The jacques futrelle meg.., p.62
The Jacques Futrelle Megapack, page 62
“Being totally ignorant now, of the incidents leading up to the pistol shot and the burglar’s escape, the first point that the logical mind can seize upon is the finding of more money in the tin box than was known to be there. Therefore, we know that that box had been opened, and we know that the burglar was either an honest man or was compelled to be honest. We know too from the fact that a thirty-eight caliber revolver was found, that there was a second revolver—the one from which the shot was fired. Burglars are not honest. Was this one compelled to be honest? What honest person could be in that room-lone with that burglar, remember? You see instantly a thousand possibilities.
“Without pursuing those possibilities at the moment, it came down to a question of finding the burglar—the dishonest one, I may say. That was not difficult, only tedious work on the telephone, seeking a doctor who had treated a man who was probably—probably, you note—injured in an automobile accident. I found your Ruby Reagan, Mr. Mallory, and from him I learned just what happened at first—a woman in white, a ghost woman, obviously some woman in the house. White lacy gowns are not popular for street wear at two o’clock in the morning.”
“I wonder if this is absolutely necessary, Mr. Van Dusen?” interrupted Mills. His face was white. “I think I understand, and I assure you the matter has taken a personal turn which may mean a great deal to me and my family.”
The Thinking Machine waved his hand as if the matter was dismissed.
“For your benefit, Mr. Mills,” continued the scientist, “I will state that the motive for the girl’s act was one which reflected her great courage, and her loyalty to you—perhaps at the same time her regard for another man. Do you follow me? In some way—perhaps the man told her—she learned of the plan to engage Reagan for the work, and she could have learned of that only from the man by a relationship which partook of love for him. Her loyalty to you and a natural desire to save this man’s name in your eyes, led her to seek in person to recover the document. It merely happened that they both visited the study the same night.”
The Thinking Machine stopped as if that was all.
“But here, go on,” Detective Mallory insisted. “I want to know the rest.”
“Suppose, Mr. Mallory, that you find Reagan for yourself?” suggested The Thinking Machine after a long pause. “I did it. Surely you can.”
“Where is he? Where did you see him?”
“I saw him at my house,” responded the scientist calmly. “I left him there to come here; but a man who confesses what he confessed to me doesn’t stay at a place like that if he can help it. The matter is as I have stated it, Mr. Mills. Your reason for refusing to give the young man any explanation of your holding the property is a good one, I dare say, so I’ll not question it.”
“I’ll tell you,” flamed Mills suddenly. “He is not really the grandson of Pendexter. I will be compelled to show that if he sues me—that is why I have advised him not to sue.”
“I imagined as much,” said The Thinking Machine.
Ruby Reagan left the home of The Thinking Machine in a cab late that night. And a few days later the Pendexter suit was withdrawn by the plaintiff.
MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN DAGGER
I
“All animals have the same appetites and the same passions. The reasoning faculty is the one thing which lifts man above what we are pleased to call the lower animals. Logic is the essence of the reasoning faculty. Therefore logic is that power which enables the mind of man to reconstruct from one fact a series of incidents leading to a given result. One result may be as surely traced back to its causes as the specialist may reconstruct a skeleton from a fraction of bone.”
Thus clearly, pointedly Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen had once explained to Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, the analytical power by which he had solved some of the most perplexing mysteries that had ever come to the attention of either the police or the press. It was a text from which sermons might be preached. No one knew this better than Hatch.
Professor Van Dusen is the foremost logician of his time. His name has been honored at home and abroad until now it embraces as honorary initials nearly all those letters which had not been included in it in the first place. The Thinking Machine! This phrase applied once in a newspaper to the scientist had clung tenaciously. It was the name by which he was known to the world at large.
In a dozen ways he had proved his right to it. Hatch remembered vividly the scientist’s mysterious disappearance from a prison cell once; then there had been the famous automobile mystery, and more lately the strange chain of circumstances whose history has been written as “The Scarlet Thread.” This little text, as given above, was one afternoon, when Hatch had casually called on The Thinking Machine. It transpired that a few hours later he had returned to lay before the logician still another mystery.
On his return to his office Hatch had been dispatched in a rush on a murder story. In following up the threads of this he had learned every fact the police had, had written his story, and then presented himself at the Beacon Hill home of The Thinking Machine. It was then 11 o’clock at night. The Thinking Machine had received him, and the facts, in substance, were laid before him as follows:
A man who had given the name of Charles Wilkes called at the real estate office of Henry Holmes & Co., on Washington Street on October 14, just thirty-two days prior to the beginning of the story, as Hatch recited it. He was a man of possibly thirty years, stalwart, good-looking and clean-cut in appearance. There had been nothing about him to attract particular attention. He had said that he was eastern agent for a big manufacturing concern, and travelled a great deal.
“I want a six or seven room house in Cambridge,” he had explained. “Something quiet, where I won’t have too many neighbors. My wife is extremely nervous, and I want to get a couple of blocks from the street cars. If you have a house, say in the middle of a big lot somewhere in the outskirts of Cambridge, I think that will do.”
“What price?” a clerk had asked.
“Anywhere from $45 to $60,” he replied.
It just happened that Henry Holmes & Co. had such a house. An office man went with Mr. Wilkes to see it. Mr. Wilkes was pleased and paid the first month’s rent of $60 to the man who had accompanied him.
“I won’t go back to the office with you,” he said. “Everything is all right. I’ll have my stuff moved out in a couple of days and let your collector come for next month’s rent when it is due.”
Mr. Wilkes was a very pleasant man; the clerk had found him so and was gratified at the transaction, which gave his firm such a desirable tenant. He did not ask for Mr. Wilkes’ address, nor did he think to ask any questions as to where the household goods were at the moment. In the light of subsequent events this lack of caution temporarily hid, at least for a time, it seemed, the key which would have solved a mystery.
The month passed and in the office of Holmes & Co. the matter had been forgotten until the rent came due. Then a collector, Willard Clements, the regular Cambridge collector for the firm went to the Cambridge house. He found the front door locked. The shutters were still over the windows. There was no indication that anyone at all had either occupied the house or used it. That was an impression to be gathered by a casual outside inspection. Clements had gone around the house; the back door stood wide open.
Clements went inside the house and must have remained there for half an hour. When he came out his face was white, his lips quivered, and the madness of terror was in his eyes. He ran staggeringly around the house and down the walk to the street. A few minutes later he rushed into a police station and there poured out a babbling, incoherent story. The usually placid face of the officer in charge was overspread with surprise as he listened.
Three men were detailed to visit the house and investigate Clements’ story. Two of these men went with Clements through the back door, which still stood open, and the third, Detective Fahey, began an examination of the premises. Entering through the back door, the kitchen lay to his left. There was nothing to show that it had been occupied for many months. A hurried glance satisfied him, and he passed into the main body of the house. This consisted of a parlor, a dining room and a bedroom. Here, too, he found nothing. The dust lay thick over floors, mantels and window sills.
From the hall, stairs led to three sleeping rooms above. Under these stairs a short flight lead to the cellar. The door stood open, and a damp, chilly breath came up. Utter darkness lay below. The detective shrugged his shoulders and turned to go upstairs where the other men were.
He found them in the smallest of the three rooms, bending over a bed. Clements stood at the door, which had been broken in, still with the pallor of death on his face and his hands working nervously.
“Find anything?” asked the detective briskly.
“My God, no,” gasped Clements. “I wouldn’t go back in that room for a million dollars.”
The detective laughed and passed in.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A girl,” was the reply.
“What happened to her?”
“Stabbed,” was the laconic answer.
The other two men stood aside and the detective looked down at the body. It was that of a girl possibly twenty or twenty-two years old. She had been pretty, but the hand of death had obliterated many traces of it now. Her hair, of a rich, ruddy gold, mercifully veiled somewhat the ravages of death; her hands lay outstretched on the white of the bed.
She was dressed for the street. Her hat still clung to her hair, fastened by a long, black-headed pin. Her clothing, of dark brown, was good but not rich. A muff lay beside her and her coat was open.
It was not necessary for Detective Fahey to ask the immediate cause of death. A stab wound in the breast showed that.
“Where’s the knife?” he asked.
“Didn’t find any.”
“Any other wounds?”
“Can’t tell until the medical examiner arrives. She’s just as we found her.”
“Here, O’Brien,” instructed the detective, “run out and ’phone to Dr. Loyd and tell him to come up as fast as he can get here. It’s probably only suicide.”
One of the men went out, and the detective picked up and examined the muff. From it he drew out a small purse. He opened this to find a withered rose—nothing else. There was no money, no card, no key—nothing which might immediately throw light on the girl’s identity.
After a while Dr. Loyd came. He remained in the room alone for ten minutes or so, while the policemen went carefully over the upper rooms of the house. When the doctor opened the door and stepped out he carried something in his hand.
“It’s murder,” he told the detective.
“How do you know?”
“There are two wounds in the back, where she could not possibly have inflicted them herself. And I found this beneath the body.”
In his open hand lay a dagger—a dagger of gold. The handle was strangely and intricately fashioned and might, from its appearance, have been cut from a solid bar of gold. In the end blazed a single splendid gem—a diamond. It was probably of three or four karats and pure white. The steel blade was bright at the hilt but stained red.
“Great Scott!” exclaimed the detective as he examined it. “With a clue like that, the end is already in sight.”
This was the story that Hutchinson Hatch told to The Thinking Machine. The scientist listened carefully, as he lay stretched out in a chair with his enormous yellow head resting easily against a cushion. He asked only three questions.
“How long had the girl been dead?”
“The medical examiner says it is impossible to tell within more than a few days,” Hatch replied. “He gave it as his opinion that it was a week or ten days.”
“What was in the cellar?”
“I don’t know. No one looked.”
“Who broke in the door? Clements?”
“Yes.”
“I shall go with you tomorrow,” said The Thinking Machine. “I want to look at the dagger and also the cellar.”
II
It was 10 o’clock next day when Hutchinson Hatch and The Thinking Machine called on Dr. Loyd. The medical examiner willingly displayed the golden dagger, and in technical terms explained just what had caused the girl’s death. Minus the medical phraseology his opinion was that the wound in the breast had been the first inflicted and that the dagger point had punctured the heart. One of the wounds in the back had also reached the same vital spot; the other wound was superficial.
The Thinking Machine viewed the body and agreed with the medical examiner. He had, meanwhile, carefully examined the dagger, handle and blade, and had a photograph of it made. Then, with Hatch, he proceeded to the Cambridge house.
“It isn’t suicide, is it?” asked Hatch on the way.
“No,” was the quick response. “The only question thus far in my mind, is whether or not the girl was killed in that house.”
“Why was a man such a fool as to leave a dagger of that value where it would be found—or any dagger for that matter?” Hatch asked.
“A dozen reasons,” replied the scientist. “A possible one is, that whoever killed her may have been frightened away before he could regain possession of the weapon. Remember it was found underneath her body. Presumably she fell backwards and covered the dagger. A slight noise—any one of a dozen things—might have caused the person who killed her to run away rather than try to get the weapon again. Against that of course is the value of the dagger. I know little about jewels, but knowing as little as I do, I should say the value was in the thousands.”
“The very reason why it wouldn’t be left,” said Hatch.
“Quite true,” said the other. “Yet the value of the dagger may have been the very reason it was left.”
Hatch turned quickly and stared at The Thinking Machine with a question in his eyes.
“I mean,” The Thinking Machine explained, “that the dagger is nearly as good as the name and the address of its owner, because it can be traced immediately. Its owner would never have left it under any circumstances.”
Hatch was puzzled. He did not follow, as yet, the intricate reasoning of the scientist. It seemed that the one solid, substantial clue, as he regarded it, was to be eliminated without a hearing. The Thinking Machine went on:
“Suppose it had been someone’s purpose to kill this girl and, on the face of it, immediately direct attention to some other person as the criminal? In that event, what would have done it more effectively than to kill her with a stolen dagger belonging to some other man and leave it?”
“Oh,” exclaimed Hatch. “I think I see what you mean. The fact that a person owns this knife is not, then, to be taken against him?”
“On the contrary,” said The Thinking Machine sharply. “It’s almost a vindication, unless the person who killed her is mad.”
A few minutes later, they arrived at the house. It was a two-story frame structure, back thirty or forty feet from the street, in the centre of a small plot of ground. The nearest house was three or four hundred feet away. Hatch was somewhat surprised at the care with which The Thinking Machine examined the premises before he entered the house. Scarcely a foot of ground had not been critically gone over.
Then they entered through the back door. Here, in the kitchen, The Thinking Machine showed the same care in his examination. He squinted aggressively at the sink and casually turned the water on. Then he examined the rusty range. Thence he went to the dining room, where there was the same minute examination. The parlor, hall, and the lower bedroom were examined, after which the two men went up stairs.
“In which room was the girl found?” asked The Thinking Machine.
“The back room,” Hatch replied.
“Well, let’s examine the other two first,” and the scientist led the way to the front of the house. His examination seemed to be confined largely to the water arrangements. He examined each faucet in turn and turned the water on. He went through the same program in the bathroom.
This done, there remained only the room of death. It was precisely as the Medical Examiner had left it, except that the girl’s body was gone. The sheets whereon she lay and the pillows were closely scrutinized. Then The Thinking Machine straightened up.
“Any running water in here?” he asked.
“I don’t see any,” Hatch replied.
“All right, now for the cellar.”
The reporter could not even conjecture what The Thinking Machine expected to find in the cellar. It was low ceiling, damp and chilly. By the light of the electric bulb, which the scientist produced, they could see only the furnace, which stood rustily at about the centre. The Thinking Machine examined this for ashes, but found none. Then he wandered aimlessly about the place, taking it all in seemingly in one long, comprehensive squint. Finally he turned to Hatch.
“Let’s go,” he suggested.
Three-quarters of an hour later, the two men were again in the apartments on Beacon Hill. The scientist dropped into his accustomed place in the big chair and sat silent for a long time. Hatch waited impatiently.
“Has a picture of this dagger been printed yet?” asked The Thinking Machine at last.
“In every newspaper in Boston, to-day.”
“Dear me, dear me,” exclaimed the scientist. “It would have been perfectly easy to find the owner of the dagger if pictures of it hadn’t been printed.”
“Do you think it probable that its owner is the criminal?”
“No, unless, as I said, he was insane, but it would have been interesting to know how the knife passed out of his possession. Was it given away? If so, to whom? A thing of that value would never be given to anyone who was not near and dear to the one who gave it. It is not the kind of gift a man would make to a woman, but is rather a kind of gift a King might make to a loyal subject. It is Oriental in appearance and naturally suggests the Orient. But as I said, the person who owned it did not use it to kill the girl.”
