Professor Augustus Van Dusen: 49 Detective Mysteries in One Edition. Jacques Futrelle

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СКАЧАТЬ and brought you here. From the fact that you were not dead then I knew that your system had absorbed only a minute quantity of poison—a quantity so small that it demonstrated instantly that there had been no suicidal intent, and indicated, too, that no one else had administered it. If this was true, I knew—I didn’t guess, I knew—that the poisoning was accidental. How accidental?

      “My first surmise, naturally, was that the poison had been absorbed through the mouth. I searched your pockets. The only thing I found that you would put into your mouth were the cigars. Were they poisoned? A test showed they were, all of them. With intent to kill? No. Not enough poison was used. Was the poison a part of the gum used to bind the cigar? Possible, of course, but not probable. Then what?” He lowered his eyes and squinted at me suddenly, aggressively. I shook my head, and, as an afterthought, closed my gaping mouth.

      “Perhaps you carried corrosive sublimate in your pocket. I didn’t find any; but perhaps you once carried it. I tore out the coat pocket in which I found the cigars and subjected it to the test. At sometime there had been corrosive sublimate, in the form of powder or crystals, in the pocket, and in some manner, perhaps because of an imperfection in the package, a minute quantity was loose in your pocket.

      “Here was an answer to every question, and more; here was how the cigars were poisoned, and, in combination with the tailor’s tag inside your pocket, a short history of your life. Briefly it was like this: Once you had corrosive sublimate in your pocket. For what purpose? First thought—to rid your home of insects. Second thought—if you were boarding, married or unmarried, the task of getting rid of the insects would have been left to the servant; and this would possibly have been the case if you had been living at home. So I assumed for the instant that you were keeping house, and if keeping house, you were married—you bought the poison for use in your own house.

      “Now, without an effort, naturally, I had you married, and keeping house. Then what? The tailor’s tag, with your name, and the date your clothing was made—one year and three months ago. It is winter clothing. If you had worn it since the poison was loose in your pocket the thing that happened to you tonight would have happened to you before; but it never happened before, therefore I assume that you had the poison early last spring, when insects began to be troublesome, and immediately after that you laid away the suit until this winter. I know you are wearing the suit for the first time this winter, because, again, this thing has not happened before, and because, too, of the faint odor of moth balls. A band of crape on your hat, the picture of a young woman in your watch, and the fact that you are now living at your club, as your bill for last month shows, establish beyond doubt that you are a widower.”

      “It’s perfectly miraculous!” I exclaimed.

      “Logic, logic, logic,” snapped the irritable little scientist. “You are a lawyer, you ought to know the correlation of facts; you ought to know that two and two make four, not sometimes but all the time.”

      A Piece of String

      Table of Contents

      It was just midnight. Somewhere near the center of a cloud of tobacco smoke, which hovered over one corner of the long editorial room, Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, was writing. The rapid click-click of his type writer went on and on, broken only when he laid aside one sheet to put in another. The finished pages were seized upon one at a time by an office boy and rushed off to the city editor. That astute person glanced at them for information and sent them on to the copy desk, whence they were shot down into that noisy, chaotic wilderness, the composing room.

      The story was what the phlegmatic head of the copy desk, speaking in the vernacular, would have called a “beaut.” It was about the kidnapping that afternoon of Walter Francis, the four-yearold son of a wealthy young broker, Stanley Francis. An alternative to the abduction had been proposed in the form of a gift to certain persons, identity unknown, of fifty thousand dollars. Francis, not unnaturally, objected to the bestowal of so vast a sum upon anyone. So he told the police, and while they were making up their minds the child was stolen. It happened in the usual way—closed carriage, and all that sort of thing.

      Hatch was telling the story graphically, as he could tell a story when there was one to be told. He glanced at the clock, jerked out another sheet of copy, and the office boy scuttled away with it.

      “How much more?” called the city editor.

      “Just a paragraph,” Hatch answered.

      His type writer clicked on merrily for a couple of minutes and then stopped. The last sheet of copy was taken away, and he rose and stretched his legs.

      “Some guy wants yer at the ‘phone,” an office boy told him.

      “Who is it?” asked Hatch.

      “Search me,” replied the boy. “Talks like he’d been eatin’ pickles.”

      Hatch went into the booth indicated. The man at the other end was Professor Augustus S. F.

      X. Van Dusen. The reporter instantly recognized the crabbed, perpetually irritated voice of the noted scientist, The Thinking Machine.

      “That you, Mr. Hatch?” came over the wire.

      “Yes.”

      “Can you do something for me immediately?” he queried. “It is very important.”

      “Certainly.”

      “Now listen closely,” directed The Thinking Machine. “Take a car from Park-sq., the one that goes toward Worcester through Brookline. About two miles beyond Brookline is Randall’s Crossing. Get off there and go to your right until you come to a small white house. In front of this house, a little to the left and across an open field, is a large tree. It stands just in the edge of a dense wood. It might be better to approach it through the wood, so as not to attract attention. Do you follow me?”

      “Yes,” Hatch replied. His imagination was leading him a chase. “Go to this tree now, immediately, tonight,” continued The Thinking Machine. “You will find a small hole in it near the level of your eye. Feel in that hole, and see what is there—no matter what it is—then return to Brookline and telephone me. It is of the greatest importance.”

      The reporter was thoughtful for a moment; it sounded like a page from a Dumas romance.

      “What’s it all about?” he asked curiously.

      “Will you go?” came the counter question.

      “Yes, certainly.”

      “Good-by.”

      Hatch heard a click as the receiver was hung up at the other end. He shrugged his shoulders, said “Good-night” to the city editor, and went out. An hour later he was at Randall’s Crossing. The night was dark—so dark that the road was barely visible. The car whirled on, and as its lights were swallowed up Hatch set out to find the white house. He came upon it at last, and, turning, faced across an open field toward the wood. Far away over there outlined vaguely against the distant glow of the city, was a tall tree.

      Having fixed its location, the reporter moved along for a hundred yards or more to where the wood ran down to the road. Here he climbed a fence and stumbled on through the dark, doing sundry injuries to his shins. After a disagreeable ten minutes he reached the tree.

      With a small electric flash light he found the hole. СКАЧАТЬ