The jacques futrelle meg.., p.52
The Jacques Futrelle Megapack, page 52
“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 domelike 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 cafe 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 reentered 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 forefinger 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 forefinger, 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 forefinger. 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 forefinger 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.”
