“I believe there was something said about her.”

  “What time did you leave the shop that night?”

  “About 10 o’clock.”

  “And you had been in the room with your father since afternoon, had you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “No dinner?”

  “No.”

  “How did you come to neglect that?”

  “My father was explaining a recent invention he had perfected, which I was to put on the market.”

  “I suppose the possibility of suicide or his death in any way had not occurred to you?”

  “No, not at all. We were making elaborate plans for the future.”

  Possibly it was some prejudice against the man’s appearance which made Hatch so dissatisfied with the result of the interview. He felt that he had gained nothing, yet Stockton had been absolutely frank, as it seemed. There was one last question.

  “Have you any recollection of a large family Bible in your father’s house?” he asked.

  “I have seen it several times,” Stockton said.

  “Is it still there?”

  “So far as I know, yes.”

  That was the end of the interview, and Hatch went straight to the house in Dorchester to see Miss Devan. There, in accordance with instructions from The Thinking Machine, he asked for the family Bible.

  “There was one here the other day,” said Miss Devan, “but it has disappeared.”

  “Since your father’s death?” asked Hatch.

  “Yes, the next day.”

  “Have you any idea who took it?”

  “Not unless—unless—”

  “John Stockton! Why did he take it?” blurted Hatch.

  There was a little resigned movement of the girl’s hands, a movement which said, “I don’t know.”

  “He told me, too,” said Hatch indignantly, “that he thought the Bible was still here.”

  The girl drew close to the reporter and laid one white hand on his sleeve. She looked up into his eyes and tears stood in her own. Her lips trembled.

  “John Stockton has that book,” she said. “He took it away from here the day after my father died, and he did it for a purpose. What, I don’t know.”

  “Are you absolutely positive he has it?” asked Hatch.

  “I saw it in his room, where he had hidden it,” replied the girl.

  III

  Hatch laid the results of the interviews before the scientist at the Beacon Hill home. The Thinking Machine listened without comment up to that point where Miss Devan had said she knew the family Bible to be in the son’s possession.

  “If Miss Devan and Stockton do not get along well together, why should she visit Stockton’s place at all?” demanded The Thinking Machine.

  “I don’t know,” Hatch replied, “except that she thinks he must have had some connection with her father’s death, and is investigating on her own account. What has this Bible to do with it anyway?”

  “It may have a great deal to do with it,” said The Thinking Machine enigmatically. “Now, the thing to do is to find out if the girl told the truth and if the Bible is in Stockton’s apartment. Now, Mr. Hatch, I leave that to you. I would like to see that Bible. If you can bring it to me, well and good. If you can’t bring it, look at and study the seventh page for any pencil marks in the text, anything whatever. It might be even advisable, if you have the opportunity, to tear out that page and bring it to me. No harm will be done, and it can be returned in proper time.”

  Perplexed wrinkles were gathering on Hatch’s forehead as he listened. What had page 7 of a Bible to do with what seemed to be a murder mystery? Who had said anything about a Bible, anyway? The letter left by Stockton mentioned a Bible, but that didn’t seem to mean anything. Then Hatch remembered that same letter carried a figure seven in parentheses which had apparently nothing to do and no connection with any other part of the letter. Hatch’s introspective study of the affair was interrupted by The Thinking Machine.

  “I shall await your report here, Mr. Hatch. If it is what I expect, we shall go out late tonight on a little voyage of discovery. Meanwhile see that Bible and tell me what you find.”

  Hatch found the apartments of John Stockton on Beacon Street without any difficulty. In a manner best known to himself he entered and searched the place. When he came out there was a look of chagrin on his face as he hurried to the house of The Thinking Machine nearby.

  “Well?” asked the scientist.

  “I saw the Bible,” said Hatch.

  “And page 7?”

  “Was torn out, missing, gone,” replied the reporter.

  “Ah,” exclaimed the scientist. “I thought so. Tonight we will make the little trip I spoke of. By the way, did you happen to notice if John Stockton had or used a fountain pen?”

  “I didn’t see one,” said Hatch.

  “Well, please see for me if any of his employees have ever noticed one. Then meet me here tonight at 10 o’clock.”

  Thus Hatch was dismissed. A little later he called casually on Stockton again. There, by inquiries, he established to his own satisfaction that Stockton did not own a fountain pen. Then with Stockton himself he took up the matter of the Bible again.

  “I understand you to say, Mr. Stockton,” he began in his smoothest tone, “that you knew of the existence of a family Bible, but you did not know if it was still at the Dorchester place.”

  “That’s correct,” said Stockton.

  “How is it then,” Hatch resumed, “that that identical Bible is now at your apartments, carefully hidden in a box under a sofa?”

  Mr. Stockton seemed to be amazed. He arose suddenly and leaned over toward the reporter with hands clenched. There was a glitter of what might have been anger in his eyes.

  “What do you know about this? What are you talking about?” he demanded.

  “I mean that you had said you did not know where this book was, and meanwhile have it hidden. Why?”

  “Have you seen the Bible in my rooms?” asked Stockton.

  “I have,” said the reporter coolly.

  Now a new determination came into the face of the merchant. The oiliness of his manner was gone, the sanctimonious smirk had been obliterated, the thin lips closed into a straight, rigid line.

  “I shall have nothing further to say,” he declared almost fiercely.

  “Will you tell me why you tore out the seventh page of the Bible?” asked Hatch.

  Stockton stared at him dully, as if dazed for a moment. All the color left his face. There came a startling pallor instead. When next he spoke, his voice was tense and strained.

  “Is—is—the seventh page missing?”

  “Yes,” Hatch replied. “Where is it?”

  “I’ll have nothing further to say under any circumstances. That’s all.”

  With not the slightest idea of what it might mean or what bearing it had on the matter, Hatch had brought out statements which were wholly at variance with facts. Why was Stockton so affected by the statement that page seven was gone? Why had the Bible been taken from the Dorchester home? Why had it been so carefully hidden? How did Miss Devan know it was there?

  These were only a few of the questions that were racing through the reporter’s mind. He did not seem to be able to grasp anything tangible. If there were a cipher hidden in the letter, what was it? What bearing did it have on the case?

  Seeking a possible answer to some of these questions, Hatch took a cab and was soon back at the Dorchester house. He was somewhat surprised to see The Thinking Machine standing on the stoop waiting to be admitted. The scientist took his presence as a matter of course.

  “What did you find out about Stockton’s fountain pen?” he asked.

  “I satisfied myself that he had not owned a fountain pen, at least recently enough for the pen to have been used in writing that letter. I presume that’s what inquiries in that direction mean.”

  The two men were admitted to the house and after a few minutes Miss Devan entered. She understood when The Thinking Machine explained that they merely wished to see the shop in which Mr. Stockton had been found dead.

  “And also if you have a sample of Mr. Stockton’s handwriting,” asked the scientist.

  “It’s rather peculiar,” Miss Devan explained, “but I doubt if there is an authentic sample in existence large enough, that is, to be compared with that letter. He had a certain amount of correspondence, but this I did for him on the typewriter. Occasionally he would prepare an article for a scientific paper, but these were also dictated to me. He has been in the habit of doing so for years.”

  “This letter seems to be all there is?”

  “Of course his signature appears to checks and in other places. I can produce some of those for you. I don’t think, however, that there is the slightest doubt that he wrote this letter. It is his handwriting.”

  “I suppose he never used a fountain pen?” asked The Thinking Machine.

  “Not that I know of,” the girl replied. “I have one,” and she took it out of a little gold fascinator she wore at her bosom.

  The scientist pressed the point of the pen against his thumb nail, and a tiny drop of blue ink appeared. The letter was written in black. The Thinking Machine seemed satisfied.

  “And now the shop,” he suggested.

  Miss Devan led the way through the long wide hall to the back of the building. There she opened a door, which showed signs of having been battered in, and admitted them. Then, at the request of The Thinking Machine, she rehearsed the story in full, showed him where Stockton had been found, where the prussic acid had been broken, and how the servant, Montgomery, had broken in the door at her request.

  “Did you ever find the key to the door?”

  “No. I can’t imagine what became of it.”

  “Is this room precisely as it was when the body was found? That is, has anything been removed from it?”

  “Nothing,” replied the girl.

  “Have the servants taken anything out? Did they have access to this room?”

  “They have not been permitted to enter it at all. The body was removed and the fragments of the acid bottle were taken away, but nothing else.”

  “Have you ever known of pen and ink being in this room?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it.”

  “You haven’t taken them out since the body was found, have you?”

  “I—I—er—have not,” the girl stammered.

  Miss Devan left the room, and for an hour Hatch and The Thinking Machine conducted the search.

  “Find a pen and ink,” The Thinking Machine instructed.

  They were not found.

  At midnight, which was six hours later, The Thinking Machine and Hutchinson Hatch were groping through the cellar of the Dorchester house by the light of a small electric lamp which shot a straight beam aggressively through the murky, damp air. Finally the ray fell on a tiny door set in the solid wall of the cellar.

  There was a slight exclamation from The Thinking Machine, and this was followed immediately by the sharp, unmistakable click of a revolver somewhere behind them in the dark.

  “Down, quick,” gasped Hatch, and with a sudden blow he dashed aside the electric light, extinguishing it. Simultaneously with this there came a revolver shot, and a bullet was buried in the wall behind Hatch’s head.

  IV

  The reverberation of the pistol shot was still ringing in Hatch’s ears when he felt the hand of The Thinking Machine on his arm, and then through the utter blackness of the cellar came the irritable voice of the scientist:

  “To your right, to your right,” it said sharply.

  Then, contrary to this advice Hatch felt the scientist drawing him to the left. In another moment there came a second shot, and by the flash Hatch could see that it was aimed at a point a dozen feet to the right of the point where they had been when the first shot was fired. The person with the revolver had heard the scientist and had been duped.

  Firmly the scientist drew Hatch on until they were almost to the cellar steps. There, outlined against a dim light which came down the stairs, they could see a tall figure peering through the darkness toward a spot opposite where they stood. Hatch saw only one thing to do and did it. He leaped forward and landed on the back of the figure, bearing the man to the ground. An instant later his hand closed on the revolver and he wrested it away.

  “All right,” he sang out. “I’ve got it.”

  The electric light which he had dashed from the hand of The Thinking Machine gleamed again through the cellar and fell upon the face of John Stockton, helpless and gasping in the hands of the reporter.

  “Well?” asked Stockton calmly. “Are you burglars or what?”

  “Let’s go upstairs to the light,” suggested The Thinking Machine.

  It was under these peculiar circumstances that the scientist came face to face for the first time with John Stockton. Hatch introduced the two men in a most matter-of-fact tone and restored to Stockton the revolver. This was suggested by a nod of the scientist’s head. Stockton laid the revolver on a table.

  “Why did you try to kill us?” asked The Thinking Machine.

  “I presumed you were burglars,” was the reply. “I heard the noise down stairs and came down to investigate.”

  “I thought you lived on Beacon Street,” said the scientist.

  “I do, but I came here tonight on a little business, which is all my own, and happened to hear you. What were you doing in the cellar?”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Five or ten minutes.”

  “Have you a key to this house?”

  “I have had one for many years. What is all this, anyway? How did you get in this house? What right had you here?”

  “Is Miss Devan in the house tonight?” asked The Thinking Machine, entirely disregarding the other’s questions.

  “I don’t know. I suppose so.”

  “You haven’t seen her, of course?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “And you came here secretly without her knowledge?”

  Stockton shrugged his shoulders and was silent. The Thinking Machine raised himself on the chair on which he had been sitting and squinted steadily into Stockton’s eyes. When he spoke it was to Hatch, but his gaze did not waver.

  “Arouse the servants, find where Miss Devan’s room is, and see if anything has happened to her,” he directed.

  “I think that will be unwise,” broke in Stockton quickly.

  “Why?”

  “If I may put it on personal grounds,” said Stockton, “I would ask as a favor that you do not make known my visit here, or your own for that matter, to Miss Devan.”

  There was a certain uneasiness in the man’s attitude, a certain eagerness to keep things away from Miss Devan that spurred Hatch to instant action. He went out of the room hurriedly and ten minutes later Miss Devan, who had dressed quickly, came into the room with him. The servants stood outside in the hall, all curiosity. The closed door barred them from knowledge of what was happening.

  There was a little dramatic pause as Miss Devan entered and Stockton arose from his seat. The Thinking Machine glanced from one to the other. He noted the pallor of the girl’s face and the frank embarrassment of Stockton.

  “What is it?” asked Miss Devan, and her voice trembled a little. “Why are you all here? What has happened?”

  “Mr. Stockton came here tonight,” The Thinking Machine began quietly, “to remove the contents from the locked vault in the cellar. He came without your knowledge and found us ahead of him. Mr. Hatch and myself are here in the course of our inquiry into the matter which you placed in my hands. We also came without your knowledge. I considered this best. Mr. Stockton was very anxious that his visit should be kept from you. Have you anything to say now?”

  The girl turned on Stockton with magnificent scorn. Accusation was in her very attitude. Her small hand was pointed directly at Stockton and into his face there came a strange emotion, which he struggled to repress.

  “Murderer! Thief!” the girl almost hissed.

  “Do you know why he came?” asked The Thinking Machine.

  “He came to rob the vault, as you said,” said the girl, fiercely. “It was because my father would not give him the secret of his last invention that this man killed him. How he compelled him to write that letter I don’t know.”

  “Elizabeth, for God’s sake what are you saying?” asked Stockton with ashen face.

  “His greed is so great that he wanted all of my father’s estate,” the girl went on impetuously. “He was not content that I should get even a small part of it.”

  “Elizabeth, Elizabeth!” said Stockton, as he leaned forward with his head in his hands.

  “What do you know about this secret vault?” asked the scientist.

  “I—I—have always thought there was a secret vault in the cellar,” the girl explained. “I may say I know there was one because those things my father took the greatest care of were always disposed of by him somewhere in the house. I can imagine no other place than the cellar.”

  There was a long pause. The girl stood rigid, staring down at the bowed figure of Stockton with not a gleam of pity in her face. Hatch caught the expression and it occurred to him for the first time that Miss Devan was vindictive. He was more convinced than ever that there had been some long-standing feud between these two. The Thinking Machine broke the long silence.

  “Do you happen to know, Miss Devan, that page seven of the Bible which you found hidden in Mr. Stockton’s place is missing?”

  “I didn’t notice,” said the girl.

  Stockton had arisen with the words and now stood with white face and listening intently.

  “Did you ever happen to see a page seven in that Bible?” the scientist asked.

  “I don’t recall.”

  “What were you doing in my rooms?” demanded Stockton of the girl.

  “Why did you tear out page seven?” asked The Thinking Machine.

  Stockton thought the question was addressed to him and turned to answer. Then he saw it was unmistakably a question to Miss Devan and turned again to her.

  “I didn’t tear it out,” exclaimed Miss Devan. “I never saw it. I don’t know what you mean.”

 

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