The three examining physicians exchanged glances.
“I don’t know that I can make you understand,” said one. “She died of absence of air in her lungs, if you follow me.”
“Absence of air—well, that’s illuminating!” the detective sneered heavily. “You mean she was strangled, or choked to death?”
“I mean precisely what I say,” was the reply. “She was not strangled—there is no mark on her throat; or choked—there is no obstruction in her throat. Literally she died of absence of air in her lungs.”
Mallory stood silently glowering at them. A fine lot of physicians, these!
“Let’s understand one another,” he said at last. “Miss Danbury did not die a natural death?”
“No!” emphatically.
“She wasn’t poisoned? Or strangled? Or shot? Or stabbed? Or run over by a truck? Or blown up by dynamite? Or kicked by a mule? Nor,” he concluded, “did she fall from an aëroplane?”
“No.”
“In other words, she just quit living?”
“Something like that,” the physician admitted. He seemed to be seeking a means of making himself more explicit. “You know the old nursery theory that a cat will suck a sleeping baby’s breath?” he asked. “Well, the death of Miss Danbury was like that, if you understand. It is as if some great animal or—or thing had—” He stopped.
Detective Mallory was an able man, the ablest, perhaps, in the bureau of criminal investigation, but a yellow primrose by the river’s brim was to him a yellow primrose, nothing more. He lacked imagination, a common fault of that type of sleuth who combines, more or less happily, a number eleven shoe and a number six hat. The only vital thing he had to go on was the fact that Miss Danbury was dead—murdered, in some mysterious, uncanny way. Vampires were something like that, weren’t they? He shuddered a little.
“Regular vampire sort of thing,” the youngest of the three physicians remarked, echoing the thought in the detective’s mind. “They’re supposed to make a slight wound, and—”
Detective Mallory didn’t hear the remainder of it. He turned abruptly, and left the room.
On the following Monday morning, one Henry Sumner, a longshoreman in Atlantic Avenue, was found dead sitting in his squalid room. On his face, dark in death, as are the faces of those who die of strangulation, was an expression of unspeakable terror. His parted lips were slightly bruised, as if from a light blow; in his left cheek was an insignificant, bloodless wound. On the floor at his feet was a shattered drinking glass!
’Twas Hutchinson Hatch, newspaper reporter, long, lean, and rather prepossessing in appearance, who brought this double mystery to the attention of The Thinking Machine. Martha, the eminent scientist’s one servant, admitted the newspaper man, and he went straight to the laboratory. As he opened the door The Thinking Machine turned testily from his worktable.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Hatch. Glad to see you. Sit down. What is it?” That was his idea of extreme cordiality.
“If you can spare me five minutes?” the reporter began apologetically.
“What is it?” repeated The Thinking Machine, without raising his eyes.
“I wish I knew,” the reporter said ruefully. “Two persons are dead—two persons as widely apart as the poles, at least in social position, have been murdered in precisely the same manner, and it seems impossible that—”
“Nothing is impossible,” The Thinking Machine interrupted, in the tone of perpetual irritation which seemed to be a part of him. “You annoy me when you say it.”
“It seems highly improbable,” Hatch corrected himself, “that there can be the remotest connection between the crimes, yet—”
“You’re wasting words,” the crabbed little scientist declared impatiently. “Begin at the beginning. Who was murdered? When? How? Why? What was the manner of death?”
“Taking the last question first,” the reporter explained, “we have the most singular part of the problem. No one can say the manner of death, not even the physicians.”
“Oh!” For the first time The Thinking Machine lifted his petulant, squinting, narrowed eyes, and stared into the face of the newspaper man. “Oh!” he said again. “Go on.”
As Hatch talked, the lure of a material problem laid hold of the master mind, and after a little The Thinking Machine dropped into a chair. With his great, grotesque head tilted back, his eyes turned steadily upward, and slender fingers placed precisely tip to tip, he listened in silence to the end.
“We come now,” said the newspaper man, “to the inexplicable after developments. We have proven that Mrs. Cecelia Montgomery, Miss Danbury’s companion, did not go to Concord to visit friends; as a matter of fact, she is missing. The police have been able to find no trace of her, and to-day are sending out a general alarm. Naturally, her absence at this particular moment is suspicious. It is possible to conjecture her connection with the death of Miss Danbury, but what about—”
“Never mind conjecture,” the scientist broke in curtly. “Facts, facts!”
“Further,” and Hatch’s bewilderment was evident on his face, “mysterious things have been happening in the rooms where Miss Danbury and this man Henry Sumner were found dead. Miss Danbury was found dead last Thursday. Immediately after the body was removed, Detective Mallory ordered her room locked, his idea being that nothing should be disturbed at least for the present, because of the strange circumstances surrounding her death. When the nature of the Henry Sumner affair became known, and the similarity of the cases recognized, he gave the same order regarding Sumner’s room.”
Hatch stopped, and stared vainly into the pallid, wizened face of the scientist. A curious little chill ran down his spinal column.
“Some time Tuesday night,” he continued, after a moment, “Miss Danbury’s room was entered and ransacked; and some time that same night Henry Sumner’s room was entered and ransacked. This morning, Wednesday, a clearly defined hand print in blood was found in Miss Danbury’s room. It was on the wooden top of a dressing table. It seemed to be a woman’s hand. Also, an indistinguishable smudge of blood, which may have been a hand print, was found in Sumner’s room!” He paused; The Thinking Machine’s countenance was inscrutable. “What possible connection can there be between this young woman of the aristocracy, and this—this longshoreman? Why should—”
“What chair,” questioned The Thinking Machine, “does Professor Meredith hold in the university?”
“Greek,” was the reply.
“Who is Mr. Willing?”
“One of the leading lawyers of the city.”
“Did you see Miss Danbury’s body?”
“Yes.”
“Did she have a large mouth, or a small mouth?”
The irrelevancy of the questions, to say nothing of their disjointedness, brought a look of astonishment to Hatch’s face; and he was a young man who was rarely astonished by the curious methods of The Thinking Machine. Always he had found that the scientist approached a problem from a new angle.
“I should say a small mouth,” he ventured. “Her lips were bruised as if—as if something round, say the size of a twenty-five-cent piece, had been crushed against them. There was a queer, drawn, caved-in look to her mouth and cheeks.”
“Naturally,” commented The Thinking Machine enigmatically. “And Sumner’s was the same?”
“Precisely. You say ‘naturally.’ Do you mean—” There was eagerness in the reporter’s question.
It passed unanswered. For half a minute The Thinking Machine continued to stare into nothingness. Finally:
“I dare say Sumner was of the English type? His name is English?”
“Yes; a splendid physical man, a hard drinker, I hear, as well as a hard worker.”
Again a pause.
“You don’t happen to know if Professor Meredith is now or ever has been particularly interested in physics—that is, in natural philosophy?”
“I do not.”
“Please find out immediately,” the
scientist directed tersely. “Willing has handled some legal business for Miss Danbury. Learn what you can from him to the general end of establishing some connection, a relationship possibly, between Henry Sumner and the Honorable Violet Danbury. That, at the moment, is the most important thing to do. Neither of them may have been aware of the relationship, if relationship it was, yet it may have existed. If it doesn’t exist, there’s only one answer to the problem.”
“And that is?” Hatch asked.
“The murders are the work of a madman,” was the tart rejoinder. “There’s no mystery, of course, in the manner of the deaths of these two.”
“No mystery?” the reporter echoed blankly. “Do you mean you know how they—”
“Certainly I know, and you know. The examining physicians know, only they don’t know that they know.” Suddenly his tone became didactic. “Knowledge that can’t be applied is utterly useless,” he said. “The real difference between a great mind and a mediocre mind is only that the great mind applies its knowledge.” He was silent a moment. “The only problem remaining here is to find the person who was aware of the many advantages of this method of murder.”
“Advantages?” Hatch was puzzled.
“From the viewpoint of the murderer there is always a good way and a bad way to kill a person,” the scientist told him. “This particular murderer chose a way that was swift, silent, simple, and sure as the march of time. There was no scream, no struggle, no pistol shot, no poison to be traced, nothing to be seen except—”
“The hole in the left cheek, perhaps?”
“Quite right, and that leaves no clew. As a matter of fact, the only clew we have at all is the certainty that the murderer, man or woman, is well acquainted with physics, or natural philosophy.”
“Then you think,” the newspaper man’s eyes were about to start from his head, “that Professor Meredith—”
“I think nothing,” The Thinking Machine declared briefly. “I want to know what he knows of physics, as I said; also I want to know if there is any connection between Miss Danbury and the longshoreman. If you’ll attend to—”
Abruptly the laboratory door opened and Martha entered, pallid, frightened, her hands shaking.
“Something most peculiar, sir,” she stammered in her excitement.
“Well?” the little scientist questioned.
“I do believe,” said Martha, “that I’m a-going to faint!”
And as an evidence of good faith she did, crumpling up in a little heap before their astonished eyes.
“Dear me! Dear me!” exclaimed The Thinking Machine petulantly. “Of all the inconsiderate things! Why couldn’t she have told us before she did that?”
It was a labor of fifteen minutes to bring Martha around, and then weakly she explained what had happened. She had answered a ring of the telephone, and someone had asked for Professor Van Dusen. She inquired the name of the person talking.
“Never mind that,” came the reply. “Is he there? Can I see him?”
“You’ll have to explain what you want, sir,” Martha had told him. “He always has to know.”
“Tell him I know who murdered Miss Danbury and Henry Sumner,” came over the wire. “If he’ll receive me I’ll be right up.”
“And then, sir,” Martha explained to The Thinking Machine, “something must have happened at the other end, sir. I heard another man’s voice, then a sort of a choking sound, sir, and then they cursed me, sir. I didn’t hear any more. They hung up the receiver or something, sir.” She paused indignantly. “Think of him, sir, a-swearing at me!”
For a moment the eyes of the two men met; the same thought had come to them both. The Thinking Machine voiced it.
“Another one!” he said. “The third!”
With no other word he turned and went out; Martha followed him grumblingly. Hatch shuddered a little. The hand of the clock went on to half past seven, to eight. At twenty minutes past eight the scientist reentered the laboratory.
“That fifteen minutes Martha was unconscious probably cost a man’s life, and certainly lost to us an immediate solution of the riddle,” he declared peevishly. “If she had told us before she fainted there is a chance that the operator would have remembered the number. As it is, there have been fifty calls since, and there’s no record.” He spread his slender hands helplessly. “The manager is trying to find the calling number. Anyway, we’ll know to-morrow. Meanwhile, try to see Mr. Willing to-night, and find out about what relationship, if any, exists between Miss Danbury and Sumner; also, see Professor Meredith.”
The newspaper man telephoned to Mr. Willing’s home in Melrose to see if he was in; he was not. On a chance he telephoned to his office. He hardly expected an answer, and he got none. So it was not until four o’clock in the morning that the third tragedy in the series came to light.
The scrubwomen employed in the great building where Mr. Willing had his law offices entered the suite to clean up. They found Mr. Willing there, gagged, bound hand and foot, and securely lashed to a chair. He was alive, but apparently unconscious from exhaustion. Directly facing him his secretary, Maxwell Pittman, sat dead in his chair. On his face, dark in death, as are the faces of those who die of strangulation, was an expression of unspeakable terror. His parted lips were slightly bruised, as if from a light blow; in his left cheek was an insignificant, bloodless wound!
Within an hour Detective Mallory was on the scene. By that time Mr. Willing, under the influence of stimulants, was able to talk.
“I have no idea what happened,” he explained. “It was after six o’clock, and my secretary and I were alone in the offices, finishing up some work. He had stepped into another room for a moment, and I was at my desk. Someone crept up behind me, and held a drugged cloth to my nostrils. I tried to shout, and struggled, but everything grew black, and that’s all I know. When I came to myself poor Pittman was there, just as you see him.”
Snooping about the offices, Mallory came upon a small lace handkerchief. He seized upon it tensely, and as he raised it to examine it he became conscious of a strong odor of drugs. In one corner of the handkerchief there was a monogram.
“‘C. M.,’” he read; his eyes blazed. “Cecelia Montgomery!”
In the grip of an uncontrollable excitement Hutchinson Hatch bulged in upon The Thinking Machine in his laboratory.
“There was another,” he announced.
“I know it,” said The Thinking Machine, still bent over his worktable. “Who was it?”
“Maxwell Pittman,” and Hatch related the story.
“There may be two more,” the scientist remarked. “Be good enough to call a cab.”
“Two more?” Hatch gasped in horror. “Already dead?”
“There may be, I said. One, Cecelia Montgomery, the other the unknown who called on the telephone last night.” He started away, then returned to his worktable. “Here’s rather an interesting experiment,” he said. “See this tube,” and he held aloft a heavy glass vessel, closed at one end, and with a stopcock at the other. “Observe. I’ll place this heavy piece of rubber over the mouth of the tube, and then turn the stopcock.” He suited the action to the word. “Now take it off.”
The reporter tugged at it until the blood rushed to his face, but was unable to move it. He glanced up at the scientist in perplexity.
“What holds it there?”
“Vacuum,” was the reply. “You may tear it to pieces, but no human power can pull it away whole.” He picked up a steel bodkin, and thrust it through the rubber into the mouth of the tube. As he withdrew it, there came a sharp, prolonged, hissing sound. Half a minute later the rubber fell off. “The vacuum is practically perfect—something like one-millionth of an atmosphere. The pin hole permits the air to fill the tube, the tremendous pressure against the rubber is removed, and—” He waved his slender hands.
In that instant a germ of comprehension was born in Hatch’s brain; he was remembering some college experiments.
“If I should
place that tube to your lips,” The Thinking Machine resumed, “and turn the stopcock, you would never speak again, never scream, never struggle. It would jerk every particle of air out of your body, paralyze you; within two minutes you would be dead. To remove the tube I should thrust the bodkin through your cheek, say your left, and withdraw it—”
Hatch gasped as the full horror of the thing burst upon him. “Absence of air in the lungs,” the examining physicians had said.
“You see, there was no mystery in the manner of the deaths of these three,” The Thinking Machine pointed out. “You knew what I have shown you, the physicians knew it, but neither of you knew you knew it. Genius is the ability to apply the knowledge you may have, not the ability to acquire it.” His manner changed abruptly. “Please call a cab,” he said again.
Together they were driven straight to the university, and shown into Professor Meredith’s study. Professor Meredith showed his astonishment plainly at the visit, and astonishment became indignant amazement at the first question.
“Mr. Meredith, can you account for every moment of your time from mid-afternoon yesterday until four o’clock this morning?” The Thinking Machine queried flatly. “Don’t misunderstand me—I mean every moment covering the time in which it is possible that Maxwell Pittman was murdered?”
“Why, it’s a most outrageous—” Professor Meredith exploded.
“I’m trying to save you from arrest,” the scientist explained curtly. “If you can account for all that time, and prove your statement, believe me, you had better prepare to do so. Now, if you could give me any information as to—”
“Who the devil are you?” demanded Professor Meredith belligerently. “What do you mean by daring to suggest—”
“My name is Van Dusen,” said The Thinking Machine, “Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen. Long before your time I held the chair of philosophy in this university. I vacated it by request. Later the university honored me with a degree of LL. D.”
The result of the self-introduction was astonishing. Professor Meredith, in the presence of the master mind in the sciences, was a different man.
Toward the Golden Age Page 15
