detective.

“Here is the diamond,” said The Thinking Machine, and he produced it from one of his pockets. “Travers is lying on a bed in the next room in a drunken stupor.”

________________

9. The Problem of the Stolen Rubens

Matthew Kale made fifty million dollars out of axle grease, after which he began to patronize the high arts. It was simple enough: he had the money, and Europe had the old masters. His method of buying was simplicity itself. There were five thousand square yards, more or less, in the huge gallery of his marble mansion which were to be covered, so he bought five thousand square yards, more or less, of art. Some of it was good, some of it fair, and much of it bad. The chief picture of the collection was a Rubens, which he had picked up in Rome for fifty thousand dollars.

Soon after acquiring his collection, Kale decided to make certain alterations in the vast room where the pictures hung. They were all taken down and stored in the ball room, equally vast, with their faces toward the wall. Meanwhile Kale and his family took refuge in a nearby hotel.

It was at this hotel that Kale met Jules de Lesseps. De Lesseps was distinctly French, the sort of Frenchman whose conversation resembles calisthenics. He was nervous, quick, and agile, and he told Kale in confidence that he was not only a painter himself, but was a connoisseur in the high arts. Pompous in the pride of possession, Kale went to a good deal of trouble to exhibit his private collection for de Lesseps’ delectation. It happened in the ball room, and the true artist’s delight shone in the Frenchman’s eyes as he handled the pieces which were good. Some of the others made him smile, but it was an inoffensive sort of smile.

With his own hands Kale lifted the precious Rubens and held it before the Frenchman’s eyes. It was a “Madonna and Child,” one of those wonderful creations which have endured through the years with all the sparkle and color beauty of their pristine days. Kale seemed disappointed because de Lesseps was not particularly enthusiastic about this picture.

“Why, it’s a Rubens!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, I see,” replied de Lesseps.

“It cost me fifty thousand dollars.”

“It is perhaps worth more than that,” and the Frenchman shrugged his shoulders as he turned away.

Kale looked at him in chagrin. Could it be that de Lesseps did not understand that it was a Rubens, and that Rubens was a painter? Or was it that he had failed to hear him say that it cost him fifty thousand dollars. Kale was accustomed to seeing people bob their heads and open their eyes when he said fifty thousand dollars; therefore, “Don’t you like it?” he asked.

“Very much indeed,” replied de Lesseps; “but I have seen it before. I saw it in Rome just a week or so before you purchased it.”

They rummaged on through the pictures, and at last a Whistler was turned up for their inspection. It was one of the famous Thames series, a water color. De Lesseps’ face radiated excitement, and several times he glanced from the water color to the Rubens as if mentally comparing the exquisitely penciled and colored modern work with the bold, masterly technic of the old.

Kale misunderstood the silence. “I don’t think much of this one myself,” he explained apologetically. “It’s a Whistler, and all that, and it cost me five thousand dollars, and I sort of had to have it, but still it isn’t just the kind of thing that I like. What do you think of it?”

“I think it is perfectly wonderful!” replied the Frenchman enthusiastically. “It is the essence, the superlative, of modern work. I wonder if it would be possible,” and he turned to face Kale, “for me to make a copy of that? I have some slight skill in painting myself, and dare say I could make a fairly creditable copy of it.”

Kale was flattered. He was more and more impressed each moment with the picture. “Why, certainly,” he replied. “I will have it sent up to the hotel, and you can——”

“No, no, no!” interrupted de Lesseps quickly. “I wouldn’t care to accept the responsibility of having the picture in my charge. There is always a danger of fire. But if you would give me permission to come here—this room is large and airy and light, and besides it is quiet——”

“Just as you like,” said Kale magnanimously. “I merely thought the other way would be most convenient for you.”

De Lesseps drew near, and laid one hand on the millionaire’s arm. “My dear friend,” he said earnestly, “if these pictures were my pictures, I shouldn’t try to accommodate anybody where they were concerned. I dare say the collection as it stands cost you——”

“Six hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars,” volunteered Kale proudly.

“And surely they must be well protected here in your house during your absence?”

“There are about twenty servants in the house while the workmen are making the alterations,” said Kale, “and three of them don’t do anything but watch this room. No one can go in or out except by the door we entered—the others are locked and barred—and then only with my permission, or a written order from me. No, sir, nobody can get away with anything in this room.”

“Excellent—excellent!” said de Lesseps admiringly. He smiled a little bit. “I am afraid I did not give you credit for being the far-sighted business man that you are.” He turned and glanced over the collection of pictures abstractedly. “A clever thief, though,” he ventured, “might cut a valuable painting, for instance the Rubens, out of the frame, roll it up, conceal it under his coat, and escape.”

Kale laughed pleasantly and shook his head.

It was a couple of days later at the hotel that de Lesseps brought up the subject of copying the Whistler. He was profuse in his thanks when Kale volunteered to accompany him to the mansion and witness the preliminary stages of the work. They paused at the ball room door.

“Jennings,” said Kale to the liveried servant there, “this is Mr. de Lesseps. He is to come and go as he likes. He is going to do some work in the ball room here. See that he isn’t disturbed.”

De Lesseps noticed the Rubens leaning carelessly against some other pictures, with the holy face of the Madonna toward them. “Really, Mr. Kale,” he protested, “that picture is too valuable to be left about like that. If you will let your servants bring me some canvas, I shall wrap it and place it up on the table here off the floor. Suppose there were mice here!”

Kale thanked him. The necessary orders were given, and finally the picture was carefully wrapped and placed beyond harm’s reach, whereupon de Lesseps adjusted himself, paper, easel, stool, and all, and began his work of copying. There Kale left him.

Three days later Kale just happened to drop in, and found the artist still at his labor.

“I just dropped by,” he explained, “to see how the work in the gallery was getting along. It will be finished in another week. I hope I am not disturbing you?”

“Not at all,” said de Lesseps; “I have nearly finished. See how I am getting along?” He turned the easel toward Kale.

The millionaire gazed from that toward the original which stood on a chair near by, and frank admiration for the artist’s efforts was in his eyes. “Why, it’s fine!” he exclaimed. “It’s just as good as the other one, and I bet you don’t want any five thousand dollars for it—eh?”

That was all that was said about it at the time. Kale wandered about the house for an hour or so, then dropped into the ball room where the artist was just getting his paraphernalia together, and they walked back to the hotel. The artist carried under one arm his copy of the Whistler, loosely rolled up.

Another week passed, and the workmen who had been engaged in refinishing and decorating the gallery had gone. De Lesseps volunteered to assist in the work of rehanging the pictures, and Kale gladly turned the matter over to him. It was in the afternoon of the day this work began that de Lesseps, chatting pleasantly with Kale, ripped loose the canvas which enshrouded the precious Rubens. Then he paused with an exclamation of dismay. The picture was gone; the frame which had held it was empty. A thin strip of canvas around the inside edge showed that a sharp penknife had been used to cut out the painting.

All of these facts came to the attention of Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen—The Thinking Machine. This was a day or so after Kale had rushed into Detective Mallory’s office at police headquarters, with the statement that his Rubens had been stolen. He banged his fist down on the detective’s desk and roared at him.

“It cost me fifty thousand dollars!” he declared violently. “Why don’t you do something? What are you sitting there staring at me for?”

“Don’t excite yourself, Mr. Kale,” the detective advised. “I will put my men at work right now to recover the—the—— What is a Rubens, anyway?”

“It’s a picture!” bellowed Mr. Kale. “A piece of canvas with some paint on it, and it cost me fifty thousand dollars—don’t you forget that!”

So the police machinery was set in motion to recover the painting. And in time the matter fell under the watchful eye of Hutchinson Hatch, reporter. He learned the facts preceding the disappearance of the picture, and then called on de Lesseps. He found the artist in a state of excitement bordering on hysteria; an intimation from the reporter of the object of his visit caused de Lesseps to burst into words.

“Mon Dieu! it is outrageous!” he exclaimed. “What can I do? I was the only one in the room for several days. I was the one who took such pains to protect the picture. And now it is gone! The loss is irreparable. What can I do?”

Hatch didn’t have any very definite idea as to just what he could do, so he let him go on. “As I understand it, Mr. de Lesseps,” he interrupted at last, “no one else was in the room, except you and Mr. Kale, all the time you were there?”

“No one else.”

“And I think Mr. Kale said that you were making a copy of some famous water color; weren’t you?”

“Yes, a Thames scene, by Whistler,” was the reply. “That is it, hanging over the mantel.”

Hatch glanced at the picture admiringly. It was an exquisite copy, and showed the deft touch of a man who was himself an artist of great ability.

De Lesseps read the admiration in his face. “It is not bad,” he said modestly. “I studied with Carolus Duran.”

With all else that was known, and this little additional information, which seemed of no particular value to the reporter, the entire matter was laid before The Thinking Machine. That distinguished man listened from beginning to end without comment.

“Who had access to the room?” he asked finally.

“That is what the police are working on now,” was the reply. “There are a couple of dozen servants in the house, and I suppose, in spite of Kale’s rigid orders, there was a certain laxity in their enforcement.”

“Of course that makes it more difficult,” said The Thinking Machine in the perpetually irritated voice which was so distinctly a part of himself. “Perhaps it would be best for us to go to Mr. Kale’s home and personally investigate.”

Kale received them with the reserve which all rich men show in the presence of representatives of the press. He stared frankly and somewhat curiously at the diminutive figure of the scientist, who explained the object of their visit.

“I guess you fellows can’t do anything with this,” the millionaire assured them. “I’ve got some regular detectives on it.”

“Is Mr. Mallory here now?” asked The Thinking Machine curtly.

“Yes, he is up stairs in the servants’ quarters.”

“May we see the room from which the picture was taken?” inquired the scientist, with a suave intonation which Hatch knew well.

Kale granted the permission with a wave of the hand, and ushered them into the ball room, where the pictures had been stored. From the relative center of this room The Thinking Machine surveyed it all. The windows were high. Half a dozen doors leading out into the hallways, to the conservatory, and quiet nooks of the mansion offered innumerable possibilities of access. After this one long comprehensive squint, The Thinking Machine went over and picked up the frame from which the Rubens had been cut. For a long time he examined it. Kale’s impatience was painfully evident. Finally the scientist turned to him.

“How well do you know M. de Lesseps?” he asked.

“I’ve known him for only a month or so. Why?”

“Did he bring you letters of introduction, or did you meet him merely casually?”

Kale regarded him with evident displeasure. “My own personal affairs have nothing whatever to do with this matter,” he said pointedly. “Mr. de Lesseps is a gentleman of integrity, and certainly he is the last whom I would suspect of any connection with the disappearance of the picture.”

“That is usually the case,” remarked The Thinking Machine tartly. He turned to Hatch. “Just how good a copy was that he made of the Whistler picture?” he asked.

“I have never seen the original,” Hatch replied; “but the workmanship was superb. Perhaps Mr. Kale wouldn’t object to us seeing——”

“Oh, of course not,” said Kale resignedly. “Come in; it’s in the gallery.”

Hatch submitted the picture to a careful scrutiny. “I should say that the copy is well nigh perfect,” was his verdict. “Of course, in its absence, I couldn’t say exactly; but it is certainly a superb work.”

The curtains of a wide door almost in front of them were thrown aside suddenly, and Detective Mallory entered. He carried something in his hand, but at the sight of them concealed it behind him. Unrepressed triumph was in his face.

“Ah, professor, we meet often; don’t we?” he said.

“This reporter here and his friend seem to be trying to drag de Lesseps into this affair somehow,” Kale complained to the detective. “I don’t want anything like that to happen. He is liable to go out and print anything. They always do.”

The Thinking Machine glared at him unwaveringly, straight in the eye for an instant, then extended his hand toward Mallory. “Where did you find it?” he asked.

“Sorry to disappoint you, professor,” said the detective sarcastically, “but this is the time when you were a little late,” and he produced the object which he held behind him. “Here is your picture, Mr. Kale.”

Kale gasped a little in relief and astonishment, and held up the canvas with both hands to examine it. “Fine!” he told the detective. “I’ll see that you don’t lose anything by this. Why, that thing cost me fifty thousand dollars!” Kale didn’t seem able to get over that.

The Thinking Machine leaned forward to squint at the upper right hand corner of the canvas. “Where did you find it?” he asked again.

“Rolled up tight, and concealed in the bottom of a trunk in the room of one of the servants,” explained Mallory. “The servant’s name is Jennings. He is now under arrest.”

“Jennings!” exclaimed Kale. “Why, he has been with me for years.”

“Did he confess?” asked the scientist imperturbably.

“Of course not,” said Mallory. “He says some of the other servants must have hidden it there.”

The Thinking Machine nodded at Hatch. “I think perhaps that is all,” he remarked. “I congratulate you, Mr. Mallory, upon bringing the matter to such a quick and satisfactory conclusion.”

Ten minutes later they left the house and caught a car for the scientist’s home. Hatch was a little chagrined at the unexpected termination of the affair, and was thoughtfully silent for a time.

“Mallory does show an occasional gleam of human intelligence; doesn’t he?” he said at last quizzically.

“Not that I ever noticed,” remarked The Thinking Machine crustily.

“But he found the picture,” Hatch insisted.

“Of course he found it. It was put there for him to find.”

“Put there for him to find!” repeated the reporter. “Didn’t Jennings steal it?”

“If he did, he’s a fool.”

“Well, if he didn’t steal it, who put it there?”

“De Lesseps.”

“De Lesseps!” echoed Hatch. “Why the deuce did he steal a fifty thousand-dollar picture and put it in a servant’s trunk to be found?”

The Thinking Machine twisted around in his seat and squinted at him coldly for a moment. “At times, Mr. Hatch, I am absolutely amazed at your stupidity,” he said frankly. “I can understand it in a man like Mallory, but I have always given you credit for being an astute, quick-witted man.”

Hatch smiled at the reproach. It was not the first time he had heard of it. But nothing bearing on the problem in hand was said until they reached The Thinking Machine’s apartments.

“The only real question in my mind, Mr. Hatch,” said the scientist then, “is whether or not I should take the trouble to restore Mr. Kale’s picture at all. He is perfectly satisfied, and will probably never know the difference. So——”

Suddenly Hatch saw something. “Great Scott!” he exclaimed. “Do you mean that the picture that Mallory found was——”

“A copy of the original,” supplemented the scientist. “Personally I know nothing whatever about art; therefore, I could not say from observation that it is a copy, but I know it from the logic of the thing. When the original was cut from the frame, the knife swerved a little at the upper right hand corner. The canvas remaining in the frame told me that. The picture that Mr. Mallory found did not correspond in this detail with the canvas in the frame. The conclusion is obvious.”

“And de Lesseps has the original?”

“De Lesseps has the original. How did he get it? In any one of a dozen ways. He might have rolled it up and stuck it under his coat. He might have had a confederate. But I don’t think that any ordinary method of theft would have appealed to him. I am giving him credit for being clever, as I must when we review the whole case.

“For instance, he asked for permission to copy the Whistler, which you saw was the same size as the Rubens. It was granted. He copied it practically under guard, always with the chance that Mr. Kale himself would drop in. It took him three days to copy it, so he says. He was alone in the room all that time. He knew that Mr. Kale had not the faintest idea of art. Taking advantage of that, what would have been simpler than to have copied the Rubens in oil? He could have removed it from the frame immediately after he canvased it over, and kept it in a position near him where it could be quickly concealed if he was interrupted. Remember, the picture is worth fifty thousand dollars; therefore, was worth the trouble.

“De Lesseps is an artist—we know that—and dealing with a man who knew nothing whatever of art, he had no fears. We may suppose his idea all along was to use the copy of the Rubens as a sort of decoy after he got away with the original. You saw that Mallory didn’t know the difference, and it was safe for him to suppose that Mr. Kale wouldn’t. His only danger until he could get away gracefully was of some critic or connoisseur, perhaps, seeing the copy. His boldness we see readily in the fact that he permitted himself to discover the theft; that he discovered it after he had volunteered to assist Mr. Kale in the general work of rehanging the pictures in the gallery. Just how he put the picture in Jenning’s trunk I don’t happen to know. We can imagine many ways.” He lay back in his chair for a minute without speaking, eyes steadily turned upward, fingers placed precisely tip to tip.

“The only thing remaining is to go get the picture. It is in de Lesseps’ room now—you told me that—and so we know it is safe. I dare say he knows that if he tried to run away it would inevitably put him under suspicion.”

“But how did he take the picture from the Kale home?” asked Hatch.

“He took it with him probably under his arm the day he left the house with Mr. Kale,” was the astonishing reply.

Hatch was staring at him in amazement. After a moment the scientist arose and passed into the adjoining room, and the telephone bell there jingled. When he joined Hatch again he picked up his hat and they went out together.

De Lesseps was in when their cards went up, and received them. They conversed of the case generally for ten minutes, while the scientist’s eyes were turned inquiringly here and there about the room. At last there came a knock on the door.

“It is Detective Mallory, Mr. Hatch,” remarked The Thinking Machine. “Open the door for him.”

De Lesseps seemed startled for just one instant, then quickly recovered. Mallory’s eyes were full of questions when he entered.

“I should like, Mr. Mallory,” began The Thinking Machine quietly, “to call your attention to this copy of Mr. Kale’s picture by Whistler—over the mantel here. Isn’t it excellent? You have seen the original?”

Mallory grunted. De Lesseps’ face, instead of expressing appreciation of the compliment, blanched suddenly, and his hands closed tightly. Again he recovered himself and smiled.

“The beauty of this picture lies not only in its faithfulness to the original,” the scientist went on, “but also in the fact that it was painted under extraordinary circumstances. For instance, I don’t know if you know, Mr. Mallory, that it is possible so to combine glue and putty and a few other commonplace things into a paste which would effectually blot out an oil painting, and offer at the same time an excellent surface for water color work.”

There was a moment’s pause, during which the three men stared at him silently—with singularly conflicting emotions depicted on their faces.

“This water color—this copy of Whistler,” continued the scientist evenly—“is painted on such a paste as I have described. That paste in turn covers the original Rubens picture. It can be removed with water without damage to the picture, which is in oil, so that instead of a copy of the Whistler painting, we have an original by Rubens, worth fifty thousand dollars. That is true; isn’t it, M. de Lesseps?”

There was no reply to the question—none was needed. It was an hour later, after de Lesseps was safely in his cell, that Hatch called up The Thinking Machine on the telephone and asked one question.

“How did you know that the water color was painted over the Rubens?”

“Because it was the only absolutely safe way in which the Rubens could be hopelessly lost to those who were looking for it, and at the same time perfectly preserved,” was the answer. “I told you de Lesseps was a clever man, and a little logic did the rest. Two and two always make four, Mr. Hatch, not sometimes, but all the time.”

_________________

10. The Problem of the Superfluous Finger

She drew off her left glove, a delicate, crinkled suede affair, and offered her bare hand to the surgeon. An artist would have called it beautiful, perfect, even; the surgeon, professionally enough, set it down as an excellent structural specimen. From the polished pink nails of the tapering fingers to the firm, well moulded wrist, it was distinctly the hand of a woman of ease—one that had never known labour, a pampered hand Dr. Prescott told himself.

“The fore-finger,” she explained calmly. “I should like to have it amputated at the first joint, please.”

“Amputated?” gasped Dr. Prescott. He stared into the pretty face of his caller. It was flushed softly, and the red lips were parted in a slight smile. It seemed quite an ordinary affair to her. The surgeon bent over the hand with quick interest. “Amputated!” he repeated.

“I came to you,” she went on with a nod, “because I have been informed that you are one of the most skilful men of your profession, and the cost of the operation is quite immaterial.”

Dr. Prescott pressed the pink nail of the fore-finger then permitted the blood to rush back into it. Several times he did this, then he turned the hand over and scrutinized it closely inside from the delicately lined palm to the tips of the fingers. When he looked up at last there was an expression of frank bewilderment on his face.

“What’s the matter with it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” the woman replied pleasantly. “I merely want it off from the first joint.”

The surgeon leaned back in his chair with a frown of perplexity on his brow, and his visitor was subjected to a sharp, professional stare. She bore it unflinchingly and even smiled a little at his obvious perturbation.

“Why do you want it off?” he demanded.

The woman shrugged her shoulders a little impatiently.

“I can’t tell you that,” she replied. “It really is not necessary that you should know. You are a surgeon, I want an operation performed. That is all.”

There was a long pause; the mutual stare didn’t waver.

“You must understand, Miss—Miss—er——” began Dr. Prescott at last. “By the way, you have not introduced yourself?” She was silent. “May I ask your name?”

“My name is of no consequence,” she replied calmly. “I might, of course, give you a name, but it would not be mine, therefore any name would be superfluous.”

Again the surgeon stared.

“When do you want the operation performed?” he inquired.

“Now,” she replied. “I am ready.”

“You must understand,” he said severely, “that surgery is a profession for the relief of human suffering, not for mutilation—wilful mutilation I might say.”

“I understand that perfectly,” she said. “But where a person submits of her own desire to—to mutilation as you call it I can see no valid objection on your part.”

“It would be criminal to remove a finger where there is no necessity for it,” continued the surgeon bluntly. “No good end could be served.”

A trace of disappointment showed in the young woman’s face, and again she shrugged her shoulders.

“The question after all,” she said finally, “is not one of ethics but is simply whether or not you will perform the operation. Would you do it for, say, a thousand dollars?”

“Not for five thousand dollars,” blurted the surgeon,

“Well, for ten thousand then?” she asked, quiet casually.

All sorts of questions were pounding in Dr. Prescott’s mind. Why did a young and beautiful woman desire—why was she anxious even—to sacrifice a perfectly healthy finger? What possible purpose would it serve to mar a hand which was as nearly perfect as any he had ever seen? Was it some insane caprice? Staring deeply into her steady, quiet eyes he could only be convinced of her sanity. Then what?

“No, madam,” he said at last, vehemently, “I would not perform the operation for any sum you might mention, unless I was first convinced that the removal of that finger was absolutely necessary. That, I think, is all.”

He arose as if to end the consultation. The woman remained seated and continued thoughtful for a minute.

“As I understand it,” she said, “you would perform the operation if I could convince you that it was absolutely necessary?”

“Certainly,” he replied promptly, almost eagerly. His curiosity was aroused. “Then it would come well within the range of my professional duties.”

“Won’t you take my word that it is necessary, and that it is impossible for me to explain why?”

“No. I must know why.”

The woman arose and stood facing him. The disappointment had gone from her face now.

“Very well,” she remarked steadily. “You will perform the operation if it is necessary, therefore if I should shoot the finger off, perhaps——?”

“Shoot it off?” exclaimed Dr. Prescott in amazement. “Shoot it off?”

“That is what I said,” she replied calmly. “If I should shoot the finger off you would consent to dress the wound? You would make any necessary amputation?”

She held up the finger under discussion and looked at it curiously. Dr. Prescott himself stared at it with a sudden new interest.

“Shoot it off?” he repeated. “Why you must be mad to contemplate such a thing,” he exploded, and his face flushed in sheer anger. “I—I will have nothing whatever to do with the affair, madam. Good day.”

“I should have to be very careful of course,” she mused, “but I think perhaps one shot would be sufficient, then I should come to you and demand that you dress it?”

There was a question in the tone. Dr. Prescott stared at her for a full minute then walked over and opened the door.

“In my profession, madam,” he said coldly, “there is too much possibility of doing good and relieving actual suffering for me to consider this matter or discuss it further with you. There are three persons now waiting in the ante-room who need my services. I shall be compelled to ask you to excuse me.”

“But you will dress the wound?” the woman insisted, undaunted by his forbidding tone and manner.

“I shall have nothing whatever to do with it,” declared the surgeon, positively, finally. “If you need the services of any medical man permit me to suggest that it is an alienist and not a surgeon.”

The woman didn’t appear to take offence.

“Someone would have to dress it,” she continued insistently. “I should much prefer that it be a man of undisputed skill—you I mean, therefore I shall call again. Good day.”

There was a rustle of silken skirts and she was gone. Dr. Prescott stood for an instant gazing after her with frank wonder and annoyance in his eyes, his attitude, then he went back and sat down at the desk. The crinkled suede glove still lay where she had left it. He examined it gingerly then with a final shake of his head dismissed the affair and turned to other things.

Early next afternoon Dr. Prescott was sitting in his office writing when the door from the ante-room where patients awaited his leisure was thrown open and the young man in attendance rushed in.

“A lady has fainted, sir,” he said hurriedly. “She seems to be hurt.”

Dr. Prescott arose quickly and strode out. There, lying helplessly back in her chair with white face and closed eyes, was his visitor of the day before. He stepped toward her quickly then hesitated as he recalled their conversation. Finally, however, professional instinct, the desire to relieve suffering, and perhaps curiosity too, caused him to go to her. The left hand was wrapped in an improvised bandage through which there was a trickle of blood. He glared at it with incredulous eyes.

“Hanged if she didn’t do it,” he blurted angrily.

The fainting spell, Dr. Prescott saw, was due only to loss of blood and physical pain, and he busied himself trying to restore her to consciousness. Meanwhile he gave some hurried instructions to the young man who was in attendance in the ante-room.

“Call up Professor Van Dusen on the ’phone,” he directed his assistant, “and ask him if he can assist me in a minor operation. Tell him it’s rather a curious case and I am sure it will interest him.”

It was in this manner that the problem of the superfluous finger first came to the attention of The Thinking Machine. He arrived just as the mysterious woman was opening her eyes to consciousness from the fainting spell. She stared at him glassily, unrecognizingly; then her glance wandered to Dr. Prescott. She smiled.

“I knew you’d have to do it,” she murmured weakly.

After the ether had been administered for the operation, a simple and an easy one, Dr. Prescott stated the circumstances of the case to The Thinking Machine. The scientist stood with his long, slender fingers resting lightly on the young woman’s pulse, listening in silence.

“What do you make of it?” demanded the surgeon.

The Thinking Machine didn’t say. At the moment he was leaning over the unconscious woman squinting at her forehead. With his disengaged hand he stroked the delicately pencilled eye-brows several times the wrong way, and again at close range squinted at them. Dr. Prescott saw and seeing, understood.

“No, it isn’t that,” he said and he shuddered a little. “I thought of it myself. Her bodily condition is excellent, splendid.”

It was some time later when the young woman was sleeping lightly, placidly under the influence of a soothing potion, that The Thinking Machine spoke of the peculiar events which had preceded the operation. Then he was sitting in Dr. Prescott’s private office. He had picked up a woman’s glove from the desk.

“This is the glove she left when she first called, isn’t it?” he inquired.

“Yes.”

“Did you happen to see her remove it?”

“Yes.”

The Thinking Machine curiously examined the dainty, perfumed trifle, then, arising suddenly, went into the adjoining room where the woman lay asleep. He stood for an instant gazing down admiringly at the exquisite, slender figure; then, bending over, he looked closely at her left hand. When at last he straightened up it seemed that some unspoken question in his mind had been answered. He rejoined Dr. Prescott.

“It’s difficult to say what motive is back of her desire to have the finger amputated,” he said musingly. “I could perhaps venture a conjecture but if the matter is of no importance to you beyond mere curiosity I should not like to do so. Within a few months from now, I daresay, important developments will result and I should like to find out something more about her. That I can do when she returns to wherever she is stopping in the city. I’ll ’phone to Mr. Hatch and have him ascertain for me where she goes, her name and other things which may throw a light on the matter.”

“He will follow her?”

“Yes, precisely. Now we only seem to know two facts in connection with her. First, she is English.”

“Yes,” Dr. Prescott agreed. “Her accent, her appearance, everything about her suggests that.”

“And the second fact is of no consequence at the moment,” resumed The Thinking Machine. “Let me use your ’phone please.”

Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, was talking.

“When the young woman left Dr. Prescott’s she took the cab which had been ordered for her and told the driver to go ahead until she stopped him. I got a good look at her, by the way. I managed to pass just as she entered the cab and walking on down got into another cab which was waiting for me. Her cab drove for three or four blocks aimlessly, and finally stopped. The driver stooped down as if to listen to someone inside, and my cab passed. Then the other cab turned across a side street and after going eight or ten blocks pulled up in front of an apartment house. The young woman got out and went inside. Her cab went away. Inside I found out that she was Mrs. Frederick Chevedon Morey. She came there last Tuesday—this is Friday—with her husband, and they engaged——”

“Yes, I knew she had a husband,” interrupted The Thinking Machine.

“—engaged apartments for three months. When I had learned this much I remembered your instructions as to steamers from Europe landing on the day they took apartments or possibly a day or so before. I was just going out when Mrs. Morey stepped out of the elevator and preceded me to the door. She had changed her clothing and wore a different hat.

“It didn’t seem to be necessary then to find out where she was going for I knew I could find her when I wanted to, so I went down and made inquiries at the steamship offices. I found, after a great deal of work, that no one of the three steamers which arrived the day they took apartments brought a Mr. and Mrs. Morey, but one steamer on the day before brought a Mr. and Mrs. David Girardeau from Liverpool. Mrs. Girardeau answered Mrs. Morey’s description to the minutest detail even to the gown she wore when she left the steamer—that is the same she wore when she left Dr. Prescott’s after the operation.”

That was all. The Thinking Machine sat with his enormous yellow head pillowed against a high-backed chair and his long slender fingers pressed tip to tip. He asked no questions and made no comment for a long time, then:

“About how many minutes was it from the time she entered the house until she came out again?”

“Not more than ten or fifteen,” was the reply. “I was still talking casually to the people down stairs trying to find out something about them.”

“What do they pay for their apartment?” asked the scientist, irrelevantly.

“Three hundred dollars a month.”

The Thinking Machine’s squint eyes were fixed immovably on a small discoloured spot on the ceiling of his laboratory.

“Whatever else may develop in this matter, Mr. Hatch,” he said after a time, “we must admit that we have met a woman with extraordinary courage—nerve, I daresay you’d call it. When Mrs. Morey left Dr. Prescott’s operating room she was so ill and weak from the shock that she could hardly stand, and now you tell me she changed her dress and went out immediately after she returned home.”

“Well, of course——” Hatch said, apologetically.

“In that event,” resumed the scientist, “we must assume also that the matter is one of the utmost importance to her, and yet the nature of the case had led me to believe that it might be months, perhaps, before there would be any particular development in it.”

“What? How?” asked the reporter.

“The final development doesn’t seem, from what I know, to belong on this side of the ocean at all,” explained The Thinking Machine. “I imagine it is a case for Scotland Yard. The problem of course is: What made it necessary for her to get rid of that finger? If we admit her sanity we can count the possible answers to this question on one hand, and at least three of these answers take the case back to England.” He paused. “By the way, was Mrs. Morey’s hand bound up in the same way when you saw her the second time?”

“Her left hand was in a muff,” explained the reporter. “I couldn’t see but it seems to me that she wouldn’t have had time to change the manner of its dressing.”

“It’s extraordinary,” commented the scientist. He arose and paced back and forth across the room. “Extraordinary,” he repeated. “One can’t help but admire the fortitude of women under certain circumstances, Mr. Hatch. I think perhaps this particular case had better be called to the attention of Scotland Yard, but first I think it would be best for you to call on the Moreys tomorrow—you can find some pretext—and see what you can learn about them. You are an ingenious young man—I’ll leave it all to you.”

Hatch did call at the Morey apartments on the morrow but under circumstances which were not at all what he expected. He went there with Detective Mallory, and Detective Mallory went there in a cab at full speed because the manager of the apartment house had ’phoned that Mrs. Frederick Chevedon Morey had been found murdered in her apartments. The detective ran up two flights of stairs and blundered, heavy-footed into the rooms, and there he paused in the presence of death.

The body of the woman lay on the floor and some one had mercifully covered it with a cloth from the bed. Detective Mallory drew the covering down from over the face and Hatch stared with a feeling of awe at the beautiful countenance which had, on the day before, been so radiant with life. Now it was distorted into an expression of awful agony and the limbs were drawn up convulsively. The mark of the murderer was at the white, exquisitely rounded throat—great black bruises where powerful, merciless fingers had sunk deeply into the soft flesh.

A physician in the house had preceded the police. After one glance at the woman and a swift, comprehensive look about the room Detective Mallory turned to him inquiringly.

“She has been dead for several hours,” the doctor volunteered, “possibly since early last night. It appears that some virulent, burning poison was administered and then she was choked. I gather this from an examination of her mouth.”

These things were readily to be seen; also it was plainly evident for many reasons that the finger marks at the throat were those of a man, but each step beyond these obvious facts only served to further bewilder the investigators. First was the statement of the night elevator boy.

“Mr. and Mrs. Morey left here last night about eleven o’clock,” he said. “I know because I telephoned for a cab, and later brought them down from the third floor. They went into the manager’s office leaving two suit cases in the hall. When they came out I took the suit cases to a cab that was waiting. They got in it and drove away.”

“When did they return?” inquired the detective.

“They didn’t return, sir,” responded the boy. “I was on duty until six o’clock this morning. It just happened that no one came in after they went out until I was off duty at six.”

The detective turned to the physician again.

“Then she couldn’t have been dead since early last night,” he said.

“She has been dead for several hours—at least twelve, possibly longer,” said the physician firmly. “There’s no possible argument about that.”

The detective stared at him scornfully for an instant, then looked at the manager of the house.

“What was said when Mr. and Mrs. Morey entered your office last night?” he asked. “Were you there?”

“I was there, yes,” was the reply. “Mr. Morey explained that they had been called away for a few days unexpectedly, and left the keys of the apartment with me. That was all that was said; I saw the elevator boy take the suit cases out for them as they went to the cab.”

“How did it come, then, if you knew they were away that some one entered here this morning, and so found the body?”

“I discovered the body myself,” replied the manager. “There was some electric wiring to be done in here and I thought their absence would be a good time for it. I came up to see about it and saw—that.”

He glanced at the covered body with a little shiver and a grimace. Detective Mallory was deeply thoughtful for several minutes.

“The woman is here and she’s dead,” he said finally. “If she is here she came back here, dead or alive last night between the time she went out with her husband and the time her body was found this morning. Now that’s an absolute fact. But how did she come here?”

Of the three employees of the apartment house only the elevator boy on duty had not spoken. Now he spoke because the detective glared at him fiercely.

“I didn’t see either Mr. or Mrs. Morey come in this morning,” he explained hastily. “Nobody had come in at all except the postman and some delivery wagon drivers up to the time the body was found.”

Again Detective Mallory turned on the manager.

“Does any window of this apartment open on a fire escape?” he demanded.

“Yes—this way.”

They passed through the short hallway to the back. Both the windows were locked on the inside, so instantly it appeared that even if the woman had been brought into the room that way the windows would not have been fastened unless her murderer went out of the house the front way. When Detective Mallory reached this stage of the investigation he sat down and stared from one to the other of the silent little party as if he considered the entire matter some affair which they had perpetrated to annoy him.

Hutchinson Hatch started to say something, then thought better of it, and turning, went to the telephone below. Within a few minutes The Thinking Machine stepped out of a cab in front and paused in the lower hall long enough to listen to the facts developed. There was a perfect net-work of wrinkles in the dome-like brow when the reporter concluded.

“It’s merely a transfer of the final development in the affair from England to this country,” he said enigmatically. “Please ’phone for Dr. Prescott to come here immediately.”

He went on to the Morey apartments. With only a curt nod for Detective Mallory, the only one of the small party who knew him, he proceeded to the body of the dead woman and squinted down without a trace of emotion into the white, pallid face. After a moment he dropped on his knees beside the inert body and examined the mouth and the finger marks about the white throat.

“Carbolic acid and strangulation,” he remarked tersely to Detective Mallory who was leaning over watching him with something of hopeful eagerness in his stolid face. The Thinking Machine glanced past him to the manager of the house. “Mr. Morey is a powerful, athletic man in appearance?” he asked.

“Oh no,” was the reply. “He’s short and slight, only a little larger than you are.”

The scientist squinted aggressively at the manager as if the description were not quite what he expected. Then the slightly puzzled expression passed.

“Oh, I see,” he remarked. “Played the piano.” This was not a question; it was a statement.

“Yes, a great deal,” was the reply, “so much so in fact that twice we had complaints from other persons in the house despite the fact that they had been here only a few days.”

“Of course,” mused the scientist abstractedly. “Of course. Perhaps Mrs. Morey did not play at all?”

“I believe she told me she did not.”

The Thinking Machine drew down the thin cloth which had been thrown over the body and glanced at the left hand.

“Dear me! Dear me!” he exclaimed suddenly, and he arose. “Dear me!” he repeated. “That’s the——” He turned to the manager and the two elevator boys. “This is Mrs. Morey beyond any question?”

The answer was a chorus of affirmation accompanied by some startling facial expressions.

“Did Mr. and Mrs. Morey employ any servants?”

“No,” was the reply. “They had their meals in the café below most of the time. There is no housekeeping in these apartments at all.”

“How many persons live in the building?”

“A hundred I should say.”

“There is a great deal of passing to and fro, then?”

“Certainly. It was rather unusual that so few persons passed in and out last night and this morning, and certainly Mrs. Morey and her husband were not among them if that’s what you’re trying to find out.”

The Thinking Machine glanced at the physician who was standing by silently.

“How long do you make it that she’s been dead?” he asked.

“At least twelve hours,” replied the physician. “Possibly longer.”

“Yes, nearer fourteen, I imagine.”

Abruptly he left the group and walked through the apartment and back again slowly. As he re-entered the room where the body lay, the door from the hall opened and Dr. Prescott entered, followed by Hutchinson Hatch. The Thinking Machine led the surgeon straight to the body and drew the cloth down from the face. Dr. Prescott started back with an exclamation of astonishment, recognition.

“There’s no doubt about it at all in your mind?” inquired the scientist.

“Not the slightest,” replied Dr. Prescott positively. “It’s the same woman.”

“Yet, look here!”

With a quick movement The Thinking Machine drew down the cloth still more. Dr. Prescott, together with those who had no idea of what to expect, peered down at the body. After one glance the surgeon dropped on his knees and examined closely the dead left hand. The fore-finger was off at the first joint. Dr. Prescott stared, stared incredulously. After a moment his eyes left the maimed hand and settled again on her face.

“I have never seen—never dreamed—of such a startling——” he began.

“That settles it all, of course,” interrupted The Thinking Machine. “It solves and proves the problem at once. Now, Mr. Mallory, if we can go to your office or some place where we will be undisturbed I will——”

“But who killed her?” demanded the detective abruptly.

“I have the photograph of her murderer in my pocket,” returned The Thinking Machine. “Also a photograph of an accomplice.”

Detective Mallory, Dr. Prescott, The Thinking Machine, Hutchinson Hatch, and the apartment house physician were seated in the front room of the Morey apartments with all doors closed against prying, inquisitive eyes. At the scientist’s request Dr. Prescott repeated the circumstances leading up to the removal of a woman’s left fore-finger, and there The Thinking Machine took up the story.

“Suppose, Mr. Mallory,” and the scientist turned to the detective, “a woman should walk into your office and say she must have a finger cut off, what would you think?”

“I’d think she was crazy,” was the prompt reply.

“Naturally, in your position,” The Thinking Machine went on, “you are acquainted with many strange happenings. Wouldn’t this one instantly suggest something to you. Something that was to happen months off.”

Detective Mallory considered it wisely, but was silent.

“Well here,” declared The Thinking Machine. “A woman whom we now know to be Mrs. Morey wanted her finger cut off. It instantly suggested three, four, five, a dozen possibilities. Of course only one, or possibly two in combination, could be true. Therefore which one? A little logic now to prove that two and two always make four—not some times but all the time.

“Naturally the first supposition was insanity. We pass that as absurd on its face. Then disease—a taint of leprosy perhaps which had been visible on the left fore-finger. I tested for that, and that was eliminated. Three strong reasons for desiring the finger off, either of which is strongly probable, remained. The fact that the woman was English unmistakably was obvious. From the mark of a wedding ring on her glove and a corresponding mark on her finger—she wore no such ring—we could safely surmise that she was married. These were the two first facts I learned. Substantiative evidence that she was married and not a widow came partly from her extreme youth and the lack of mourning in her attire.

“Then Mr. Hatch followed her, learned her name, where she lived, and later the fact that she had arrived with her husband on a steamer a day or so before they took apartments here. This was proof that she was English, and proof that she had a husband. They came over on the steamer as Mr. and Mrs. David Girardeau—here they were Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Chevedon Morey. Why this difference in name? The circumstance in itself pointed to irregularity—crime committed or contemplated. Other things made me think it was merely contemplated and that it could be prevented; for then the absence of every fact gave me no intimation that there would be murder. Then came the murder presumably of—Mrs. Morey?”

“Isn’t it Mrs. Morey?” demanded the detective.

“Mr. Hatch recognized the woman as the one he had followed, I recognized her as the one on whom there had been an operation, Dr. Prescott also recognized her,” continued the Thinking Machine. “To convince myself, after I had found the manner of death, that it was the woman, I looked at her left hand. I found that the fore-finger was gone—it had been removed by a skilled surgeon at the first joint. And this fact instantly showed me that the dead woman was not Mrs. Morey at all, but somebody else; and incidentally cleared up the entire affair.”

“How?” demanded the detective. “I thought you just said that you had helped cut off her fore-finger.”

“Dr. Prescott and I cut off that finger yesterday,” replied The Thinking Machine calmly. “The finger of the dead woman had been cut off months, perhaps years, ago.”

There was blank amazement on Detective Mallory’s face, and Hatch was staring straight into the squint eyes of the scientist. Vaguely, as through a mist, he was beginning to account for many things which had been hitherto inexplicable.

“The perfectly healed wound on the hand eliminated every possibility but one,” The Thinking Machine resumed. “Previously I had been informed that Mrs. Morey did not—or said she did not—play the piano. I had seen the bare possibility of an immense insurance on her hands, and some trick to defraud an insurance company by marring one. Of course against this was the fact that she had offered to pay a large sum for the operation; that their expenses here must have been enormous, so I was beginning to doubt the tenability of this supposition. The fact that the dead woman’s finger was off removed that possibility completely, as it also removed the possibility of a crime of some sort in which there might have been left behind a tell-tale print of that fore-finger. If there had been a serious crime with the trace of the finger as evidence, its removal would have been necessary to her.

“Then the one thing remained—that is that Mrs. Morey or whatever her name is—was in a conspiracy with her husband to get possession of certain properties, perhaps a title—remember she is English—by sacrificing that finger so that identification might be in accordance with the description of an heir whom she was to impersonate. We may well believe that she was provided with the necessary documentary evidence, and we know conclusively—we don’t conjecture but we know—that the dead woman in there is the woman whose rights were to have been stolen by the so-called Mrs. Morey.”

“But that is Mrs. Morey, isn’t it?” demanded the detective again.

“No,” was the sharp retort. “The perfect resemblance to Mrs. Morey and the finger removed long ago makes that clear. There is, I imagine, a relationship between them—perhaps they are cousins. I can hardly believe they are twins because the necessity, then of one impersonating the other to obtain either money or a title, would not have existed so palpably although it is possible that Mrs. Morey, if disinherited or disowned, would have resorted to such a course. This dead woman is Miss—Miss——” and he glanced at the back of a photograph, “Miss Evelyn Rossmore, and she has evidently been living in this city for some time. This is her picture, and it was made at least a year ago by Harkinson here. Perhaps he can give you her address as well.”

There was silence for several minutes. Each member of the little group was turning over the stated facts mentally, and Detective Mallory was staring at the photograph, studying the handwriting on the back.

“But how did she come here—like this?” Hatch inquired.

“You remember, Mr. Hatch, when you followed Mrs. Morey here you told me she dressed again and went out?” asked the scientist in turn. “It was not Mrs. Morey you saw then—she was ill and I knew it from the operation—it was Miss Rossmore. The manager says a hundred persons live in this house—that there is a great deal of passing in and out. Can’t you see that when there is such a startling resemblance Miss Rossmore could pass in and out at will and always be mistaken for Mrs. Morey? That no one would ever notice the difference?”

“But who killed her?” asked Detective Mallory, curiously. “How? Why?”

“Morey killed her,” said The Thinking Machine flatly and he produced two other photographs from his pocket. “There’s his picture and his wife’s picture for identification purposes. How did he kill her? We can fairly presume that first he tricked her into drinking the acid, then perhaps she was screaming with the pain of it, and he choked her to death. I imagined first he was a large, powerful man because his grip on her throat was so powerful that he ruptured the jugular inside; but instead of that he plays the piano a great deal, which would give him the hand-power to choke her. And why? We can suppose only that it was because she had in some way learned of their purpose. That would have established the motive. The crowning delicacy of the affair was Morey’s act in leaving his keys with the manager here. He did not anticipate that the apartments would be entered for several days—after they were safely away—while there was a chance that if neither of them had been seen here and their disappearance was unexplained the rooms would have been opened to ascertain why. That is all, I think.”

“Except to catch Morey and his wife,” said the detective grimly.

“Easily done with those photographs,” said The Thinking Machine. “I imagine, if this murder is kept out of the newspapers for a couple of hours you can find them about to sail for Europe. Suppose you try the line they came over on?”

It was just three hours later that the accused man and wife were taken prisoner. They had just engaged passage on the steamer which sailed at half-past four o’clock. Their trial was a famous one and resulted in conviction after an astonishing story of an attempt to seize an estate and title belonging rightfully to Miss Evelyn Rossmore who had mysteriously disappeared years before.

___________________

11. The Three Overcoats

Under the influence of that singular feeling of some one being in the room with him, Carroll Garland opened his eyes suddenly from sound sleep. The intuition was correct; there was some one in the room with him—a man whose back was turned. At that particular moment he was examining the clothing Garland had discarded on retiring. Garland raised himself on one elbow, and the bed creaked a little.

“Don’t disturb yourself,” said the man, without turning, “I’ll be through in a minute.”

“Through what?” demanded Garland. “My pockets?”

The stranger straightened up and turned toward him. He was a tall, lithe, clean-cut young man, with crisp, curly hair, and a quizzical expression about his eyes and lips. He was in evening dress, and Garland could only admire the manner in which it fitted him. He wore an opera hat, and a light weight Inverness coat.

“I didn’t mean to wake you, really,” the stranger apologized pleasantly. “I’m sure I didn’t make any noise.”

“No, I dare say you didn’t,” replied Garland. “What do you want?”

The stranger picked up an overcoat, which lay across a chair, and deftly, with a penknife, slit the lining on each side. He did something then which Garland couldn’t see, after which he carefully folded the coat again, and laid it across the chair. “I have taken what you won at bridge at your club this evening,” he remarked. “It will save me the trouble of cashing a check.”

Garland gazed at this imperturbable, audacious person with a sort of admiration. “I trust you found the amount correct?” he said sarcastically.

“Yes, thirteen hundred and forty-seven dollars. That will do very nicely, thank you. I am leaving two hundred and some odd dollars of your own.”

“Oh, take it all,” said Garland magnanimously, “because I am going to make you return it, anyway.”

The stranger laughed pleasantly. “I am going now,” he said; “but before I go I should like to tell you that you play really an excellent game of bridge, except, perhaps, you are a little reckless on no trumps.”

“Thank you,” said Garland, and started to get out of bed.

“Now, don’t get up!” advised the stranger, still pleasantly. “I have something here in my pocket which I should dislike very much to have to use. But I will use it if necessary.”

Garland kept right on getting out of bed. “You are not such a fool as to shoot,” he said quietly. “You couldn’t get out of this hotel to save your life if you did. It is only half-past eleven o’clock, there are people passing in the halls, and always at this time there are a great many people in the lobby. You would have to go that way. So now I’ll trouble you for the money.”

The stranger drew a glistening, shining object from his pocket, examined it casually, then went over and stood beside the call button. There was a glitter of determination in his eyes, and the smile had gone from his lips. “I certainly have no intention of returning the money—now,” he said. “It would be best for both of us, of course, not to attract anyone’s attention.”

Garland was coming straight toward him.

“Now, don’t do anything foolish,” the stranger warned, not unkindly. “You can’t reach the call button unless you go over me; you won’t shout, because if you do I shall have to use this revolver, and take my chances below. You don’t happen to need this money, and I do. It was simply a pick-up for you at the club. If you give an alarm when I go out, it will be disagreeable for me.”

Garland stared at him in frank amazement for a moment. The stranger steadily returned the gaze.

“I’ll just take one whirl out of you anyhow,” declared Garland grimly. “I don’t happen to have a gun; but——”

And Garland sent in a vicious right swing, which would have been highly effective had the stranger’s head remained stationary. Instead, it ducked suddenly, and a left hand landed jarringly on one of Garland’s eyes. Instantly he forgot all about the burglarious intentions of his visitor; it was man to man, and Garland happened to be dexterous in the science of pugilism—Mike Donovan had taught him.

After four blows had been exchanged, Garland became suddenly convinced that the stranger’s teacher in the gentle art of bruising was more gifted even than Mike, because, in all the freedom of his pajamas, Garland got in only one blow for two, on a man who was hampered by overcoat and evening dress. A stinging jab to Garland’s mouth made him clinch, and in trying to reach the stranger’s throat, he forgot all the ethics of the game.

At this close range, the stranger delivered one short arm punch, and as Garland reeled and the world grew dark about him, he recalled the blow as being identical with one which was made famous in Carson City, at the time a world’s championship changed hands. Dazzling lights danced before his eyes for a moment, and then all was dark.

The stranger stood looking down at him, planted his opera hat more firmly on his head, drew on his gloves, opened the door, and went out. He sauntered through the lobby carelessly, paused to light a cigar, and disappeared through the revolving doors. At the curb outside, an automobile was waiting. In it sat a veiled woman, and a very much begoggled chauffeur.

“Well?” the woman asked quickly.

The stranger shook his head, climbed in beside her, and the car rushed away.

When Garland recovered consciousness, he had the impression of having experienced a remarkably vivid nightmare. But one look into the mirror at the bulbous black eye, and the absence of thirteen hundred and forty-seven dollars from his pockets, convinced him of the reality of it all. Incidentally he examined the two knife cuts in the overcoat lining, and shook his head in bewilderment.

“What the deuce did he cut those for?” he asked himself.

On the following morning Garland returned the overcoat to its owner, Hal Dickson. There is a freemasonry among roommates at college by which one acknowledges that whatever he owns belongs equally to the other. Garland had exercised certain rights which had accrued to him by reason of this comradeship upon his arrival in the city the day before. He wore then a light weight tan coat, entirely too thin for the extreme cold which set in immediately upon his arrival; so he borrowed a heavier coat, a thick frieze affair, from his old chum, and left his own light coat with him.

“I want to tell you something about this, Hal,” he said, and recited in detail the events of the night before. “Now look here where my friend cut your coat,” he said in conclusion.

Together they examined the long slits, after which they stared at each other in blank wonderment.

“Send it down to your tailor and have it relined,” remarked Garland. “Tell him to send the bill to me.”

Dickson continued to stare at the coat lining. “What did he want to cut it for?” he asked.

Garland shook his head. “Give me my own coat,” he said; “I’ve got to go back home at two-thirty, and can manage with this light coat until I get there, and may not have a chance to come here again.”

Garland was just about to put on his own coat, when he stopped in fresh amazement. “Well! Look at that!” he exclaimed.

Dickson looked. The lining of the coat was slit wide open on each side, as if with a sharp knife.

Ten minutes later the young men were on their way to police headquarters. Detective Mallory received them. The coats were laid under his official eyes, and he scrutinized them carefully.

Mallory listened, with his feet on his desk, and his cigar clinched in his teeth. “What did the thief look like?” he asked at the end.

“He had every appearance of a gentleman.”

“Just like me and you, eh?”

“Well, a little more like me,” replied Garland innocently.

“I shall put my men on it at once,” said the detective.

Garland caught the two-thirty train for a run of an hour and a half to a small city.

At fifteen minutes before five o’clock Detective Mallory was called to the long distance telephone.

“That Mr. Mallory?” came an excited voice. “Well, this is Carroll Garland. Yes, I am at home. Just as soon as I got here I went straight to my room to get a heavier overcoat. I was putting it on, when I found that the lining had been ripped open just like those other two. Now, what does that mean?”

For the first time in his life a question had been asked to which Mallory would confess that he didn’t know the answer. He scratched his head thoughtfully, then stopped doing that to tug violently at his bristly moustache. Finally he hung up the receiver with a bang, and went out personally to look into an affair which had not attracted more than passing interest at the time it was reported.

“I can readily understand,” Hutchinson Hatch was saying, “why the burglar took the money; but why did he slit the lining of the overcoat?”

The Thinking Machine didn’t say.

“Then why did he go to Dickson’s room, and slit the lining of an overcoat which Garland left there?”

Still The Thinking Machine was silent.

“And finally why did he go to Garland’s home, in another city forty miles away, and slit the lining of an overcoat there?”

Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen receded still farther into the depths of a huge chair, and sat for a long time with his squint eyes turned upward, and finger tips pressed together. At last he broke the silence. “You have given me every known fact?”

“Everything,” the reporter answered.

“There is really no problem in it at all,” The Thinking Machine declared, “unless one of the units remains undiscovered. If all are known, the solution is obvious. When the money is returned to Garland, it will definitely prove the only possible hypothesis that may be advanced.”

“When the money is returned?” gasped the reporter.

“That is what I said!” snapped the scientist crustily. “If Garland does not care to lose that thirteen hundred and forty-seven dollars, it would not be wise to press the investigation just now. If you will keep in communication with him, and inform me immediately when he receives the money, I shall undertake to close up the affair. Until then it is really not worth attention.”

Nearly a week elapsed before there was another development in the mystery—the return of thirteen hundred and forty-seven dollars, by express from Denver. Accompanying the money was an unsigned note of thanks for the use of it, and a line or two which might have been construed into an apology for the stranger’s conduct in Garland’s room.

The police were astounded; this was against all the rules of the game. Garland was a little more than astounded, and at the same time delighted at the generosity of the thief. It was not possible to develop any fact as to the identity of the intruder from the express records. Obviously the sender had used a fictitious name in Denver. When Hatch explained this point to The Thinking Machine, it was dismissed with a wave of one slender hand.

“It is really of no consequence,” declared the scientist. “Garland knows the name of the man who took the money and cut the overcoat.”

“But he says he doesn’t,” Hatch remonstrated.

“There may be circumstances which make it necessary for him to say that,” continued the scientist.

“He is prepared to swear that he never saw the man before.”

“That might be quite true,” was the curt rejoinder; “but I dare say he does know his name. The next time Garland comes to the city, let me know.”

“He is here now,” the reporter informed him. “He came in to-day to consult with Detective Mallory about the return of the money.”

“That simplifies matters,” said the scientist. “We’ll see him at once.”

Garland was in. Hatch introduced the distinguished man of science, and he came immediately to business.

“Tell me something of your love affairs, Mr. Garland,” The Thinking Machine began abruptly.

“My love affairs? I have no love affairs at all.”

“Oh, I see; married.”

Garland gazed straight into the squinting eyes, with a quizzical expression about his mouth. “I don’t see that it is absolutely inconsistent for a man to have a love affair and be married,” he said smilingly. “There are men, you know, who are in love with their own wives. I happen to be one of these. When you said love affairs, I presumed you meant——”

“There are men,” interrupted The Thinking Machine, “who because of being married dare not admit any other entanglements.” The aggressive blue eyes were staring straight into Garland’s.

After a moment the young man arose, with something like anger in his manner. “I don’t happen to be one of them,” he said sharply.

The Thinking Machine shrugged his shoulders. “Now, what is the name of the man who robbed you and cut those coats?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” retorted Garland.

“I know that is what you told the police,” said the scientist; “but believe me, it would be best, and possibly save you trouble, for you to give me the name of that man.”

“I don’t know it,” repeated Garland.

The Thinking Machine seemed satisfied on that point, but with his satisfaction came tiny, sinuous lines in his forehead. Hatch knew what that meant.

“You never saw the man before?” asked the scientist after a moment. The aggressiveness had gone from his voice now.

“No, I never saw him before,” Garland replied.

“Nor a photograph of him?”

“No, never.”

Almost imperceptibly the lines deepened in the brow of The Thinking Machine. His eyes were narrowed down to mere slits, and his thin lips set into a perfectly straight line. Garland studied the grotesque little figure with a curiosity backed by anger. For a long time there was silence, then:

“Mr. Garland, how long have you been married?”

“Four years.”

The Thinking Machine shook his head and arose. “Please pardon me,” he continued, “but what is your financial condition?”

“I am a salaried man; but it is a good salary, twelve thousand a year, quite enough for my wife and self.”

“Your married life has been happy?”

“Perfectly.”

Again The Thinking Machine shook his head.

Ten minutes later he and Hutchinson Hatch were in the street together.

“He has either lied, or else we have overlooked a unit,” volunteered the scientist as they walked on. “Now I can’t believe that we missed anything—ergo, he lied, and yet I can’t believe that.”

“Well, that doesn’t leave much,” the reporter suggested.

“The next step,” the scientist went on, “will be to establish beyond all doubt that he told the truth. I leave that to you. Get his record for the last five years, and inquire particularly about his family life, his club life, and always bear in mind the possibility of another woman in the case. There is a woman—some woman—because she was in the automobile. Of course, the case is inconsequential, since the money has been returned; but I happen to be interested in it, because the return of the money bears out my hypothesis, and other things tend to upset it.”

Hatch covered the affair thoroughly. Garland had told the truth, as far as investigation could develop. He so informed the scientist.

“It is singular, very singular,” remarked The Thinking Machine, in deep abstraction. “By the inexorable rule of logic we reach a point where we must believe that Garland slit the lining of the coats himself, and had the money sent to him from Denver. When we attempt to find a motive for that, we plunge into absurdities. Two and two always make four, Mr. Hatch, not sometimes, but all the time. No problem in arithmetic can be correctly solved, if one figure is missing. There is one figure missing. I’ll find it. In your investigation of Garland’s career you found out something about his father?”

“Yes. He died several years ago. His name, by the way, was also Carroll Garland.”

The Thinking Machine turned suddenly and squinted at the reporter. “Here is our missing unit, Mr. Hatch,” he said. “Do you happen to know if there were ever any other Carroll Garlands in the family?”

“Years ago, yes. The great-grandfather of the present one was also a Carroll Garland.”

The little scientist arose suddenly, paced back and forth half a dozen times, then passed into an adjoining room. Five minutes later he re-entered, with his hat and coat. Accompanied by the reporter, he went straight to one of the fashionable clubs, and sent in a card. After a few minutes’ wait a young man appeared.

“My name is Van Dusen,” began The Thinking Machine. “I came here to see you about a personal matter. Could we go to some place where we should not be disturbed for a minute?”

The young man led the way into a private parlor and closed the door.

“It’s about that compromising letter which you carry there,” and The Thinking Machine touched the young man on the breast with one long slender finger.

“Did she send you?”

“No.”

“Well, what business is it of yours, then?”

“I do not think that a man of honor—a man of your social position—would care to carry about with him a paper which would not only imperil but might wreck the reputation of a woman who is now another man’s wife.”

That The Thinking Machine had spoken correctly, Hatch could not doubt from the expression on the other’s face.

“Another man’s wife,” repeated the young man in astonishment. “Since when?”

“A week or so ago. She is now in the West with her husband. He knows of the existence of this document, therefore whatever vengeful spirit you may have had in preserving it is wasted. I would advise you to destroy it.”

For a minute or more the young man stared straight into the squint eyes. “If the lady in question should have made such a request of me in person, I should have destroyed it,” said the young man; “otherwise I——”

“She makes that request now, through me,” the scientist lied glibly.

“Did she ask you to come to me?”

“She makes that request now, through me,” repeated the scientist.

Again the young man was silent. Finally he slowly removed his overcoat and laid it across the table. Then from a pocket in the lining, the opening of which was concealed in a seam where the sleeve joined the coat, he removed a letter. A strange expression played about his face, reminiscent, thoughtful, even tender, as he offered it to The Thinking Machine. Instead of accepting it, the scientist struck a match and touched it to the corner. In silence the three men watched it burn.

“It is obvious to the dullest intelligence,” said The Thinking Machine to Hutchinson Hatch, “that the man who entered Garland’s room at the hotel was not a thief. He went there to open the lining of Garland’s overcoat. Why? To find something which he had reason to believe was concealed therein. True, he took some money; but we can readily imagine that he happened to need a large sum at the minute, and took it, intending to return it, as he did.

“When we know that he was not a thief, we know that the thing he sought was in the lining of the coat. It just happened that this particular coat was not Garland’s. The thief didn’t know that when he cut it; but he had been so certain of finding what he sought that he took pains to see if it was Garland’s coat. Instead of Garland’s name, he found on a tailor’s tab inside the pocket the name of Dickson. If we give him credit for intelligence at all, we must give him credit for imagining how another man’s coat came into Garland’s possession. Therefore, he went to Dickson’s room, found Garland’s coat, and ripped that as he did the first. Still nothing. Naturally then, he went to Garland’s home and ripped open the third coat.

“All this was obvious. Now we come to the less obvious. What was he after? Money? No. He left money behind him. A jewel? Possibly but improbably, because his was not a mercenary pursuit. Then what? The remainder: some document or letter which was of such importance that he practically risked his life for it. Now, was this letter or document of value to himself, or to some one else?

“At this point logic met an obstacle in the veiled woman who waited in the automobile. Would the man permit the woman to take the chance she was taking with him if the document had been of value only to himself? It seems unlikely. On the other hand, if the document was of value to her, might she not insist on accompanying him?

“What paper was he after? A will or a deed? Perhaps; but would not that have gone into a court of law? A letter? More likely. So what did we have? A man risking his life, prison at least, to recover a letter for a woman near and dear to him. She, perhaps, informed him that the letter was concealed in the lining of Carroll Garland’s overcoat. How she knew this does not appear. We can even imagine the woman confessing the existence of a letter by which her character was menaced before she consented to become his wife. In that event everything else is accounted for; no other hypothesis would fit all the circumstances, therefore this must be correct. Obviously the stranger knew the name of the man who had the letter; therefore it would seem that there could be no mistake. I failed to see at the moment that there might be another Carroll Garland. When I saw that I telephoned to Garland, and he informed me that he had a cousin of the same name who occasionally visited this city and always stopped at the club where we called. You know what happened when we saw this second Carroll Garland. In searching for a Carroll Garland the stranger came across the wrong man and held him up. That is all, I think.”

There was a long silence.

“By the way,” Hatch inquired suddenly, “what is the name of the strange man and the woman?”

“Why, I don’t know,” responded The Thinking Machine in surprise.

________________

12. The Problem of the Vanishing Man

There was a feverish restlessness in the merciless gray eyes, an unpleasant frown on his brow, as Charles Duer Carroll paused on the curb in front of a tall down town office building and stared moodily across the busy street into nothingness. Carroll was a remarkable looking young man in many ways. He was young,—only thirty,—and physically every line of his body expressed power, sturdiness rather than youth, force rather than grace. He was blessed too with an indomitable, uncompromising jaw, the jaw of a fighting man. The chin was square, the lips thin, avaricious perhaps, the nose slightly hooked, the cheek bones high. In general his appearance was that of a keenly alert man who is never surprised; who chooses his way and pursues it aggressively without haste, without mercy, and without mistakes.

Despite his youth,—it may have been because of it,—Carroll was president and active head of the great brokerage concern, the Carroll-Swayne-McPartland Company, with general offices on the fourth floor of this huge building behind him. He held that responsible position by right of being the grandson of its founder, old Nick Carroll. Upon his retirement from active business a year previously the old man, a wrinkled, venomous image of the young, had banged his desk with lusty fist and so declared it—Charlie Carroll was to be his successor. There had been heartburnings, objections, violent protests even; but the old man owned five thousand of the ten thousand shares of the company, and—Charles Duer Carroll was president.

Financially the young man was interested in the company only to the extent of owning twenty-five shares, this being a gift from old Nick and a necessary qualification for an office holder. Beyond this rather meager possession,—meager at least in comparison with the holdings of other officers and stockholders of the company,—young Carroll had only his salary of twenty thousand dollars a year,—nothing else, for he had been exalted to this from a salary of eighteen hundred and a clerk’s desk in the general office. Here for six years old Nick Carroll had drilled the business into him, warp and woof; then had come the exaltation.

Thus it came about that a pauper, from the viewpoint of financial circles, directed the affairs of a company whose business ran into millions and tens of millions annually. If young Carroll felt that he needed advice, he did not hesitate to disregard his fellows and go straight to the fountainhead, old Carroll. And when he asked for that advice he regarded it scrupulously, minutely. At other times—in fact, as a general thing—young Carroll sailed on his own course,—took the bit in his teeth and did as he pleased,—leaving accrued profits to inform the various stockholders of his actions. At such times old Nick was wont to rub his skinny hands together and smile.

For months after young Carroll assumed the reins of government there had been fear of a misstep and consequent wreck in the conservative hearts of officers and stockholders, except in the case of old Carroll; then this apprehension was dissipated, leaving a residue of rankling envy. Not one man in authority would have said it was not for the best that old Nick had thrust this infusion of aggressive young blood into the staid old company; but half a dozen persons at interest could have enumerated a thousand reasons why a youth of thirty should not hold the position of president, when some older man—one of themselves—knew the business better and had been in the office longer

Be that as it may, Charles Duer Carroll, the pauper, was president of the company. When he stepped into that position he brought with him new vigor and virility and vitality and a surly, curt, merciless method which had enabled him to achieve things. This was the young man—this Charles Duer Carroll—who stood on the curb one morning staring, glaring, across the busy street. At last he dropped a half smoked cigar, ground it to shreds on the pavement beneath a vigorous heel, and turning stared up at the building. There was a window of his office in the corner straight above him, and there was work that called. But Carroll wasn’t thinking of that particularly; he was thinking of——

He snapped his fingers impatiently and entered the building. An elevator whirled him up to the fourth floor, and he entered the large outer office of the company. The forbidding frown was still on his brow, the steeliness still in his gray eyes. Several clerks nodded respectfully as he entered; but there was no greeting in return, not even a curt time of day. He strode straight across the room to his private office without a glance either to right or left, banging the door behind him.

Over in a corner of the outer office Gordon Swayne, secretary and treasurer, was dictating letters. He glanced round with an expression of annoyance on his face at the sudden noise. “Who did that?” he demanded of his stenographer.

“It was Mr. Carroll, sir.”

“Oh!” and he resumed his dictation.

For an hour or more he continued dictating; then a letter which required the attention of President Carroll came to hand and he went into the private office. He came out after a moment and spoke to his stenographer again.

“Did Mr. Carroll go into his office this morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

Swayne turned and glanced round the outer office inquiringly. “Did you see him come out?” he inquired.

“No, sir.”

That was all. Swayne laid the letter aside for the moment and continued with the other correspondence. From time to time he glanced impatiently at the clock, thence to the door from the hall. At ten minutes past eleven the stenographer returned to her own desk, and with a worried countenance Swayne went over and spoke to a bookkeeper near the door.

“Did you see Mr. Carroll go out?” he asked. “Or do you know where he went?”

“He hasn’t gone out, sir,” replied the bookkeeper. “I saw him go into his office a couple of hours ago.”

Swayne went straight toward the private office with the evident intention of leaving the letter on the president’s desk. The door of the room was still closed. He was reaching out his hand to open it, when it was opened from within and Carroll started out. Swayne stared at him a moment in a manner nearly approaching amazement.

“Well, what is it?” demanded Carroll curtly.

“I—er—here’s something I wanted to ask you about,” Swayne explained haltingly.

Carroll glanced over the extended letter. His brows contracted and he quickly looked up at the clock.

“Did this come in the morning mail?” he demanded impatiently.

“Yes. I knew——”

“You should have called it to my attention two hours ago,” said Carroll sharply. “Answer by wire that we’ll accept the proposition.”

Swayne’s face flamed suddenly at the tone and manner. “I tried to call it to your attention two hours ago,” he explained; “but you were not in your office, nor were you out here.”

“I’ve been in my office right along,” said Carroll sharply, and he glared straight into Swayne’s eyes. “Wire immediately that we’ll accept the proposition.”

The two men stood thus face to face, eyes challenging eyes, for an instant, then simultaneously turned away. Swayne’s countenance showed not only anger but bewilderment; whatever Carroll felt was not evident. Perhaps there was more color in his face than was usually there; but it had been that way when he came out of the private office, therefore was not due to any feeling aroused by the scene with Swayne.

That afternoon Carroll caused a neat placard to be placed on the door of his private office. It said briefly:

Do not enter this room without knocking. If Mr. Carroll does not answer a knock, it is to be understood that he is not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

Swayne read it and wondered, feeling somehow that it was a direct rebuke to him; the dozen or more clerks read it and wondered, and commented upon it varyingly; two office boys read it and added their opinions. On the following day the incident was repeated with slight variations. Swayne saw Carroll enter the front door, pass through the main office, and go into the private office, closing the door behind him. Half an hour later Swayne spoke to the bookkeeper Black, to whom he had spoken the day before.

“Please hand that to Mr. Carroll in his private office,” he directed.

The bookkeeper took the slip of paper which the secretary offered, crossed the office, and rapped on Carroll’s door. After a minute he returned to Swayne, who was apparently adding a column of figures.

“Mr. Carroll doesn’t answer, sir,” explained the bookkeeper.

“You know he’s in there, don’t you?” asked Swayne blandly.

“I saw him go in a few minutes ago, yes, sir; but I didn’t intrude because of the notice on the door.”

“Oh, that’s of no consequence,” exclaimed Swayne impatiently. “This is a matter of importance. Take it into him anyway, whether he answers or not.”

Again the bookkeeper went away, and again he returned. “Mr. Carroll wasn’t in there, sir,” he explained; “and I had to leave the paper on his desk.”

“I thought you said you saw him go in?” demanded Swayne.

“I did, sir.”

“Well, he must be in there; he hasn’t come out,” insisted Swayne. “Are you sure he isn’t there?”

“Why, positive, yes, sir,” replied the bewildered bookkeeper.

Swayne was bending over the high desk intently studying the figures before him. The bookkeeper stood for a little while as if awaiting another order, then resumed his work.

“We’ll go in there together and see if he isn’t to be found,” said Swayne at last in a most matter of fact tone.

“But I just——” the bookkeeper began.

“Never mind, come along,” directed Swayne; “and don’t talk too loud,” he added in a lower tone.

Wonderingly the bookkeeper followed the secretary. Swayne himself rapped on the door. There was no answer, and finally he pushed the door open quietly. Carroll was sitting at his desk going over the morning mail. He apparently was not aware that the door had been opened, and Swayne started to close it as he and the bookkeeper withdrew.

“You were mistaken, Black,” Swayne remarked casually.

“Come in, Mr. Swayne, you and Black,” called Carroll just as the door was closing.

Swayne warned the bookkeeper to silence with one quick, comprehensive glance, then reopened the door, and they entered the private office, closing the door behind them. Swayne faced his superior calmly, defiantly almost; the bookkeeper twiddled his fingers nervously.

“Since when is it customary for employees here to disobey my orders?” demanded Carroll coldly.

“Mr. Black told me you were not here, and I came to see myself,” replied Swayne with a singular emphasis on every word.

“You see that he was mistaken, then?” demanded Carroll. “Mr. Black, we shall not require your services any longer. Mr. Swayne will give you a check immediately for what is due you. And you, Mr. Swayne, understand that if my orders are not obeyed to the letter in this office I shall be compelled to make other changes. From this time forward the door will be locked when I am in my office. That’s all.”

“But I was obeying orders when——” Black began in trepidation.

“I put my order on the door for you to obey,” interrupted Carroll. “Go write him a check, Mr. Swayne.”

Swayne and Black went out, and Swayne closed the door. Carroll had been seated as they went out; but the door had no sooner closed now than they heard the lock snap inside.

“What does it mean, Black?” Swayne inquired quietly.

“I don’t know, sir,” replied the astonished bookkeeper. “He certainly was not in that room when I was in there. And as for discharging me——”

“You are not discharged,” Swayne said impatiently, with a new note in his voice. “You are going to take a vacation of a couple of weeks, though, on full salary. Meanwhile have luncheon with me today.”

Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen—The Thinking Machine—straightened up in his chair suddenly and turned his squinting, belligerent eyes full upon his two visitors.

“Never mind your personal opinion or prejudices, Mr. Swayne,” he rebuked sharply. “If you want my assistance in this matter, I must insist that you relate the facts, and only the facts, freed of all coloring which may have been infused into them by your ill feeling toward Mr. Carroll. I understand readily enough the cause of this—this ill feeling. You are his senior in the office, and he was promoted over your head to be the president of the company, while you remained secretary and treasurer. Now give me the remainder of the facts, please.”

There was a considerable pause. A flush had slowly mounted Swayne’s face, and it was only with an obvious effort that he controlled himself. Once he looked toward Black, who had been a silent witness of the interview.

“Well, after those first two incidents,” Swayne went on at last, “the door of Mr. Carroll’s private office was always locked on the inside the moment he was left alone. Now I am not a fool, Professor Van Dusen. In my mind it stands to reason that if Mr. Carroll disappeared from that room twice when the door was left unlocked, he is gone from it practically all the time when the door is locked; therefore——”

“Opinion again,” interrupted The Thinking Machine curtly. “Facts, Mr. Swayne, facts!”

“If he isn’t gone, why does he keep the door locked?”

“Perhaps,” and the crabbed little scientist regarded him coldly,—“perhaps it’s really because he is busy and doesn’t want to be interrupted. That is always possible, you know. I’m that way myself sometimes.”

“And where does he go? How does he go? And why does he go?”

“If I had to diagnose this case,” remarked The Thinking Machine almost pleasantly, “I should say it was a severe attack of idle curiosity, complicated with prejudice and suspicion.” Suddenly his whole tone, his whole manner, changed. “Has the conduct of the business of the company been all it should have been since Mr. Carroll has been in charge?” he demanded.

“Well, yes,” admitted Swayne.

“He has made money for the company?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps increased its earnings, if anything?”

Swayne nodded reluctantly.

“Nothing is stolen?” the scientist demanded. “Nothing is missing? Nothing has gone wrong?”

Three times Swayne shook his head.

The Thinking Machine arose impatiently. “If there had been anything wrong, of course you would have gone to the police,” The Thinking Machine went on. “There being nothing wrong, you came to me. I don’t mind giving what assistance I can in instances where it works for good; but my time is valuable to the world of science, Mr. Swayne, and really I can’t be disturbed by such a trivial affair as this. If anything does go wrong, if anything does happen, you are at liberty to call again. Good day.”

The two men arose, stood staring blankly at each other for a moment, then turned to go out. Swayne’s face was crimson with anger, chagrin, at his abrupt dismissal. But at the door he turned back for one final question.

“Would you mind informing us how Mr. Carroll disappeared from his office on the two occasions when we know he did disappear, before he locked his door against us?”

“You saw him go in one door; he went out another, I suppose,” replied The Thinking Machine.

“There is only one other door,” retorted Swayne with something like triumph in his voice. “That is blocked in his office by his desk and also blocked in the stockholders’ meeting room, to which it leads, by a long couch. The offices are fifty feet from the ground; so he couldn’t jump from a window. He didn’t go through the stockholders’ room, either, because that has only one door, and that opens into the outer office within two or three feet of the door to his private office. There are no fire escapes at either of his windows, I may add. Now, how did he get out—if he got out?”

The face was flushed and angry again, the voice raised stridently. The Thinking Machine stared for half a minute, then opened the door to the street.

“I don’t know if you know it,” he said calmly at last; “but you are almost convincing me that there is something wrong there, and that you are responsible for it. Good day.”

The steel gray eyes of Charles Duer Carroll were blazing as he flung open the outside door of the offices of Carroll-Swayne-McPartland Company and entered the large general office. Was it anger? Not one of the dozen clerks who raised half timid eyes as he appeared could have answered the question. Was it excitement? Still there would have been no answer. He went straight to his private office, without a look or word for his subordinates then wheeled suddenly on his heel there and called:

“Mr. Swayne!”

The secretary and treasurer started a little at the imperative command, and Carroll motioned for him to approach. Then he led the way into his office, Swayne following, and the clerks outside heard the lock click. Swayne, inside, stood waiting the president’s pleasure. A vague sense of physical danger oppressed him.

“Sit down!” commanded Carroll. The secretary obeyed. “You are the secretary and treasurer of this company, are you not?” demanded Carroll brutally.

“Certainly. Why?”

“Then you know, or are supposed to know, exactly what securities this company holds in trust for its customers to protect margins, don’t you?” Carroll went on. His eyes were blazing as the secretary met them.

“Certainly I know,” Swayne responded after a moment.

“You know that in the round three million dollars worth of securities in our vaults and safety deposit vaults over the city there is one lot of four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of United States gold bonds, and that these include the numbers 0043917 to 0044120?”

Swayne disregarded the urgent demand for an immediate answer which lay behind the tone, and stopped to consider the matter carefully. Was it a trap of some sort? He couldn’t tell.

“Do you or do you not know that this consignment of bonds includes those numbers?” demanded Carroll hotly.

“Yes” was the reply, “I know that those numbers are included in the Mason-Hackett trust lot. Further I know that I locked them myself in the vault in the office here.”

Carroll’s eyes were contracted to pin points, and all the latent power of the man seemed aroused as he turned savagely in his chair.

“If you know that to be true, then what does that mean?” and he flung down a sheet of paper violently under the eyes of the secretary and treasurer.

Swayne, with a vague sense of terror which he could not fathom at the moment, picked up the paper and glanced over it. It was an affidavit signed by E. C. Morgan & Co., brokers, and dated the day before. It was in the usual form, and attested, with innumerable reiterations, that United States Government gold bonds, numbers 0043917 to 0043940 inclusive, were in the possession of E. C. Morgan & Co., having been bought in the open market three days previously.

Swayne stared unbelievingly at the affidavit, and slowly, slowly, the color deserted his face until it was chalk white. Twice he raised his eyes from the affidavit to the strangely working face of Carroll, and twice he lowered them under the baleful glare they met. When he raised them the third time there was mystification, wonder, utter helplessness, in them.

“Well?” blazed out Carroll. “Well?” he repeated.

Swayne started to his feet.

“Just a moment, Mr. Swayne,” warned the president in a voice which had become suddenly and strangely quiet. “You had better remain here for a few minutes until we look into this.” He arose and went to the door, and spoke to some one outside.

“Please bring me all the securities of all kinds in our vaults,” he directed, “and send messengers to bring those which are in safety deposit vaults elsewhere. Bring them all to me personally—not to Mr. Swayne.”

He closed the door and turned back toward the secretary. The color came back into Swayne’s face with a rush under the impetus of some powerful emotion, and he stood swaying a little, closing and unclosing his hands spasmodically. At length he found tongue, and now his voice was as steady and quiet as was the others.

“Do I understand you accuse me of—of stealing those bonds?” he demanded.

“The bonds are missing,” was the reply. “They were in your care. It really is of no concern whether they were misappropriated or lost. The result is the same. Bonds were intrusted to us to protect our customers. We are responsible for them; you are responsible to us.”

Swayne dropped back into a chair with his head in his hands. Utterly at a loss for words, he sat thus until there came a respectful rap on the door. Carroll opened it, and a clerk entered with a package of the securities.

“Is this all of them?” inquired Carroll.

“All except about six hundred thousand dollars’ worth which were in a safety deposit vault farther up town,” was the reply. “A messenger is on his way with them now.”

Carroll dismissed him with a curt nod and spilled the securities on the table before him. Then he spoke to Swayne again. There was a singular softening of his tone—Swayne chose to read it as mocking.

“Really I’m very sorry, Mr. Swayne,” the president said soothingly. “I had trusted you to the utmost: indeed, I dare say every stockholder in the company did, and whether you are at fault or not now remains to be seen. We know if those bonds are missing, as the affidavit asserts, there may be others missing, and the entire amount will have to be verified. I shall do that personally.”

Still Swayne didn’t speak. There seemed to be nothing to say. Once he glanced up into the steady gaze which was directed toward him, and relapsed immediately into his former position, with his head resting in his hands.

“Don’t misunderstand me, please,” said Carroll. “You are not a prisoner. This is a matter that will not go to the police—as yet anyway. It would not be safe for our office force to know what has happened. It might precipitate disaster. Meanwhile go on about your duties as if nothing has happened.”

“My God, Charlie! you don’t believe I stole them, do you?” Swayne burst out at last piteously as he rose to his feet.

“That’s the first time you have called me by that name since I have been president of this company,” Carroll remarked irrelevantly. “I want to like you,—I’ve always wanted to like you,—but of late you have wilfully antagonized me. Now, my first duty is here,” and he indicated the heap of securities on his desk. “I must not be interrupted until I have finished. It is as necessary to you as to me; so go on about your work. Afterward we’ll see what we can do.”

For an hour, perhaps, Swayne sat at his desk gazing dreamily across the office. Half a dozen questions were asked; he didn’t answer. But slowly there came a subtle change in his face; slowly some strong determination seized upon him, and at last it brought him to his feet, with staring eyes. For only an instant he hesitated over this idea which had come to him, and then spoke to the girl in charge of the office telephone exchange.

“Connect booth 3 with Central,” he commanded sharply, “then leave the exchange there and don’t answer a ring under any circumstances!”

Within less than a minute Swayne was talking to The Thinking Machine over the wire.

“This is Gordon Swayne,” he began abruptly. “Something has happened, I don’t know what. You told me I might call on you if something did happen. Can you come to the office at once?”

“What happened?” demanded The Thinking Machine irritably.

“I’m afraid it’s a huge defalcation,” was the instant response. “Carroll has locked himself in the room from which he had disappeared previously, with millions of dollars in securities which came into his possession by a trick, and I believe as firmly as I believe I’m living that he has run away with them. It’s the only thing to account for his strange actions. He went into the room an hour ago—I’d wager my life he isn’t there now.”

“Why don’t you rap on the door and ask for him?” came an imperturbable question.

“Can you come at once?” demanded Swayne abruptly.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” was the reply. “Don’t do anything absurd until I get there; and don’t call the police, because you are probably only suffering from another manifestation of that complaint with which I found you suffering before. Good by.”

Swayne forced himself to calmness again, and after a few minutes’ wait rapped quietly on the door of the private office. There was no response from inside. He tried the door. It was locked. It was just then that the door from the hall opened, and The Thinking Machine entered, peering about his curiously. In tones subdued by sheer force, Swayne related the incidents of the morning in detail.

“I believe—I know—Carroll has stolen those securities!” Swayne burst out at last. “What shall I do?”

For a minute or more The Thinking Machine sat silently squinting upward with white fingers at rest tip to tip, then he arose and readjusted his glasses.

“I believe,” he said quietly, “I’d smash in the door. It might be something worse than you think.”

Swayne called to two of the clerks as he went, and the four men paused for an instant at the entrance to the private office.

“Well, do it!” commanded The Thinking Machine irritably.

Swayne and the clerks placed their shoulders against the door; then from inside there came a sharp click. It was the key turning in the lock. They drew back and waited. The door swung open, and Carroll in person appeared before them, with both hands behind his back. There was an instant’s pause, then in the strained, harsh voice of Swayne came the question—an accusation:

“Where are those securities?”

“Here,” responded Carroll, and he produced them from behind his back. “Swayne, you are a childish idiot!” he added sharply.

The Thinking Machine nearly smiled.

The explanation of the problem of the vanishing man, as The Thinking Machine stated it, was ludicrously simple. After Carroll had so mercilessly smashed Swayne’s hypothesis of a defalcation, by appearing in person with the bonds and other securities, the secretary had stalked out moodily, and now he was in The Thinking Machine’s small reception room, staring gloomily at the floor.

“My first diagnosis fits the case,” remarked the diminutive scientist; “idle curiosity with complications. You see, Mr. Swayne, you business men are too practical, if I may say so. You in this instance could not or would not see beyond the obvious. A little imagination would have aided you—imagination coupled with a knowledge of the rudimentary rules of logic. Logic doesn’t make mistakes—it is as certainly infallible as that two and two make four, not sometimes but all the time.

“Briefly I knew from your first statement of the case that Mr. Carroll was comparatively poor, despite the fact that he is the head of this great company. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred every man wants to get rich. Mr. Carroll had increased the earnings of his company; but he had not increased his own, therefore let us credit him with a desire to get rich. If he did not have such a desire, he would not be in the position he now holds. The moment we allow for this, and also allow for the fact that the securities were returned intact, we have the solution of the entire affair. I am admitting that not only did Mr. Carroll disappear from his private office at the times you specify; but that he was also gone from that office practically all the time he kept the door locked.

“In the stock markets (I have just enough acquaintance with them to know that money begets money) it is possible to make or lose millions in an hour. Therefore if Mr. Carroll could get all the securities of the company into his possession for an hour, and cared to do so, he could work wonders in the open market. This is precisely what he did. By a trick, we’ll say, he got them together in a way which could not arouse even your suspicions, and used them on the market. The inference is that he made money by the use of those securities for that hour—the fact that he brought them back shows that he did not lose money, or he would not have had them. So, that’s all of it: Mr. Carroll used the firm’s money to make money for himself. Technically he has committed a crime; but——”

“It is a crime then?” demanded Swayne. “He was the criminal then, when he accused me of—of stealing the United States bonds?”

“By accusing you of appropriating or misplacing those bonds he did the necessary thing,” replied The Thinking Machine; “that is, distracted your attention and gave himself, even in your eyes, the best possible excuse for getting all the securities together, without even a glimmer of light as to his purpose when he got them. Mr. Carroll is a very remarkable and very able man; he knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it. In other words, he is tremendously resourceful.”

“But how—how did he leave that private office to use the securities, say in a market transaction?” Swayne insisted.

“Simply enough,” was the reply. “I don’t know; but I dare say through a window. It is a simple matter to stand on a window sill and swing yourself to the sill of the next window, particularly when a man has the steady nerve and strength of this man. If perchance the next room was unoccupied, you see how simple it would have been for Mr. Carroll to leave his office and remain away for hours, with the door of his private office locked behind him. There is really no mystery about the affair at all. It is simply a question of how much the transaction netted Mr. Carroll.”

An hour later the board of directors of the Carroll-Swayne-McPartland Company met in the room adjoining Carroll’s private office. The call had been issued by Swayne without consulting President Carroll. The secretary stated the case pithily, violently even. Carroll listened to the end.

“I am very glad that the directors have met,” he said then as he arose. “I have committed a crime technically, as Mr. Swayne says. By that crime I have made a little more than two million dollars. The tremendous power which the millions of securities of this company gave me allowed me to turn the market upside down, to manipulate it at will, then to withdraw. This company is old; it’s conservative. If this thing becomes known outside, it will hurt. But this company has its securities again, intact; I have made a fortune. If the company chooses to accept one-half of what I made, I to hold the other half, it is agreeable to me. I had intended to make this proposition anyway.”

There was a long argument, a great many words, and finally acquiescence.

“And now shall I resign?” inquired Carroll finally.

“No,” returned old Nick Carroll. “You young scoundrel, if you even think about resigning, why—why, confound it, we’ll fire you! A man who can do such a thing as that—— Why, Charlie, you’re a wonder! You’ll stay! do you understand?”

He arose and glared defiantly about the room. There was not even a head shake—nothing.

“You stay on the job, Charlie,” said the old man. “That’s all.”

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