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

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СКАЧАТЬ let Morris be hossie.”

      “No, no. You be hossie.”

      That was all. Evidently some one was “hossie,” because there was a sound of romping; but finally even that died away. Hatch yawned away another hour or so under the constant eye of his guard, and then began to grow restless. He turned on the guard savagely.

      “Isn’t anything ever going to happen?” he demanded.

      The guard didn’t say.

      “You’ll never convict yourself on your own statement,” Hatch burst out again in disgust.

      He stretched out on a couch, bored by the sameness which had characterized the last few hours of his adventure. His attention was attracted by some movement at the door, and he looked up. His guard heard, too, and with revolver in hand went to the door, carefully unlocking it. After a few hurriedly whispered words he left the room, and Hatch was meditating an instant rush for a window, when the woman entered. She had the revolver now. She was deathly white and gripped the weapon menacingly. She did not lock the door—only closed it—but with her own person and the attention compelling revolver she blocked the way.

      “What is it now?” asked Hatch wearily.

      “You must not speak or call, or make the slightest sound,” she whispered tensely. “If you do, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

      Hatch confessed by a nod that he understood. He also imagined that he understood this sudden change in guard, and the warning. It was because some one was about to enter or had entered the house. His conjecture was partially confirmed instantly by a distant rapping on a door.

      “Not a sound, now!” whispered the woman.

      From somewhere below he heard the sound of steps as one of the servants answered the knock. After a short wait he heard two voices mumbling. Suddenly one was raised clearly.

      “Why, Worcester can’t be that far,” it protested irritably.

      Hatch knew. It was The Thinking Machine. The woman noted a change in his manner and drew back the hammer of the revolver. The reporter saw the idea. He didn’t dare call. That would be suicide. Perhaps he could attract attention, though; drop a key, for instance. The sound might reach The Thinking Machine and be interpreted aright. One hand was in a pocket, and slowly he was drawing out a key. He would risk it. Maybe—

      Then came a new sound. It was the patter of small feet. The guarded door was pushed open and a tousle-headed child, a boy, ran in.

      “Mama, mama!” he called loudly. He ran to the woman and clutched at her skirts.

      “Oh, my baby! what have you done?” she asked piteously. “We are lost, lost!”

      “Me ‘faid,” the child went on.

      With the door—his avenue of possible escape—open, Hatch did not drop the key. Instead, he gazed at the woman, then down at the child. From below he again heard The Thinking Machine.

      “How far is the car track, then?”

      The servant answered something. There was a sound of steps, and the front door closed. Hatch knew that The Thinking Machine had come and gone; yet he was strangely calm about it, quite himself, despite the fact that a nervous finger still lay on the trigger of the pistol.

      From his refuge behind his mother’s skirts the boy peered around at Hatch shyly. The reporter gazed, gazed, all eyes, and then was convinced. The boy was Walter Francis, the kidnapped boy whose pictures were being published in every newspaper of a dozen cities. Here was a story—the story—the superlative story.

      “Mrs. Francis, if you wouldn’t mind letting down that hammer—” he suggested modestly. “I assure you I contemplate no harm, and you—you are very nervous.”

      “You know me, then?” she asked.

      “Only because the child there, Walter, called you mama.”

      Mrs. Francis lowered the revolver hammer so recklessly that Hatch involuntarily dodged. And then came a scene, a scene with tears in it, and all those things which stir men, even reporters. Finally the woman dropped the revolver on the floor and swept the boy up in her arms with a gesture of infinite tenderness. He cuddled there, content. At that moment Hatch could have walked out the door, but instead he sat down. He was just beginning to get interested.

      “They sha’n’t take you!” sobbed the mother.

      “There is no immediate danger,” the reporter assured her. “The man who came here for that purpose has gone. Meanwhile, if you will tell me the facts, perhaps—perhaps I may be able to be of some assistance.”

      Mrs. Francis looked at him, startled. “Help me?”

      “If you will explain, perhaps I can do something,” said Hatch again.

      Somewhere back in a remote recess of his brain he was remembering. And as it became clearer he was surprised that he had not remembered sooner. It was a story of marital infelicity, and its principals were Stanley Francis and his wife—this bewilderingly pretty young woman before him. It had been only eight or nine months back.

      Technically she had deserted Stanley Francis. There had been some violent scene and she left their home and little son. Soon afterward she went to Europe. It had been rumored that divorce proceedings would follow, or at least a legal separation, but nothing had ever come of the rumors. All this Mrs. Francis told to Hatch in little incoherent bursts, punctuated with sobs and tears.

      “He struck me, he struck me!” she declared with a flush of anger and shame, “and I went then on impulse. I was desperate. Later, even before I went to Europe, I knew the legal status of the affair; but the thought of my boy lingered, and I resolved to come back and get him—abduct him, if necessary. I did that, and I will keep him if I have to kill the one who opposes me.”

      Hatch saw the mother instinct here, that tigerish ferocity of love which stops at nothing.

      “I conceived the plan of demanding fifty thousand dollars of my husband under threat of abduction,” Mrs. Francis went on. “My purpose was to make it appear that the plot was that of professional—what would you call it?—kidnappers. But I did not send the letter demanding this until I had perfected all my plans and knew I could get the boy. I wanted my husband to think it was the work of others, at least until we were safe in Europe, because even then I imagined there would be a long legal fight.

      “After I stole the boy and he recognized me, I wanted him as my own, absolutely safe from legal action by his father. Then I wrote to Mr. Francis, telling him I had Walter, and asking that in pity to me he legally give me the boy by a document of some sort. In that letter I told how he might signify his willingness to do this; but of course I would not give my address. I placed a string, the one you saw, in that tree after having tied two knots in it. It was a silly, romantic means of communication he and I used years ago in my girlhood when we both lived near here. If he agreed that I should have the child, he was to come or send some one last night and unties one of the two knots.”

      Then, to Hatch, the intricacies passed away. He understood clearly. Instead of going to the police with the second letter from his wife, Francis had gone to The Thinking Machine. The Thinking Machine sent the reporter to untie the knot, which was an answer of “Yes” СКАЧАТЬ