It was an impatient supper party in the rooms of Professor Van Dusen
and a somewhat silent one. The guests were Dr. Ransome, Albert
Fielding, the warden, and Hutchinson Hatch, reporter. The meal was
served to the minute, in accordance with Professor Van Dusen's
instructions of one week before; Dr. Ransome found the artichokes
delicious. At last the supper was finished and The Thinking Machine
turned full on Dr. Ransome and squinted at him fiercely.
"Do you believe it now?" he demanded.
"I do," replied Dr. Ransome.
"Do you admit that it was a fair test?"
"I do."
With the others, particularly the warden, he was waiting anxiously for
the explanation.
"Suppose you tell us how----" began Mr. Fielding.
"Yes, tell us how," said the warden.
The Thinking Machine readjusted his glasses, took a couple of
preparatory squints at his audience, and began the story. He told it
from the beginning logically; and no man ever talked to more
interested listeners.
"My agreement was," he began, "to go into a cell, carrying nothing
except what was necessary to wear, and to leave that cell within a
week. I had never seen Chisholm Prison. When I went into the cell I
asked for tooth powder, two ten and one five-dollar bills, and also to
have my shoes blacked. Even if these requests had been refused it
would not have mattered seriously. But you agreed to them.
"I knew there would be nothing in the cell which you thought I might
use to advantage. So when the warden locked the door on me I was
apparently helpless, unless I could turn three seemingly innocent
things to use. They were things which would have been permitted any
prisoner under sentence of death, were they not, warden?"
"Tooth powder and polished shoes, yes, but not money," replied the
warden.
"Anything is dangerous in the hands of a man who knows how to use it,"
went on The Thinking Machine. "I did nothing that first night but
sleep and chase rats." He glared at the warden. "When the matter was
broached I knew I could do nothing that night, so suggested next day.
You gentlemen thought I wanted time to arrange an escape with outside
assistance, but this was not true. I knew I could communicate with
whom I pleased, when I pleased."
The warden stared at him a moment, then went on smoking solemnly.
"I was aroused next morning at six o'clock by the jailer with my
breakfast," continued the scientist. "He told me dinner was at twelve
and supper at six. Between these times, I gathered, I would be pretty
much to myself. So immediately after breakfast I examined my outside
surroundings from my cell window. One look told me it would be useless
to try to scale the wall, even should I decide to leave my cell by the
window, for my purpose was to leave not only the cell, but the prison.
Of course, I could have gone over the wall, but it would have taken me
longer to lay my plans that way. Therefore, for the moment, I
dismissed all idea of that.
"From this first observation I knew the river was on that side of
the prison, and that there was also a playground there. Subsequently
these surmises were verified by a keeper. I knew then one important
thing--that anyone might approach the prison wall from that side if
necessary without attracting any particular attention. That was well
to remember. I remembered it.
"But the outside thing which most attracted my attention was the feed
wire to the arc light which ran within a few feet--probably three or
four--of my cell window. I knew that would be valuable in the event I
found it necessary to cut off that arc light."
"Oh, you shut it off to-night, then?" asked the warden.
"Having learned all I could from that window," resumed The Thinking
Machine, without heeding the interruption, "I considered the idea of
escaping through the prison proper. I recalled just how I had come
into the cell, which I knew would be the only way. Seven doors lay
between me and the outside. So, also for the time being, I gave up the
idea of escaping that way. And I couldn't go through the solid granite
walls of the cell."
The Thinking Machine paused for a moment and Dr. Ransome lighted a new
cigar. For several minutes there was silence, then the scientific
jail-breaker went on:
"While I was thinking about these things a rat ran across my foot. It
suggested a new line, of thought. There were at least half a dozen
rats in the cell--I could see their beady eyes. Yet I had noticed none
come under the cell door. I frightened them purposely and watched the
cell door to see if they went out that way. They did not, but they
were gone. Obviously they went another way. Another way meant another
opening.
"I searched for this opening and found it. It was an old drain pipe,
long unused and partly choked with dirt and dust. But this was the way
the rats had come. They came from somewhere. Where? Drain pipes
usually lead outside prison grounds. This one probably led to the
river, or near it. The rats must therefore come from that direction.
If they came a part of the way, I reasoned that they came all the way,
because it was extremely unlikely that a solid iron or lead pipe would
have any hole in it except at the exit.
"When the jailer came with my luncheon he told me two important
things, although he didn't know it. One was that a new system of
plumbing had been put in the prison seven years before; another that
the river was only three hundred feet away. Then I knew positively
that the pipe was a part of an old system; I knew, too, that it
slanted generally toward the river. But did the pipe end in the water
or on land?
"This was the next question to be decided. I decided it by catching
several of the rats in the cell. My jailer was surprised to see me
engaged in this work. I examined at least a dozen of them. They were
perfectly dry; they had come through the pipe, and, most important of
all, they were _not house rats, but field rats_. The other end of the
pipe was on land, then, outside the prison walls. So far, so good.
"Then, I knew that if I worked freely from this point I must attract
the warden's attention in another direction. You see, by telling the
warden that I had come there to escape you made the test more severe,
because I had to trick him by false scents."
The warden looked up with a sad expression in his eyes.
"The first thing was to make him think I was trying to communicate
with you, Dr. Ransome. So I wrote a note on a piece of linen I tore
from my shirt, addressed it to Dr. Ransome, tied a five-dollar bill
around it and threw it out the window. I knew the guard would take it
to the warden, but I rather hoped the warden would send it as
addressed. Have you that first linen note, warden?"
The warden produced the cipher.
"What the deuce does it mean, anyhow?" he asked.
"Read it backward, beginning with the 'T' signature and disregard the
division into words," instructed The Thinking Machine.
The warden did so.
"T-h-i-s, this," he spelled, studied it a moment, then read it off,
grinning:
"This is not the way I intend to escape."
"Well, now what do you think o' that?" he demanded, still grinning.
"I knew that would attract your attention, just as it did," said The
Thinking Machine, "and if you really found out what it was it would be
a sort of gentle rebuke."
"What did you write it with?" asked Dr. Ransome, after he had examined
the linen and passed it to Mr. Fielding.
"This," said the erstwhile prisoner, and he extended his foot.
On it was the shoe he had worn in prison, though the polish was
gone--scraped off clean. "The shoe blacking, moistened with water, was
my ink; the metal tip of the shoe lace made a fairly good pen."
The warden looked up and suddenly burst into a laugh, half of relief,
half of amusement.
"You're a wonder," he said, admiringly. "Go on."
"That precipitated a search of my cell by the warden, as I had
intended," continued The Thinking Machine. "I was anxious to get the
warden into the habit of searching my cell, so that finally,
constantly finding nothing, he would get disgusted and quit. This at
last happened, practically."
The warden blushed.
"He then took my white shirt away and gave me a prison shirt. He was
satisfied that those two pieces of the shirt were all that was
missing. But while he was searching my cell I had another piece of
that same shirt, about nine inches square, rolled into a small ball in
my mouth."
"Nine inches of that shirt?" demanded the warden. "Where did it come
from?"
"The bosoms of all stiff white shirts are of triple thickness," was
the explanation. "I tore out the inside thickness, leaving the bosom
only two thicknesses. I knew you wouldn't see it. So much for that."
There was a little pause, and the warden looked from one to another of
the men with a sheepish grin.
"Having disposed of the warden for the time being by giving him
something else to think about, I took my first serious step toward
freedom," said Professor Van Dusen. "I knew, within reason, that the
pipe led somewhere to the playground outside; I knew a great many boys
played there; I knew that rats came into my cell from out there. Could
I communicate with some one outside with these things at hand?
"First was necessary, I saw, a long and fairly reliable thread,
so--but here," he pulled up his trousers legs and showed that the tops
of both stockings, of fine, strong lisle, were gone. "I unraveled
those--after I got them started it wasn't difficult--and I had easily
a quarter of a mile of thread that I could depend on.
"Then on half of my remaining linen I wrote, laboriously enough I
assure you, a letter explaining my situation to this gentleman here,"
and he indicated Hutchinson Hatch. "I knew he would assist me--for the
value of the newspaper story. I tied firmly to this linen letter a
ten-dollar bill--there is no surer way of attracting the eye of
anyone--and wrote on the linen: 'Finder of this deliver to Hutchinson
Hatch, _Daily American_, who will give another ten dollars for the
information.'
"The next thing was to get this note outside on that playground where
a boy might find it. There were two ways, but I chose the best. I took
one of the rats--I became adept in catching them--tied the linen and
money firmly to one leg, fastened my lisle thread to another, and
turned him loose in the drain pipe. I reasoned that the natural fright
of the rodent would make him run until he was outside the pipe and
then out on earth he would probably stop to gnaw off the linen and
money.
"From the moment the rat disappeared into that dusty pipe I became
anxious. I was taking so many chances. The rat might gnaw the string,
of which I held one end; other rats might gnaw it; the rat might run
out of the pipe and leave the linen and money where they would never
be found; a thousand other things might have happened. So began some
nervous hours, but the fact that the rat ran on until only a few feet
of the string remained in my cell made me think he was outside the
pipe. I had carefully instructed Mr. Hatch what to do in case the note
reached him. The question was: Would it reach him?
"This done, I could only wait and make other plans in case this one
failed. I openly attempted to bribe my jailer, and learned from him
that he held the keys to only two of seven doors between me and
freedom. Then I did something else to make the warden nervous. I took
the steel supports out of the heels of my shoes and made a pretense of
sawing the bars of my cell window. The warden raised a pretty row
about that. He developed, too, the habit of shaking the bars of my
cell window to see if they were solid. They were--then."
Again the warden grinned. He had ceased being astonished.
"With this one plan I had done all I could and could only wait to see
what happened," the scientist went on. "I couldn't know whether my
note had been delivered or even found, or whether the mouse had gnawed
it up. And I didn't dare to draw back through the pipe that one
slender thread which connected me with the outside.
"When I went to bed that night I didn't sleep, for fear there would
come the slight signal twitch at the thread which was to tell me that
Mr. Hatch had received the note. At half-past three o'clock, I judge,
I felt this twitch, and no prisoner actually under sentence of death
ever welcomed a thing more heartily."
The Thinking Machine stopped and turned to the reporter.
"You'd better explain just what you did," he said.
"The linen note was brought to me by a small boy who had been playing
baseball," said Mr. Hatch. "I immediately saw a big story in it, so I
gave the boy another ten dollars, and got several spools of silk, some
twine, and a roll of light, pliable wire. The professor's note
suggested that I have the finder of the note show me just where it was
picked up, and told me to make my search from there, beginning at two
o'clock in the morning. If I found the other end of the thread I was
to twitch it gently three times, then a fourth.
"I began the search with a small bulb electric light. It was an hour
and twenty minutes before I found the end of the drain pipe, half
hidden in weeds. The pipe was very large there, say twelve inches
across. Then I found the end of the lisle thread, twitched it as
directed and immediately I got an answering twitch.
"Then I fastened the silk to this and Professor Van Dusen began to
pull it into his cell. I nearly had heart disease for fear the string
would break. To the end of the silk I fastened the twine, and when
that had been pulled in I tied on the wire. Then that was drawn into
the pipe and we had a substantial line, which rats couldn't gnaw, from
the mouth of the drain into the cell."
The Thinking Machine raised his hand and Hatch stopped.
"All this was done in absolute silence," said the scientist. "But when
the wire reached my hand I could have shouted. Then we tried another
experiment, which Mr. Hatch was prepared for. I tested the pipe as a
speaking tube. Neither of us could hear very clearly, but I dared not
speak loud for fear of attracting attention in the prison. At last I
made him understand what I wanted immediately. He seemed to have great
difficulty in understanding when I asked for nitric acid, and I
repeated the word 'acid' several times.
"Then I heard a shriek from a cell above me. I knew instantly that
some one had overheard, and when I heard you coming, Mr. Warden, I
feigned sleep. If you had entered my cell at that moment that whole
plan of escape would have ended there. But you passed on. That was the
nearest I ever came to being caught.
"Having established this improvised trolley it is easy to see how I
got things in the cell and made them disappear at will. I merely
dropped them back into the pipe. You, Mr. Warden, could not have
reached the connecting wire with your fingers; they are too large. My
fingers, you see, are longer and more slender. In addition I guarded
the top of that pipe with a rat--you remember how."
"I remember," said the warden, with a grimace. "I thought that if any
one were tempted to investigate that hole the rat would dampen his
ardor. Mr. Hatch could not send me anything useful through the pipe
until next night, although he did send me change for ten dollars as a
test, so I proceeded with other parts of my plan. Then I evolved the
method of escape, which I finally employed.
"In order to carry this out successfully it was necessary for the
guard in the yard to get accustomed to seeing me at the cell window. I
arranged this by dropping linen notes to him, boastful in tone, to
make the warden believe, if possible, one of his assistants was
communicating with the outside for me. I would stand at my window for
hours gazing out, so the guard could see, and occasionally I spoke to
him. In that way I learned that the prison had no electricians of its
own, but was dependent upon the lighting company if anything should go
wrong.
"That cleared the way to freedom perfectly: Early in the evening of
the last day of my imprisonment, when it was dark, I planned to cut
the feed wire which was only a few feet from my window, reaching it
with an acid-tipped wire I had. That would make that side of the
prison perfectly dark while the electricians were searching for the
break. That would also bring Mr. Hatch into the prison yard.
"There was only one more thing to do before I actually began the work
of setting myself free. This was to arrange final details with Mr.
Hatch through our speaking tube. I did this within half an hour after
the warden left my cell on the fourth night of my imprisonment. Mr.
Hatch again had serious difficulty in understanding me, and I repeated
the word 'acid' to him several times, and later the words: 'Number
eight hat'--that's my size--and these were the things which made a
prisoner upstairs confess to murder, so one of the jailers told me
next day. This prisoner heard our voices, confused of course, through
the pipe, which also went to his cell. The cell directly over me was
not occupied, hence no one else heard.
"Of course the actual work of cutting the steel bars out of the window
and door was comparatively easy with nitric acid, which I got through
the pipe in thin bottles, but it took time. Hour after hour on the
fifth and sixth and seventh days the guard below was looking at me as
I worked on the bars of the window with the acid on a piece of wire. I
used the tooth powder to prevent the acid spreading. I looked away
abstractedly as I worked and each minute the acid cut deeper into the
metal. I noticed that the jailers always tried the door by shaking the
upper part, never the lower bars, therefore I cut the lower bars,
leaving them hanging in place by thin strips of metal. But that was a
bit of dare-deviltry. I could not have gone that way so easily."
The Thinking Machine sat silent for several minutes.
"I think that makes everything clear," he went on. "Whatever points I
have not explained were merely to confuse the warden and jailers.
These things in my bed I brought in to please Mr. Hatch, who wanted to
improve the story. Of course, the wig was necessary in my plan. The
special delivery letter I wrote and directed in my cell with Mr.
Hatch's fountain pen, then sent it out to him and he mailed it. That's
all, I think."
"But your actually leaving the prison grounds and then coming in
through the outer gate to my office?" asked the warden.
"Perfectly simple," said the scientist. "I cut the electric light wire
with acid, as I said, when the current was off. Therefore when the
current was turned on the arc didn't light. I knew it would take some
time to find out what was the matter and make repairs. When the guard
went to report to you the yard was dark. I crept out the window--it
was a tight fit, too--replaced the bars by standing on a narrow ledge
and remained in a shadow until the force of electricians arrived. Mr.
Hatch was one of them.
"When I saw him I spoke and he handed me a cap, a jumper and overalls,
which I put on within ten feet of you, Mr. Warden, while you were in
the yard. Later Mr. Hatch called me, presumably as a workman, and
together we went out the gate to get something out of the wagon. The
gate guard let us pass out readily as two workmen who had just passed
in. We changed our clothing and reappeared, asking to see you. We saw
you. That's all."
There was silence for several minutes. Dr. Ransome was first to speak.
"Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Perfectly amazing."
"How did Mr. Hatch happen to come with the electricians?" asked Mr.
Fielding.
"His father is manager of the company," replied The Thinking Machine.
"But what if there had been no Mr. Hatch outside to help?"
"Every prisoner has one friend outside who would help him escape if he
could."
"Suppose--just suppose--there had been no old plumbing system there?"
asked the warden, curiously.
"There were two other ways out," said The Thinking Machine,
enigmatically.
Ten minutes later the telephone bell rang. It was a request for the
warden.
"Light all right, eh?" the warden asked, through the 'phone. "Good.
Wire cut beside Cell 13? Yes, I know. One electrician too many? What's
that? Two came out?"
The warden turned to the others with a puzzled expression.
"He only let in four electricians, he has let out two and says there
are three left."
"I was the odd one," said The Thinking Machine. "Oh," said the warden.
"I see." Then through the 'phone "Let the fifth man go. He's all
right."