Then came a fierce, hard fight for possession of the revolver. It
ended with the weapon in Hatch's hand, and both he and Cabell blowing
from the effort they had expended. Jean, the valet, had turned at the
sound of the shot and started toward the door leading into the hall.
The Thinking Machine had stepped in front of him, and now stood there
with his back to the door. Physically he would have been a child in
the hands of the valet, yet there was a look in his eyes which stopped
him.
"Now, Mr. Hatch," said the scientist quietly, a touch of irony in his
voice, "hand me the revolver, then 'phone for Detective Mallory to
come here immediately. Tell him we have a murderer--and if he can't
come at once get some other detective whom you know."
"Murderer!" gasped Cabell.
Uncontrollable rage was blazing in the eyes of the valet, and he made
as if to throw The Thinking Machine aside, despite the revolver, when
Hatch was at the telephone. As Jean started forward, however, Cabell
stopped him with a quick, stern gesture. Suddenly the young Southerner
turned on The Thinking Machine; but it was with a question.
"What does it all mean?" he asked, bewildered.
"It means that that man there," and The Thinking Machine indicated the
valet by a nod of his head, "is a murderer--that he killed Louise
Regnier; that he shot Weldon Henley on Boston Common, and that, with
the aid of Miss Regnier, he had four times previously attempted to
kill Mr. Henley. Is he coming, Mr. Hatch?"
"Yes," was the reply. "He says he'll be here directly."
"Do you deny it?" demanded The Thinking Machine of the valet.
"I've done nothing," said the valet sullenly. "I'm going out of here."
Like an infuriated animal he rushed forward. Hatch and Cabell seized
him and bore him to the floor. There, after a frantic struggle, he was
bound and the other three men sat down to wait for Detective Mallory.
Cabell sank back in his chair with a perplexed frown on his face. From
time to time he glanced at Jean. The flush of anger which had been on
the valet's face was gone now; instead there was the pallor of fear.
"Won't you tell us?" pleaded Cabell impatiently.
"When Detective Mallory comes and takes his prisoner," said The
Thinking Machine.
Ten minutes later they heard a quick step in the hall outside and
Hatch opened the door. Detective Mallory entered and looked from one
to another inquiringly.
"That's your prisoner, Mr. Mallory," said the scientist, coldly. "I
charge him with the murder of Miss Regnier, whom you were so confident
committed suicide; I charge him with five attempts on the life of
Weldon Henley, four times by gas poisoning, in which Miss Regnier was
his accomplice, and once by shooting. He is the man who shot Mr.
Henley."
The Thinking Machine arose and walked over to the prostrate man,
handing the revolver to Hatch. He glared down at Jean fiercely.
"Will you tell how you did it or shall I?" he demanded.
His answer was a sullen, defiant glare. He turned and picked up the
square mirror which the valet had produced previously.
"That's where the screw was, isn't it?" he asked, as he indicated a
small hole in the frame of the mirror. Jean stared at it and his head
sank forward hopelessly. "And this is the bath robe you wore, isn't
it?" he demanded again, and from the suit case he pulled out the
garment with the scarlet stripe.
"I guess you got me all right," was the sullen reply.
"It might be better for you if you told the story then?" suggested The
Thinking Machine.
"You know so much about it, tell it yourself."
"Very well," was the calm rejoinder. "I will. If I make any mistake
you will correct me."
For a long time no one spoke. The Thinking Machine had dropped back
into a chair and was staring through his thick glasses at the ceiling;
his finger tips were pressed tightly together. At last he began:
"There are certain trivial gaps which only the imagination can supply
until the matter is gone into more fully. I should have supplied these
myself, but the arrest of this man, Jean, was precipitated by the
attempted hurried departure of Mr. Cabell for the South to-night, and
I did not have time to go into the case to the fullest extent.
"Thus, we begin with the fact that there were several clever attempts
made to murder Mr. Henley. This was by putting out the gas which he
habitually left burning in his room. It happened four times in all;
thus proving that it was an attempt to kill him. If it had been only
once it might have been accident, even twice it might have been
accident, but the same accident does not happen four times at the same
time of night.
"Mr. Henley finally grew to regard the strange extinguishing of the
gas as an effort to kill him, and carefully locked and barred his door
and windows each night. He believed that some one came into his
apartments and put out the light, leaving the gas flow. This, of
course, was not true. Yet the gas was put out. How? My first idea, a
natural one, was that it was turned off for an instant at the meter,
when the light would go out, then turned on again. This, I convinced
myself, was not true. Therefore still the question--how?
"It is a fact--I don't know how widely known it is--but it is a fact
that every gas light in this house might be extinguished at the same
time from this room without leaving it. How? Simply by removing the
gas jet tip and blowing into the gas pipe. It would not leave a jet in
the building burning. It is due to the fact that the lung power is
greater than the pressure of the gas in the pipes, and forces it out.
"Thus we have the method employed to extinguish the light in Mr.
Henley's rooms, and all the barred and locked doors and windows would
not stop it. At the same time it threatened the life of every other
person in the house--that is, every other person who used gas. It was
probably for this reason that the attempt was always made late at
night, I should say three or four o'clock. That's when it was done,
isn't it?" he asked suddenly of the valet.
Staring at The Thinking Machine in open-mouthed astonishment the valet
nodded his acquiescence before he was fully aware of it.
"Yes, that's right," The Thinking Machine resumed complacently. "This
was easily found out--comparatively. The next question was how was a
watch kept on Mr. Henley? It would have done no good to extinguish the
gas before he was asleep, or, to have turned it on when he was not in
his rooms. It might have led to a speedy discovery of just how the
thing was done.
"There's a spring lock on the door of Mr. Henley's apartment.
Therefore it would have been impossible for anyone to peep through the
keyhole. There are no cracks through which one might see. How was this
watch kept? How was the plotter to satisfy himself positively of the
time when Mr. Henley was asleep? How was it the gas was put out at no
time of the score or more nights Mr. Henley himself kept watch?
Obviously he was watched through a window.
"No one could climb out on the window ledge and look into Mr. Henley's
apartments. No one could see into that apartment from the street--that
is, could see whether Mr. Henley was asleep or even in bed. They could
see the light. Watch was kept with the aid offered by the flagpole,
supplemented with a mirror--this mirror. A screw was driven into the
frame--it has been removed now--it was swung on the flagpole rope and
pulled out to the end of the pole, facing the building. To a man
standing in the hall window of the third floor it offered precisely
the angle necessary to reflect the interior of Mr. Henley's suite,
possibly even showed him in bed through a narrow opening in the
curtain. There is no shade on the windows of that suite; heavy
curtains instead. Is that right?"
Again the prisoner was surprised into a mute acquiescence.
"I saw the possibility of these things, and I saw, too, that at three
or four o'clock in the morning it would be perfectly possible for a
person to move about the upper halls of this house without being seen.
If he wore a heavy bath robe, with a hood, say, no one would recognize
him even if he were seen, and besides the garb would not cause
suspicion. This bath robe has a hood.
"Now, in working the mirror back and forth on the flagpole at night a
tiny scarlet thread was pulled out of the robe and clung to the rope.
I found this thread; later Mr. Hatch found an identical thread in
these apartments. Both came from that bath robe. Plain logic shows
that the person who blew down the gas pipes worked the mirror trick;
the person who worked the mirror trick left the thread; the thread
comes back to the bath robe--that bath robe there," he pointed
dramatically. "Thus the person who desired Henley's death was in these
apartments, or had easy access to them."
He paused a moment and there was a tense silence. A great light was
coming to Hatch, slowly but surely. The brain that had followed all
this was unlimited in possibilities.
"Even before we traced the origin of the crime to this room," went on
the scientist, quietly now, "attention had been attracted here,
particularly to you, Mr. Cabell. It was through the love affair, of
which Miss Lipscomb was the center. Mr. Hatch learned that you and
Henley had been rivals for her hand. It was that, even before this
scarlet thread was found, which indicated that you might have some
knowledge of the affair, directly or indirectly.
"You are not a malicious or revengeful man, Mr. Cabell. But you are
hot-tempered--extremely so. You demonstrated that just now, when,
angry and not understanding, but feeling that your honor was at stake,
you shot a hole in the floor."
"What?" asked Detective Mallory.
"A little accident," explained The Thinking Machine quickly. "Not
being a malicious or revengeful man, you are not the man to
deliberately go ahead, and make elaborate plans for the murder of
Henley. In a moment of passion you might have killed him--but never
deliberately as the result of premeditation. Besides you were out of
town. Who was then in these apartments? Who had access to these
apartments? Who might have used your bath robe? Your valet, possibly
Miss Austin. Which? Now, let's see how we reached this conclusion
which led to the valet.
"Miss Regnier was found dead. It was not suicide. How did I know?
Because she had been reading with the gas light at its full. If she
had been reading by the gas light, how was it then that it went out
and suffocated her before she could arise and shut it off? Obviously
she must have fallen asleep over her book and left the light burning.
"If she was in this plot to kill Henley, why did she light the jet in
her room? There might have been some slight defect in the electric
bulb in her room which she had just discovered. Therefore she lighted
the gas, intending to extinguish it--turn it off entirely--later. But
she fell asleep. Therefore when the valet here blew into the pipe,
intending to kill Mr. Henley, he unwittingly killed the woman he
loved--Miss Regnier. It was perfectly possible, meanwhile, that she
did not know of the attempt to be made that particular night, although
she had participated in the others, knowing that Henley had night
after night sat up to watch the light in his rooms.
"The facts, as I knew them, showed no connection between Miss Regnier
and this man at that time--nor any connection between Miss Regnier and
Henley. It might have been that the person who blew the gas out of the
pipe from these rooms knew nothing whatever of Miss Regnier, just as
he didn't know who else he might have killed in the building.
"But I had her death and the manner of it. I had eliminated you, Mr.
Cabell. Therefore there remained Miss Austin and the valet. Miss
Austin was eccentric--insane, if you will. Would she have any motive
for killing Henley? I could imagine none. Love? Probably not. Money?
They had nothing in common on that ground. What? Nothing that I could
see. Therefore, for the moment, I passed Miss Austin by, after asking
you, Mr. Cabell, if you were Miss Austin.
"What remained? The valet. Motive? Several possible ones, one or two
probable. He is French, or says he is. Miss Regnier is French.
Therefore I had arrived at the conclusion that they knew each other as
people of the same nationality will in a house of this sort. And
remember, I had passed by Mr. Cabell and Miss Austin, so the valet was
the only one left; he could use the bath robe.
"Well, the motive. Frankly that was the only difficult point in the
entire problem--difficult because there were so many possibilities.
And each possibility that suggested itself suggested also a woman.
Jealousy? There must be a woman. Hate? Probably a woman. Attempted
extortion? With the aid of a woman. No other motive which would lead
to so elaborate a plot of murder would come forward. Who was the
woman? Miss Regnier.
"Did Miss Regnier know Henley? Mr. Hatch had reason to believe he knew
her because of his actions when informed of her death. Knew her how?
People of such relatively different planes of life can know each
other--or do know each other--only on one plane. Henley is a typical
young man, fast, I dare say, and liberal. Perhaps, then, there had
been a liaison. When I saw this possibility I had my motives--all of
them--jealousy, hate and possibly attempted extortion as well.
"What was more possible than Mr. Henley and Miss Regnier had been
acquainted? All liaisons are secret ones. Suppose she had been cast
off because of the engagement to a young woman of Henley's own level?
Suppose she had confided in the valet here? Do you see? Motives enough
for any crime, however diabolical. The attempts on Henley's life
possibly followed an attempted extortion of money. The shot which
wounded Henley was fired by this man, Jean. Why? Because the woman who
had cause to hate Henley was dead. Then the man? He was alive and
vindictive. Henley knew who shot him, and knew why, but he'll never
say it publicly. He can't afford to. It would ruin him. I think
probably that's all. Do you want to add anything?" he asked of the
valet.
"No," was the fierce reply. "I'm sorry I didn't kill him, that's all.
It was all about as you said, though God knows how you found it out,"
he added, desperately.
"Are you a Frenchman?"
"I was born in New York, but lived in France for eleven years. I first
knew Louise there."
Silence fell upon the little group. Then Hatch asked a question:
"You told me, Professor, that there would be no other attempt to kill
Henley by extinguishing the gas. How did you know that?"
"Because one person--the wrong person--had been killed that way," was
the reply. "For this reason it was hardly likely that another attempt
of that sort would be made. You had no intention of killing Louise
Regnier, had you, Jean?"
"No, God help me, no."
"It was all done in these apartments," The Thinking Machine added,
turning to Cabell, "at the gas jet from which I took the tip. It had
been only loosely replaced and the metal was tarnished where the lips
had dampened it."
"It must take great lung power to do a thing like that," remarked
Detective Mallory.
"You would be amazed to know how easily it is done," said the
scientist. "Try it some time."
The Thinking Machine arose and picked up his hat; Hatch did the same.
Then the reporter turned to Cabell.
"Would you mind telling me why you were so anxious to get away
to-night?" he asked.
"Well, no," Cabell explained, and there was a rush of red to his face.
"It's because I received a telegram from Virginia--Miss Lipscomb, in
fact. Some of Henley's past had come to her knowledge and the telegram
told me that the engagement was broken. On top of this came the
information that Henley had been shot and--I was considerably
agitated."
The Thinking Machine and Hatch were walking along the street.
"What did you write in the note you sent to Cabell that made him start
to unpack?" asked the reporter, curiously.
"There are some things that it wouldn't be well for everyone to know,"
was the enigmatic response. "Perhaps it would be just as well for you
to overlook this little omission."
"Of course, of course," replied the reporter, wonderingly.