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

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СКАЧАТЬ never be seen again.”

      “How did the child leave the yard?”

      “If the child does not appear within twenty-four hours,” was the reply, “I shall tell you. It is a hideous story.”

      Hatch had to be content with that statement of the case for the moment. None knew better than he how useless it would be to question The Thinking Machine.

      “Did you happen to know, Mr. Hatch,” The Thinking Machine asked, “that in the event of the death of Douglas Blake, his fortune of nearly three million dollars left in trust by his father would be divided among four relatives of Mrs. Blake?”

      “What?” asked Hatch, a little startled.

      “Suppose for instance, Baby Blake was never found, as seems possible,” went on the other. “After a certain number of years, I believe, in a case of that kind there is an assumption of death and property passes to heirs. You see then, there was a motive, and a strong one, underlying this entire affair.”

      “But, surely there wouldn’t be murder?”

      “Not murder,” responded The Thinking Machine tartly. “I haven’t even suggested murder. I said I believe the child is dead. If it is not dead who would benefit by his disappearance? The four whom I named. Well, suppose Baby Blake fell into the hands of those people. It would be comparatively an easy matter for them to lose it in some way—not necessarily kill it—have it adopted in some orphan asylum, place it anywhere to hide its identity. That’s the main thing.”

      Hatch began to see light faintly, he thought.

      “Then this advertisement is to the people who may be holding the child now?” he asked.

      “It is so addressed,” was the other’s reply.

      “But, but—” Hatch began.

      “Once upon a time a noted wit, who was of necessity a student of human nature,” The Thinking Machine began, “declared there was one thing carefully hidden in every man’s life which would ruin him should it be known, or land him in prison. He volunteered to prove this, taking any man whose name was suggested. An eminent minister of the gospel was named as the victim. The wit sent a telegram to the minister, who was attending a banquet: ‘All is discovered. Flee while there is opportunity,’ signed ‘Friend.’ The minister read it, arose and left the room, and from that day to this he has never been seen again.”

      Hatch laughed, and The Thinking Machine glanced at him with an annoyed expression on his face.

      “I had no intention of arousing your laughter,” he said sharply. “I merely intended to illustrate the possible effect of a guilty conscience.”

      When the flaming advertisement in the newspapers was called to the attention of the police, they were first surprised, then amused. Then they grew serious. After a while an officer went to Mrs. Blake and asked what it meant. She informed him that she had acted at the suggestion of Professor Van Dusen. Then the police were amused again; they are wont to feign an amusement which they never feel in the presence of a superior mind.

      That afternoon, Hatch, who by direction of The Thinking Machine, was on watch again near the Blake home, received a strange request from the scientist by telephone. It was:

      “Go to the Blake home immediately, see the picture book which Baby Blake was looking at just before his disappearance, and report to me by ‘phone just what’s in it.”

      “The picture book?” Hatch repeated.

      “Certainly, the picture book,” said the scientist, irritably. “Also find out for me from the nurse and Mrs. Blake if the baby cried easily, that is from a slight hurt or anything of that kind.”

      With these things in his mind Hatch went to the Blake house, had a look at the picture book, asked the questions as to Baby Blake’s propensity to weep on slight provocation, and returned to the ‘phone. Feeling singularly foolish, he enumerated to The Thinking Machine the things he had seen in the picture book.

      “There’s a horse, and a cat with three kittens,” he explained. “Also a pale purple rhinoceros, and a dog, an elephant, a deer, an alligator, a monkey, three chicks, and a whole lot of birds.”

      “Any eagle?” queried the other.

      “Yes, an eagle among them, with a rabbit in its claws.”

      “And the monkey. What is it doing?”

      “Hanging by its tail to a blue tree with a coconut in its hands,” replied the reporter. The humor of the situation was beginning to appeal to him.

      “And about the baby crying?” the scientist asked.

      “He does not cry easily, both the mother and nurse say,” replied Hatch. “They both describe him as a brave little chap, who cries sometimes when he can’t have his own way, but never from fright or a minor hurt.”

      “Good,” he heard The Thinking Machine say. “Watch in front of the Blake house tonight until half past eight. If the child returns it will probably be earlier than that. Speak to the person who brings him, as he leaves the house, and he will tell you his story I think, if you can make him understand that he is in no danger. Immediately after that come to my home in Boston.”

      Hatch was treading on air; when The Thinking Machine gave positive directions of that sort it usually meant that the final curtain was to be drawn aside. He so construed this.

      Thus it came to pass that Hutchinson Hatch planted himself, carefully hidden so he might command a view of the front of the Blake home, and waited there for many hours.

      Mrs. Blake, the mother of the millionaire baby, had just finished her dinner and had retired to a small parlor off the library, where she reclined on a couch. It was ten minutes of seven o’clock in the evening. After a moment Miss Barton entered the room.

      The girl heard a sob from the couch and impulsively ran to Mrs. Blake, who was weeping softly—she was always weeping now. A few comforting words, a little consolation such as one woman is able to give to another, and the girl arose from her knees and started into the library, where a dim light burned.

      As she was entering that room again, she paused, screamed and without a word sank down on the floor, fainting. Mrs. Blake rose from the couch and rushed toward the door. She screamed too, but that scream was of a different tone from that of the girl—it was a fierce scream of mother-love satisfied.

      For there on the floor of the library sat Baby Blake, millionaire, gazing with enraptured eyes at his brilliantly colored picture book.

      “Pitty hossie,” he said to his mother. “See! See!”

      6

      It was an affecting scene Hutchinson Hatch witnessed in the Blake home about halfpast seven o’clock. It was that of a mother clasping a baby to her breast while tears of joy and hysteria streamed from her eyes. Baby Blake struggled manfully to free himself, but the mother clung to him.

      “My boy, my boy,” she sobbed again and again.

      Miss Barton sat on the floor beside СКАЧАТЬ