“Well, this man who was lost—Doane, or Preston Bell—went to sleep in my apartments. At that time I believed it fully possible that he was a counterfeiter, as the bills were supposedly burned, and sent Mr. Hatch to consult an expert. I also wired for details of the fire loss in Butte and names of persons who had any knowledge of the matter. This done, I removed and examined this gentleman’s shoes for the name of the maker. I found it. The shoes were of fine quality, probably made to order for him.

  “Remember, at this time I believed this gentleman to be Preston Bell, for reasons I have stated. I wired to the maker or retailer to know if he had a record of a sale of the shoes, describing them in detail, to any financier or banker. I also wired to the Denver police to know if any financier or banker had been away from there for four or five weeks. Then came the somewhat startling information, through Mr. Hatch, that the hundred dollar bills were genuine. That answer meant that Preston Bell—as I had begun to think of him—was as either a thief or the victim of some sort of financial conspiracy.”

  During the silence which followed every eye was turned on the man who was lost—Doane or Preston Bell. He sat staring straight ahead of him with hands nervously clenched. On his face was written the sign of a desperate mental struggle. He was still trying to recall the past.

  “Then,” The Thinking Machine resumed, “I heard from the Denver police. There was no leading financier or banker out of the city so far as they could learn hurriedly. It was not conclusive, but it aided me. Also I received another telegram from Butte, signed Preston Bell, telling me the circumstances of the supposed burning of the hundred dollar bills. It did not show that they were burned at all; it was merely an assumption that they had been. They were last seen in President Harrison’s office.”

  “Harrison, Harrison, Harrison,” repeated Doane.

  “Vaguely I could see the possibility of something financially wrong in the bank. Possibly Harrison, even Mr. Bell here, knew of it. Banks do not apply for permission to reissue bills unless they are positive of the original loss. Yet here were the bills. Obviously some sort of jugglery. I wired to the police of Butte, asking some questions. The answer was that Harrison had embezzled $175,000 and had disappeared. Now I knew he had part of the missing, supposedly burned, bills with him. It was obvious. Was Bell also a thief?

  “The same telegram said that Mr. Bell’s reputation was of the best, and he was out of the city. That confirmed my belief that it was an office rule to sign telegrams with the cashier’s name, and further made me positive that this man was Preston Bell. The chain of circumstances was complete. It was two and two—inevitable result, four.

  “Now, what was the plot? Something to do with copper, and there was an embezzlement. Then, still seeking a man who knew Bell personally, I sent him out walking with Hatch. I had done so before. Suddenly another figure came into the mystery—a confusing one at the moment. This was a Mr. Manning, who knew Doane, or Bell, as Harry—something; met him in Pittsburg three years ago, in the Lincoln Club.

  “It was just after Mr. Hatch told me of this man that I received a telegram from the shoemaker in Denver. It said that he had made a shoe such as I described within a few months for Preston Bell. I had asked if a sale had been made to a financier or banker; I got the name back by wire.

  “At this point a woman appeared to claim John Doane as her husband. With no definite purpose, save general precaution, I asked Mr. Hatch to see her first. She imagined he was Doane and embraced him, calling him John. Therefore she was a fraud. She did not know John Doane, or Preston Bell, by sight. Was she acting under the direction of some one else? If so, whose?”

  There was as a pause as The Thinking Machine readjusted himself in the chair. After a time he went on:

  “There are shades of emotion intuition, call it what you will, so subtle that it is difficult to express them in words. As I had instinctively associated Harrison with Bell’s present condition I instinctively associated this woman with Harrison. For not a word of the affair had appeared in a newspaper; only a very few persons knew of it. Was it possible that the stranger Manning was backing the woman in an effort to get the $10,000? That remained to be seen. I questioned the woman; she would say nothing. She is clever, but she blundered badly in claiming Mr. Hatch for a husband.”

  The reporter blushed modestly.

  “I asked her flatly about a drug. She was quite calm and her manner indicated that she knew nothing of it. Yet I presume she did. Then I sprung the bombshell, and she saw she had made a mistake. I gave her over to Detective Mallory and she was locked up. This done, I wired to the Lincoln Club in Pittsburg to find out about this mysterious ‘Harry’ who had come into the case. I was so confident then that I also wired to Mrs. Bell in Butte, presuming that there was a Mrs. Bell, asking about her husband.

  “Then Manning came to see me. I knew he came because he had remembered the name he knew you by,” and The Thinking Machine turned to the central figure in this strange entanglement of identity, “although he seemed surprised when I told him as much. He knew you as Harry Pillsbury. I asked him who the woman was. His manner told me that he knew nothing whatever of her. Then it came back to her as an associate of Harrison, your enemy for some reason, and I could see it in no other light. It was her purpose to get hold of you and possibly keep you a prisoner, at least until some gigantic deal in which copper figured was disposed of. That was what I surmised.

  “Then another telegram came from the Lincoln Club in Pittsburg. The name of Harry Pillsbury appeared as a visitor in the book in January, three years ago. It was you—Manning is not the sort of man to be mistaken—and then there remained only one point to be solved as I then saw the case. That was an answer from Mrs. Preston Bell, if there was a Mrs. Bell. She would know where her husband was.”

  Again there was silence. A thousand things were running through Bell’s mind. The story had been told so pointedly, and was so vitally a part of him, that semi-recollection was again on his face.

  “That telegram said that Preston Bell was in Honolulu; that the wife had received a cable dispatch that day. Then, frankly, I was puzzled; so puzzled, in fact, that the entire fabric I had constructed seemed to melt away before my eyes. It took me hours to readjust it. I tried it all over in detail, and then the theory which would reconcile every fact in the case was evolved. That theory is right—as right as that two and two make four. It’s logic.”

  It was half an hour later when a detective entered and spoke to Detective Mallory aside.

  “Fine!” said Mallory. “Bring ’em in.”

  Then there reappeared the woman who had been a prisoner and a man of fifty years.

  “Harrison!” exclaimed Bell, suddenly. He staggered to his feet with outstretched hands. “Harrison! I know! I know!”

  “Good, good, very good,” said The Thinking Machine.

  Bell’s nervously twitching hands were reaching for Harrison’s throat when he was pushed aside by Detective Mallory. He stood pallid for a moment, then sank down on the floor in a heap. He was senseless. The Thinking Machine made a hurried examination.

  “Good!” he remarked again. “When he recovers he will remember everything except what has happened since he has been in Boston. Meanwhile, Mr. Harrison, we know all about the little affair of the drug, the battle for new copper workings in Honolulu, and your partner there has been arrested. Your drug didn’t do its work well enough. Have you anything to add?”

  The prisoner was silent.

  “Did you search his rooms?” asked The Thinking Machine of the detective who had made the double arrest.

  “Yes, and found this.”

  It was a large roll of money. The Thinking Machine ran over it lightly—$70,000—scanning the numbers of the bills. At last he held forth half a dozen. They were among the twenty seven reported to have been burned in the bank fire in Butte.

  Harrison and the woman were led away. Subsequently it developed that he had been systematically robbing the bank of which he was president for years; was responsible for the fire, at which time he had evidently expected to make a great haul; and that the woman was not his wife. Following his arrest this entire story came out; also the facts of the gigantic copper deal, in which he had rid himself of Bell, who was his partner, and had sent another man to Honolulu in Bell’s name to buy up options on some valuable copper property there. This confederate in Honolulu had sent the cable dispatches to the wife in Butte. She accepted them without question.

  It was a day or so later that Hatch dropped in to see The Thinking Machine and asked a few questions.

  “How did Bell happen to have that $10,000?”

  “It was given to him, probably, because it was safer to have him rambling about the country, not knowing who he was as, than to kill him.”

  “And how did he happen to be here?”

  “That question may be answered at the trial.”

  “And how did it come that Bell was once known as Harry Pillsbury?”

  “Bell is a director in United States Steel, I have since learned. There was a secret meeting of this board in Pittsburg three years ago. He went incognito to attend that meeting and was introduced at the Lincoln Club as Harry Pillsbury.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Hatch.

  THE MYSTERY OF A STUDIO

  I

  Where the light slants down softly into one corner of a noted art museum in Boston there hangs a large picture. Its title is “Fulfillment.” Discriminating art critics have alternately raved at it and praised it; from the day it appeared there it has been a fruitful source of acrimonious discussion. As for the public, it accepts the picture as a startling, amazing thing of beauty, and there is always a crowd around it.

  “Fulfillment” is typified by a woman. She stands boldly forth against a languorous background of deep tones. Flesh tints are daringly laid on the semi-nude figure, diaphanous draperies hide, yet, reveal, the exquisite lines of the body. Her arms are outstretched straight toward the spectator, the black hair ripples down over her shoulders, the red lips are slightly parted. The mysteries of complete achievement and perfect life lie in her eyes.

  Into this picture the artist wove the spiritual and the worldly; here he placed on canvas an elusive portrayal of success in its fullest and widest meaning. One’s first impression of the picture is that it is sensual; another glance shows the underlying typification of success, and love and life are there. One by one the qualities stand forth.

  The artist was Constans St. George. After the first flurry of excitement which the picture caused there came a whirlwind of criticism. Then the artist, who had labored for months on the work which he had intended and which proved to be his masterpiece, collapsed. Some said it was overwork—they were partly right; others that it was grief at the attacks of critics who did not see beyond the surface of the painting. Perhaps they, too, were partly right.

  However that may be, it is a fact that for several months after the picture was exhibited St. George was in a sanitarium. The physicians said it was nervous collapse—a total breaking-down, and there were fears for his sanity. At length there came an improvement in his condition, and he returned to the world. Since then he had lived quietly in his studio, one of many in a large office building. From time to time he had been approached with offers for the picture, but always he refused to sell. A New York millionaire made a flat proposition of fifty thousand dollars, which was as flatly refused.

  The artist loved the picture as a child of his own brain; every day he visited the museum where it was exhibited and stood looking at it with something almost like adoration in his eyes. Then he went away quietly, tugging at his straggling beard and with the dim blindness of tears in his eyes. He never spoke to anyone; and always avoided that moment when a crowd was about.

  Whatever the verdict of the critics or of the public on “Fulfillment,” it was an admitted fact that the artist had placed on canvas a representation of a wonderfully beautiful woman. Therefore, after awhile the question of who had been the model for “Fulfillment” was aroused. No one knew, apparently. Artists who knew St. George could give no idea—they only knew that the woman who had posed was not a professional model.

  This led to speculation, in which the names of some of the most beautiful women in the United States were mentioned. Then a romance was woven. This was that the artist was in love with the original and that his collapse was partly due to her refusal to wed him. This story, as it went, was elaborated until the artist was said to be pining away for love of one whom he had immortalized in oils.

  As the story grew it gained credence, and a search was still made occasionally for the model. Half a dozen times Hutchinson Hatch, a newspaper reporter of more than usual astuteness, had been on the story without success; he had seen and studied the picture until every line of it was firmly in his mind. He had seen and talked to St. George twice. The artist would answer no questions as to the identity of the model.

  This, then, was the situation on the morning of Friday, November 27, when Hatch entered the reportorial rooms of his newspaper. At sight of him the City Editor removed his cigar, placed it carefully on the “official block” which adorned his flat topped desk, and called to the reporter.

  “Girl reported missing,” he said, brusquely. “Name is Grace Field, and she lived at No. 195—Street, Dorchester. Employed in the photographic department of the Star, a big department store. Report of her disappearance made to the police early to-day by Ellen Stanford, her roommate, also employed at the Star. Jump out on it and get all you can. Here is the official police description.”

  Hatch took a slip of paper and read:

  “Grace Field, twenty-one years, five feet seven inches tall, weight 151 pounds, profuse black hair, dark-brown eyes, superb figure, oval face, said to be beautiful.”

  Then the description went into details of her dress and other things which the police note in their minute records for a search. Hatch absorbed all these things and left his office. He went first to the department store, where he was told Miss Stanford had not appeared that day, sending a note that she was ill.

  From the store Hatch went at once to the address given in Dorchester. Miss Stanford was in. Would she see a reporter? Yes. So Hatch was ushered into the modest little parlor of a boardinghouse, and after awhile Miss Stanford entered. She was as a petite blonde, with pink cheeks and blue eyes, now reddened by weeping.

  Briefly Hatch explained the purpose of his visit—an effort to find Grace Field, and Miss Stanford eagerly and tearfully expressed herself as willing to tell him all she knew.

  “I have known Grace for five months,” she explained; “that is, from the time she came to work at the Star. Her counter is next to mine. A friendship grew up between us, and we began rooming together. Each of us is alone in the East. She comes from the West, somewhere in Nevada, and I come from Quebec.

  “Grace has never said much about herself, but I know that she had been in Boston a year or so before I met her. She lived somewhere in Brookline, I believe, but it seems that she had some funds and did not go to work until she came to the Star. This is as I understand it.

  “Three days ago, on Tuesday it was, there was a letter for Grace when we came in from work. It seemed to agitate her, although she said nothing to me about what was in it, and I did not ask. She did not sleep well that night, but next morning, when we started to work, she seemed all right. That is, she was all right until we got to the subway station, and then she told me to go on to the store, saying she would be there after awhile.

  “I left her, and at her request explained to the manager of our floor that she would be late. From that time to this no one has seen her or heard of her. I don’t know where she could have gone,” and the girl burst into tears. “I’m sure something dreadful has happened to her.”

  “Possibly an elopement?” Hatch suggested.

  “No,” said the girl, quickly. “No. She was in love, but the man she was in love with has not heard of her either. I saw him the night after she disappeared. He called here and asked for her, and seemed surprised that she had not returned home, or had not been at work.”

  “What’s his name?” asked Hatch.

  “He’s a clerk in a bank,” said Miss Stanford. “His name is Willis—Victor Willis. If she had eloped with him I would not have been surprised, but I am positive she did not, and if she did not, where is she?”

  “Were there any other admirers you know of?” Hatch asked.

  “No,” said the girl, stoutly. “There may have been others who admired her, but none she cared for. She has told me too much—I—I know,” she faltered.

  “How long have you known Mr. Willis?” asked Hatch.

  The girl’s face flamed scarlet instantly.

  “Only since I’ve known Grace,” she replied. “She introduced us.”

  “Has Mr. Willis ever shown you any attention?”

  “Certainly not,” Miss Stanford flashed, angrily. “All his attention was for Grace.”

  There was the least trace of bitterness in the tone, and Hatch imagined he read it aright. Willis was a man whom both perhaps loved; it might be in that event that Miss Stanford knew more than she had said of the whereabouts of Grace Field. The next step was to see Willis.

  “I suppose you’ll do everything possible to find Miss Field?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” said the girl.

  “Have you her photograph?”

  “I have one, yes, but I don’t think—I don’t believe Grace—”

  “Would like to have it published?” asked Hatch. “Possibly not, under ordinary circumstances—but now that she is missing it is the surest way of getting a trace of her. Will you give it to me?”

  Miss Stanford was silent for a time. Then apparently she made up her mind, for she arose.

 

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