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

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СКАЧАТЬ snow had fallen for an hour, then stopped, and the clouds passed. Now, at fifteen minutes of six o’clock in the evening, the moon glittered coldly and clearly over the unbroken surface of the snow. Star points spangled the sky; the wind had gone, and extreme quiet lay over the place. Even the sound from the street, where an occasional vehicle passed, was muffled by the snow. Baby Blake heard a jingling sleigh bell somewhere in the distance and raised his head inquiringly.

      “Pretty horse,” said Miss Balton, quickly indicating a splash of color in the open book.

      “Pitty horsie,” said Baby Blake.

      “Horse,” said Miss Barton. “Four legs. One, two, three, four,” she counted.

      “Pitty horsie,” said Baby Blake again.

      He turned another page with a ruthless disregard of what might happen to it.

      “Pitty kitty,” he went on, wisely.

      “Yes, pretty kitty,” the nurse agreed.

      “Pitty doggie, ‘n’ pitty ev’fing, ooo-o-oh,” Baby Blake was gravely enthusiastic. “Ef’nit,” he added, as his eye caught a full page picture.

      “Elephant, yes,” said Miss Barton. “Almost bedtime,” she added.

      “No, no,” insisted Baby Blake, vigorously. “Pity ef’nit.”

      Then Baby Blake arose from his seat on the floor and toddled over to where Miss Barton sat, plumping down heavily, directly in front of her. Here, with the picture book in his hands he lay back with his head resting against her knee. Mrs. Blake appeared at the door.

      “Miss Barton, a moment please,” she said. Her face was white and there was a strange note in her voice.

      A little anxiously, the girl arose and went into the adjoining room with Mrs. Blake, leaving Baby Blake with the picture book outspread on the floor. Mrs. Blake handed her an open letter, written on a piece of wrapping paper in a scrawly, almost indecipherable hand.

      “This came in the late afternoon mail,” said the mother. “Read it.”

      “‘We hav maid plans to kiddnap your baby,’” Miss Barton read slowly. “‘Nothig cann bee dun to keep us from it so it wont do no good to tel the polece. If you will git me ten thousan dolers we will not, and will go away. Advertis YES or NOA ann sin your name in a Boston Amurikan. Then we will tell you wat to do. (sined) Three. (3)’”

      Miss Barton was silent a moment as she realized what she had read and there was a quick-caught breath.

      “A threat to kidnap,” said the mother. “Evelyn, Evelyn, can you believe it?”

      “Oh, Mrs. Blake,” and tears leaped to the girl’s eyes quickly. “Oh, the monsters.”

      “I don’t know what to do,” said the mother, uncertainly.

      “The police, I would suggest,” replied the girl, quickly. “I should turn it over to the police immediately.”

      “Then the newspaper notoriety,” said the mother, “and after all it may mean nothing. I think perhaps it would be better for us to leave here tomorrow, and go into Boston for the Winter. I could never live here with this horrible fear hanging over me—if I should lose my baby, too, it would kill me.”

      “As you say, but I would suggest the police, nevertheless,” the girl insisted gently.

      “Of course the money is nothing,” she went on. “I would give every penny for the boy if I had to, but there’s the fear and uncertainty of it. I think perhaps it would be better for you to pack up Douglas’s little clothes tonight and tomorrow we will go to Boston to a hotel until we can make other arrangements for the Winter. You need not mention the matter to the others in the house.”

      “I think perhaps that would be best,” said Miss Barton, “but I still think the police should be notified.”

      The two women left the room together and returned to the library after about ten minutes, where Baby Blake had been looking at the picture book. The baby was not there, and Miss Barton turned and glanced quickly at Mrs. Blake. The mother apparently paid no attention, and the nurse passed into another room, thinking Douglas had gone there.

      Within ten minutes the household was in an uproar—Baby Blake had disappeared. Miss Barton, the servants and the distracted mother raced through the roomy building, searching every nook and corner, calling for Douglas. No answer. At last Miss Barton and Mrs. Blake met face to face in the library over the picture book the baby had been admiring.

      “I’m afraid it’s happened,” said the nurse.

      “Kidnapped!” exclaimed the mother. “Oh,” and with waxen white face she sank back on a couch in a dead faint.

      Regardless of the mother, Evelyn ran to the telephone and notified the police. They responded promptly, three detectives and two uniformed officers. The threatening letter was placed in their hands, and one of them laid its contents before his chief by ‘phone, a general alarm was sent out.

      While the uniformed men searched the house again from attic to cellar the two other plain clothes men searched outside. Together they went over the ground, but the surface of the snow was unbroken save for their own footprints and the paved path. From the front wall, which faced the street, the detectives walked slowly back, one on each side of the house, searching in the snow for some trace of a footprint.

      There was nothing to reward this vigilance, and they met behind the house. Each shook his head. Then one stopped suddenly and pointed to the snow which lay at their feet and spreading away over the immense back yard. The other detective looked intently then stopped and stared.

      What he saw was the footprint of a child—a baby. The tracks led straight away through the snow toward the back wall, and without a word the two men followed them, one by one; the regular toddling steps of a baby who is only fairly certain of his feet. Ten, twenty, thirty feet they went on in a straight line and already the detectives saw a possible solution. It was that Baby Blake had wandered away of his own free will.

      Then, as they were following the tracks, they stopped suddenly astounded. Each dropped on his knees in the snow and sought vainly for something sought over a space of many feet, then turned back to the tracks again.

      “Well, if that—” one began.

      The footprints, going steadily forward across the yard, had stopped. There was the last, made as if Baby Blake had intended to go forward, but there were no more tracks—no more traces of tracks—nothing. Baby Blake had walked to this point, and then—

      “Why he must have gone straight up in the air,” gasped one of the detectives. He sank down on a small wooden box three or four feet from where the tracks ended, and wiped the perspiration from his face.

      2

      “All problems may be reduced to an arithmetical basis by a simple mental process,” declared Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, emphatically. “Once a problem is so reduced, no matter what it is, it may be solved. If you play chess, Mr. Hatch, you will readily grasp what I mean. Our great chess СКАЧАТЬ