The jacques futrelle meg.., p.86
The Jacques Futrelle Megapack, page 86
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.
