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

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СКАЧАТЬ been murdered,” declared The Thinking Machine quietly, to Osaka. “We know that Mrs. Dudley killed him,” he went on as Hatch stared, “but I have told her she is not suspected. We are not officers and cannot arrest her. Can you go with us to Boston, without the knowledge of anyone here and tell what you know of the quarrel between husband and wife to the police?”

      Osaka looked placidly into the eager face.

      “I had the honour to believe that the circumstances would not be recognized,” he said finally. “Since you know, I will go.”

      “We will drive down a little way and wait for you.”

      The Japanese disappeared into the house again. Hatch was too astounded to speak, but followed The Thinking Machine into the carry-all. It drove away a hundred yards and stopped. After a few minutes an impalpable shadow came toward them through the night. The scientist peered out as it came up.

      “Osaka?” he asked softly.

      “Yes.”

      An hour later the three men were on a train, Boston bound. Once comfortably settled the scientist turned to the Japanese.

      “Now if you will please tell me just what happened the night of the ball?” he asked, “and the incidents leading up to the disagreement between Mr. and Mrs. Dudley?”

      “He drank elaborately,” Osaka explained reluctantly, in his quaint English, “and when drinking he was brutal to the honourable lady. Twice with my own eyes I saw him strike her—once in Japan where I entered his service while they were on a wedding journey, and once here. On the night of the ball he was immeasurably intoxicated, and when he danced he fell down to the floor. The honourable lady was chagrined and angry—she had been angry before. There was some quarrel which I am not comprehensive of. They had been widely divergent for several months. It was, of course, not prominent in the presence of others.”

      “And the cut on his arm where the court plaster was applied?” asked the scientist. “Just how did he get that?”

      “It was when he fell down,” continued the Japanese. “He reached to embrace a carved chair and the carved wood cut his arm. I assisted him to his feet and the honourable lady sent me to her room to get court plaster. I acquired it from her dressing table and she placed it on the cut.”

      “That makes the evidence against her absolutely conclusive,” remarked The Thinking Machine, as if finally. There was a little pause, and then: “Do you happen to know just how Mrs. Dudley placed the body in the boat?”

      “I have not that honour,” said Osaka. “Indeed I am not comprehensive of anything that happened after the court plaster was put on except that Mr. Dudley was affected some way and went out of the house. Mrs. Dudley, too, was not in the ball room for ten minutes or so afterwards.”

      Hutchinson Hatch stared frankly into the face of The Thinking Machine; there was nothing to be read there. Still deeply thoughtful Hatch heard the brakeman bawl “Boston” and mechanically followed the scientist and Osaka out of the station into a cab. They were driven immediately to Police Headquarters. Detective Mallory was just about to go home when they entered his office.

      “It may enlighten you, Mr. Mallory,” announced the scientist coldly, “to know that the man in the motor boat was not a French naval officer who died of natural causes—he was Langham Dudley, a millionaire ship owner. He was murdered. It just happens that I know the person who did it.”

      The detective arose in astonishment and stared at the slight figure before him inquiringly; he knew the man too well to dispute any assertion he might make.

      “Who is the murderer?” he asked.

      The Thinking Machine closed the door and the spring lock clicked.

      “That man there,” he remarked calmly, turning on Osaka.

      For one brief instant there was a pause and silence; then the detective advanced upon the Japanese with hand outstretched. The agile Osaka leapt suddenly, as a snake strikes; there was a quick, fierce struggle and Detective Mallory sprawled on the floor. There had been just a twist of the wrist—a trick of jiu jitsu—and Osaka had flung himself at the locked door. As he fumbled there Hatch, deliberately and without compunction, raised a chair and brought it down on his head. Osaka sank down without a sound.

      It was an hour before they brought him around again. Meanwhile the detective had patted and petted half a dozen suddenly acquired bruises, and had then searched Osaka. He found nothing to interest him save a small bottle. He uncorked it and started to smell it when The Thinking Machine snatched it away.

      “You fool, that’ll kill you!” he exclaimed.

      Osaka sat, lashed hand and foot to a chair, in Detective Mallory’s office—so placed by the detective for safe keeping. His face was no longer expressionless; there were fear and treachery and cunning there. So he listened, perforce, to the statement of the case by The Thinking Machine who leaned back in his chair, squinting steadily upward and with his long, slender fingers pressed together.

      “Two and two make four, not some times but all the time,” he began at last as if disputing some previous assertion. “As the figure two, wholly disconnected from any other, gives small indication of a result, so is an isolated fact of little consequence. Yet that fact added to another, and the resulting fact added to a third, and so on, will give a final result. That result, if every fact is considered, must be correct. Thus any problem may be solved by logic; logic is inevitable.

      “In this case the facts, considered singly, might have been compatible with either a natural death, suicide, or murder—considered together they proved murder. The climax of this proof was the removal of the maker’s name from the dead man’s shoes, and a fact strongly contributory was the attempt to destroy the identity of the boat. A subtle mind lay back of it all.”

      “I so regarded it,” said Detective Mallory. “I was confident of murder until the Medical Examiner—”

      “We prove a murder,” The Thinking Machine went on serenely. “The method? I was with Dr. Clough at the autopsy. There was no shot, or knife wound, no poison in the stomach. Knowing there was murder I sought further. Then I found the method in a slight, jagged wound on the left arm. It had been covered with court plaster. The heart showed constriction without apparent cause, and while Dr. Clough examined it I took off this court plaster. Its odour, an unusual one, told me that poison had been transfused into the blood through the wound. So two and two had made four.

      “Then—what poison? A knowledge of botany aided me. I recognized faintly the trace of an odour of an herb which is not only indigenous to, but grows exclusively in Japan. Thus a Japanese poison. Analysis later in my laboratory proved it was a Japanese poison, virulent, and necessarily slow to act unless it is placed directly in an artery. The poison on the court plaster and that you took from Osaka are identical.”

      The scientist uncorked the bottle and permitted a single drop of a green liquid to fall on his handkerchief. He allowed a minute or more for evaporation then handed it to Detective Mallory who sniffed at it from a respectful distance. Then The Thinking Machine produced the bit of court plaster he had taken from the dead man’s arm, and again the detective sniffed.

      “The same,” the scientist resumed as he touched a lighted match to the handkerchief and watched it crumble to ashes, “and so powerful that in its pure state mere inhalation is fatal. I permitted Dr. Clough to make public his opinion—heart failure—after the autopsy for obvious reasons. СКАЧАТЬ