A half-hour later, when Mrs Hammond, in her anxiety at hearing nothing more from Miss Strange, opened the door of her room, it was to find, lying on the edge of the sill, the little detective’s card with these words hastily written across it:
I do not feel as well as I could wish, and so have telephoned to my own coachman to come and take me home. I will either see or write you within a few days. But do not allow yourself to hope. I pray you do not allow yourself the least hope; the outcome is still very problematical.
When Violet’s employer entered his office the next morning it was to find a veiled figure awaiting him which he at once recognized as that of his little deputy. She was slow in lifting her veil and when it finally came free he felt a momentary doubt as to his wisdom in giving her just such a matter as this to investigate. He was quite sure of his mistake when he saw her face, it was so drawn and pitiful.
‘You have failed,’ said he.
‘Of that you must judge,’ she answered; and drawing near she whispered in his ear.
‘No!’ he cried in his amazement.
‘Think,’ she murmured, ‘think. Only so can all the facts be accounted for.’
‘I will look into it; I will certainly look into it,’ was his earnest reply. ‘If you are right – but never mind that. Go home and take a horseback ride in the Park. When I have news in regard to this I will let you know. Till then forget it all. Hear me, I charge you to forget everything but your balls and your parties.’
And Violet obeyed him.
Some few days after this, the following statement appeared in all the papers:
‘Owing to some remarkable work done by the firm of –– & ––, the well-known private detective agency, the claim made by Mrs George Hammond against the Shuler Life Insurance Company is likely to be allowed without further litigation. As our readers will remember, the contestant has insisted from the first that the bullet causing her husband’s death came from another pistol than the one found clutched in his own hand. But while reasons were not lacking to substantiate this assertion, the failure to discover more than the disputed track of a second bullet led to a verdict of suicide, and a refusal of the company to pay.
‘But now that bullet has been found. And where? In the most startling place in the world, viz.: in the larynx of the child found lying dead upon the floor beside his father, strangled as was supposed by the weight of that father’s arm. The theory is, and there seems to be none other, that the father, hearing a suspicious noise at the window, set down the child he was endeavouring to soothe and made for the bed and his own pistol, and, mistaking a reflection of the assassin for the assassin himself, sent his shot sidewise at a mirror just as the other let go the trigger which drove a similar bullet into his breast. The course of the one was straight and fatal and that of the other deflected. Striking the mirror at an oblique angle, the bullet fell to the floor where it was picked up by the crawling child, and, as was most natural, thrust at once into his mouth. Perhaps it felt hot to the little tongue; perhaps the child was simply frightened by some convulsive movement of the father who evidently spent his last moment in an endeavour to reach the child, but, whatever the cause, in the quick gasp it gave, the bullet was drawn into the larynx, strangling him.
‘That the father’s arm, in his last struggle, should have fallen directly across the little throat is one of those anomalies which confounds reason and misleads justice by stopping investigation at the very point where truth lies and mystery disappears.
‘Mrs Hammond is to be congratulated that there are detectives who do not give too much credence to outward appearances.’
We expect soon to hear of the capture of the man who sped home the death-dealing bullet.
PROFESSOR AUGUSTUS SFX VAN DUSEN (‘THE THINKING MACHINE’)
Created by Jacques Futrelle (1875-1912)
Is there a fictional detective even more cerebral than Sherlock Holmes? One more committed to the power of cold, unemotional reasoning? Step forward the extravagantly named Professor Augustus SFX Van Dusen, otherwise known as ‘The Thinking Machine’. Van Dusen was the creation of Jacques Futrelle. His most famous appearance is in a much-anthologised story entitled ‘The Problem of Cell 13’ in which the Professor applies his gigantic brain to the challenge of exiting an apparently escape-proof prison cell. (The story is included in my own anthology, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes.) However, Futrelle wrote dozens of other tales about The Thinking Machine between 1905 and 1912, all of which are worth reading. Futrelle himself was born in Georgia and worked as a journalist in Atlanta before moving to New England to write for newspapers in New York and Boston. He began publishing fiction and both his novels and his short stories proved popular. One of the novels, The Diamond Master, was adapted for Hollywood three times in the silent era. In 1912, Futrelle visited England and booked passage back to New York on an ocean liner. Unfortunately, the liner was the Titanic. When ship met iceberg and sank, he was amongst nearly 1500 who drowned. His detective – brilliant, cantankerous and eccentric – lives on.
THE PROBLEM OF THE OPERA BOX
Gradually the lights dimmed and the great audience became an impalpable, shadowy mass broken here and there by the vagrant glint of a jewel or the gleam of white shoulders. There was a preliminary blare of horns, then the crashing anvil chorus of Il Trovatore began. Sparks spattered and flashed as the sledges rose and fell in exquisite rhythm while the clangorous music roared through the big theatre.
Eleanor Oliver arose, and moving from the front of the box into the gloom at the rear, leaned her head wearily against the latticed partition. Her mother, beside whom she had been sitting, glanced up inquiringly as did her father and their guest Sylvester Knight.
‘What’s the matter, my dear?’ asked Mrs Oliver.
‘Those sparks and that noise give me a headache,’ she explained. ‘Father, sit in front there if you wish. I’ll stay here in the dark until I feel better.’
Mr Oliver took the seat near his wife and Knight immediately lost interest in the stage, turning his chair to face Eleanor. She seemed a little pale and mingled eagerness and anxiety in his face showed his concern. They chatted together for a minute or so and under cover of darkness his hand caught hers and held it a fluttering prisoner.
As they talked the drone of their voices interfered with Mrs Oliver’s enjoyment of the music and she glanced back warningly. Neither noticed it for Knight was gazing deeply into the girl’s eyes with adoration in his own. She made some remark to him and he protested quickly.
‘Please don’t,’ Mrs Oliver heard him say pleadingly as his voice was raised. ‘It won’t be long.’
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to,’ the girl replied.
‘You mustn’t,’ Knight commanded earnestly. ‘If you insist on it I shall have to do something desperate.’
Mrs Oliver turned and looked back at them reprovingly.
‘You children chatter too much,’ she said good-naturedly. ‘You make more noise than the anvils.’
She turned again to the stage and Knight was silent for a moment. Finally the girl said something else that the mother didn’t catch.
‘Certainly,’ he replied.
He arose quietly and left the box. The swish and fall of the curtain behind him were smothered in the heavy volume of music. The girl sat white and inert. Knight found her in just that position when he returned with a glass of water. He had been out only a minute or so, and the encore to the chorus was just ending.
He offered the glass to Eleanor but she made no move to take it and he touched her lightly on the arm. Still she did not move and he leaned over and looked at her closely. Then he turned quickly to Mrs Oliver.
‘Eleanor has fainted, I think,’ he whispered uneasily.
‘Fainted?’ exclaimed Mrs Oliver as she arose. ‘Fainted?’
She pushed her chair back and in a moment was beside her daughter chafing
her hands. Mr Oliver turned and glanced at them with languid interest.
‘What’s the matter now?’ he inquired.
‘We’ll have to go,’ replied Mrs Oliver. ‘Eleanor has fainted.’
‘Again?’ he asked impatiently.
Knight hovered about anxiously, helplessly as the father and mother worked with the girl. Finally in some way he never understood Eleanor was lifted out, still unconscious and white as death, and removed in a waiting carriage to her home. Two physicians were summoned and disappeared into her boudoir while Knight paced back and forth restlessly between the smoking room and the hall. Mrs Oliver was with her daughter; Mr Oliver sat quietly smoking.
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ he advised the young man after a few minutes. ‘She has a trick of fainting like that. You will know more about her after a while – when she is Mrs Knight.’
****
From somewhere upstairs came a scream and Knight started nervously. It was a shrill, penetrating cry that tore straight through him. Mr Oliver took it phlegmatically, even smiled at his nervousness.
‘That’s my wife fainting,’ he explained. ‘She always does it that way. You know,’ he added confidentially, ‘my wife and two daughters are so exhausted with this everlasting social game that they go off like that at any minute. I’ve talked to them about it but they won’t listen.’
Heedless of the idle, even heartless, comments of the father Knight stopped in the hall and stood at the foot of the stairs looking up. After a minute a man came down; it was Dr Brander, one of the two physicians who had been called. On his face was an expression of troubled perplexity.
‘How is she?’ demanded Knight abruptly.
‘Where is Mr Oliver?’ asked Dr Brander.
‘In the smoking room,’ replied the young man. ‘What’s the matter?’
Without answering the physician went on to the father. Mr Oliver looked up.
‘Bring her around all right?’ he asked.
‘She’s dead,’ replied the physician.
‘Dead?’ gasped Knight.
Mr Oliver rose suddenly and gripped the physician fiercely by a shoulder. For an instant he gazed and then his face grew deathly pale. With a distinct effort he recovered himself.
‘Her heart?’ he asked at last.
‘No. She was stabbed.’
Dr Brander looked from one to the other of the two white faces with troubled lines about his eyes.
‘Why it can’t be,’ burst out Knight suddenly. ‘Where is she? I’ll go to her.’
Dr Brander laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
‘You can do no good,’ he said quietly.
For a time Mr Oliver was dumb and the physician curiously watched the struggle in his face. The hand that clung to his shoulder was trembling horribly. At last the father found voice.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘She was stabbed,’ said Dr Brander again. ‘When we examined her we found the knife – a long, keen, short-handled stiletto. It was driven in with great force directly under her left arm and penetrated the heart. She must have been dead when she was lifted from the box at the opera. The stiletto remained in the wound and prevented any flow of blood while its position and the short handle caused it to be overlooked when she was lifted into the carriage. We did not find the knife for several minutes after we arrived. It was covered by her arm.’
‘Did you tell my wife?’ asked Mr Oliver quickly.
‘She was present,’ the physician went on. ‘She screamed and fainted. Dr Seaver is attending her. Her condition is – is not very good. Where is your ’phone? I must notify the police.’
Mr Oliver started to ask something else, paused and dropped back in his chair only to rise instantly and rush up the stairs. Knight into whose face there had come a deadly calm stood stone-like while Dr Brander used the telephone. At last the physician finished.
‘The calling of the police means that Eleanor did not kill herself?’ asked the young man.
‘It was murder,’ was the positive reply. ‘She could not have stabbed herself. The knife went straight in, entering here,’ and he indicated a spot about four inches below his left arm. ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘it took a very long blade to penetrate the heart.’
There was dull despair in Knight’s eyes. He dropped down at a table with his head on his arms and sat motionless for a long time. He looked up once and asked a question.
‘Where is the knife?’
‘I have it,’ replied Dr Brander. ‘I shall turn it over to the authorities.’
****
‘Now,’ began The Thinking Machine in his small, irritated voice as Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, stopped talking and leaned back to listen, ‘all problems are merely sums in addition, when reduced to their primary parts. Therefore this one is simply a matter of putting facts together in order to prove that two and two do not sometimes but always make four.’
Professor Augustus SFX Van Dusen, scientist and logician, paused to adjust his head comfortably on the cushion in the big chair, then resumed:
‘Your statement of the case, Mr Hatch, gives me these absolute facts: Eleanor Oliver is dead; she died of a stab wound; a stiletto made this wound; it was in such a position that she could hardly have inflicted it herself; and Sylvester Knight, her fiancé, is under arrest. That’s all we know isn’t it?’
‘You forget that she was stabbed while in a box at the opera,’ the reporter put in, ‘in the hearing of three or four thousand persons.’
‘I forget nothing,’ snapped the scientist. ‘It does not appear at all that she was stabbed while in that box. It appears merely that she was ill and might have fainted. She might have been stabbed while in the carriage, or even after she was in her room.’
Hatch’s eyes opened wide at the bare mention of these possibilities.
‘The presumption is of course,’ The Thinking Machine went on a little less aggressively, ‘that she was stabbed while in the box, but we can’t put that down as an absolute fact to work on until we know it. Remember, the stiletto was not found until she was in her room.’
This gave the reporter something new to think about and he was silent as he considered it. He saw that either of the possibilities suggested by the scientist was tenable, but on the other hand – on the other hand, and there his mind refused to work.
‘You have told me that Knight was arrested at the suggestion of Mr Oliver last night shortly after the police learned of the affair,’ The Thinking Machine went on, musingly. ‘Now just what have you or the police learned as to him? How do they connect him with the affair?’
‘First the police acted on the general ground of exclusive opportunity,’ the reporter explained. ‘Then Knight was arrested. The stiletto used was not an ordinary one. It had a blade of about seven inches and was very slender, but instead of a guard on it there was only a gold band. The handle is a straight, highly polished piece of wood. Around it, below the gold band where the guard should have been, there were threads as if it had been screwed into something.’
‘Yes, yes, I see,’ the other interrupted impatiently. ‘It was intended to be carried hidden in a walking cane, perhaps, and was screwed down with the blade in the stick. Go on.’
‘Detective Mallory surmised that when he saw the stiletto,’ the reporter continued, ‘so after Knight was locked up he searched his rooms for the other part – the lower end – of the cane.’
‘And he found it, without the stiletto?’
‘Yes, that’s the chain against Knight. First, exclusive opportunity, then the stiletto and the finding of the lower end of the cane in his possession.’
‘Exclusive fiddlesticks!’ exclaimed the scientist irritably. ‘I presume Knight denies that he killed Miss Oliver?’
‘Naturally.’
‘And where is the stiletto that belongs to his cane? Does he atte
mpt to account for it?’
‘He doesn’t seem to know where it is – in fact he doesn’t deny that the stiletto might be his. He merely says he doesn’t know.’
The Thinking Machine was silent for several minutes.
‘Looks bad for him,’ he remarked at last.
‘Thank you,’ remarked Hatch dryly. It was one of those rare occasions when the scientist saw a problem exactly as he saw it.
‘Miss Oliver and Mr Knight were to be married – when?’
‘Three weeks from next Wednesday.’
‘I suppose Detective Mallory has the stiletto and cane?’
‘Yes.’
The Thinking Machine arose and found his hat.
‘Let’s run over to police headquarters,’ he suggested.
****
They found Detective Mallory snugly ensconced behind a fat cigar with beatific satisfaction on his face.
‘Ah, gentlemen,’ he remarked graciously – the graciousness of conscious superiority. ‘We’ve nailed it to our friend Knight all right.’
‘How?’ inquired The Thinking Machine.
The detective gloated a little – twisted his tongue around the dainty morsel – before he answered.
‘I suppose Hatch has told you the grounds of the arrest?’ he asked. ‘Exclusive opportunity and all that? Then you know, too, how I searched Knight’s rooms and found the other part of the stiletto cane. Of course that was enough to convict, but early this evening the last link in the chain against him was supplied when Mrs Oliver made a statement to me.’
The detective paused in enjoyment of the curiosity he had aroused.
‘Well?’ asked The Thinking Machine, at last.
‘Mrs Oliver heard – understand me – heard Knight threaten her daughter only a few minutes before she was found dead.’
‘Threaten her?’ exclaimed Hatch, as he glanced at The Thinking Machine. ‘By George!’
American Sherlocks Page 35
