Professor Augustus Van Dusen: 49 Detective Mysteries in One Edition. Jacques Futrelle
was like the other doors along in that it led into the back hall of a house, and was intended for the use of tradesmen. When he examined the door he scratched his chin thoughtfully; then came utter bewilderment, an amazing sense of hopeless insanity. For there, staring at him from a door-plate, was the name: “van Safford.” She had merely come out the front door and gone into the back!
Hatch started to rap and ask some questions, then changed his mind and walked around to the front again, and up the steps.
“Is Mrs. van Safford in?” he inquired of Baxter, who opened the door.
“No, sir,” was the reply. “She went out a few minutes ago.”
Hatch stared at him coldly a minute, then walked away.
“Now this is a particularly savoury kettle of fish,” he soliloquized. “She has either gone back into the house without his knowledge, or else he has been bribed, and then—”
And then, he took the story to The Thinking Machine. That imperturbable man of science listened to the end, then arose and said “Oh!” three times. Which was interesting to Hatch in that it showed the end was in sight, but it was not illuminating. He was still floundering.
The Thinking Machine started into an adjoining room, then turned back.
“By the way, Mr. Hatch,” he asked, “did you happen to find out what was the matter with Miss Blakesley?”
“By George, I forgot it,” returned the reporter, ruefully.
“Never mind, I’ll find out.”
At eleven o’clock Hutchinson Hatch and The Thinking Machine called at the van Safford home. Mr. van Safford in person received them; there was a gleam of hope in his face at sight of the diminutive scientist. Hatch was introduced, then:
“You don’t know of any other van Safford family in this block?” began the scientist.
“There’s not another family in the city,” was the reply. “Why?”
“Is your wife in now?”
“No. She went out this morning, as usual.”
“Now, Mr. van Safford, I’ll tell you how you may bring this matter to an end, and understand it all at once. Go upstairs to your wife’s apartments—they are probably locked—and call her. She won’t answer but she’ll hear you. Then tell her you understand it all, and that you’re sorry. She’ll hear that, as that alone is what she has been waiting to hear for some time. When she comes out bring her down stairs. Believe me I should be delighted to meet so clever a woman.”
Mr. van Safford was looking at him as if he doubted his sanity.
“Really,” he said coldly, “what sort of child’s play is this?”
“It’s the only way you’ll ever coax her out of that room,” snapped The Thinking Machine belligerently, “and you’d better do it gracefully.”
“Are you serious?” demanded the other.
“Perfectly serious,” was the crabbed rejoinder. “She has taught you a lesson that you’ll remember for sometime. She has been merely going out the front door every day, and coming in the back, with the full knowledge of the cook and her maid.”
Mr. van Safford listened in amazement.
“Why did she do it?” he asked.
“Why?” retorted The Thinking Machine. “That’s for you to answer. A little less of your time at the club of evenings, and a little less of selfish amusement, so that you can pay attention to a beautiful woman who has, previous to her marriage at least, been accustomed to constant attention, would solve this little problem. You’ve spent every evening at your club for months, and she was here alone probably a great part of that time. In your own selfishness you had never a thought of her, so she gave you a reason to think of her.”
Suddenly Mr. van Safford turned and ran out of the room. They heard him as he took the stairs, two at a time.
“By George!” remarked Hatch. “That’s a silly ending to a cracking good mystery, isn’t it?”
Ten minutes later Mr. and Mrs. van Safford entered the room. Her pretty face was suffused with colour: he was frankly, outrageously happy. There were mutual introductions.
“It was perfectly dreadful of Mr. van Safford to call you gentlemen into this affair,” Mrs. van Safford apologized, charmingly. “Really I feel very much ashamed of myself for—”
“It’s of no consequence, madam,” The Thinking Machine assured her. “It’s the first opportunity I have ever had of studying a woman’s mind. It was not at all logical, but it was very—very instructive. I may add that it was effective, too.”
He bowed low, and turning picked up his hat.
“But your fee?” suggested Mr. van Safford.
The Thinking Machine squinted at him sourly. “Oh, yes, my fee,” he mused. “It will be just five thousand dollars.”
“Five thousand dollars?” exclaimed Mr. van Safford.
“Five thousand dollars,” repeated the scientist.
“Why, man, it’s perfectly absurd to talk—”
Mrs. van Safford laid one white hand on her husband’s arm. He glanced at her and she smiled radiantly.
“Don’t you think I’m worth it, Van?” she asked, archly.
He wrote the cheque. The Thinking Machine scribbled his name across the back in a crabbed little hand, and passed it on to Hatch.
“Please hand that to some charitable organization,” he directed. “It was an excellent lesson, Mrs. van Safford. Good day.”
Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, scientist, and Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, walked along side by side for two blocks, without speaking. The reporter broke the silence.
“Why did you want to know what was the matter with Miss Blakesley?” he asked.
“I wanted to know if she really had been ill or was merely attempting to mislead Mr. van Safford,” was the reply. “She was ill with a touch of grippe. I got that by ‘phone. I also learned of Mr. van Safford’s club habits by ‘phone from his club.”
“And those women who laughed—what was the joke about?”
“The fact that they laughed made me see that the affair was not a serious one. They were intimate friends with whom the wife had evidently discussed doing just what she did do,” explained the scientist. “All things considered in this case the facts could only have been as logic developed them. I imagined the true state of affairs from your report of Mrs. van Safford’s day of wandering; when I knew she went in the back door of her own house, I saw the solution. Because, Mr. Hatch,” and the scientist paused and shook a long finger in the reporter’s face, “because two and two always make four—not some times, but all the time.”
The Problem of the Hidden Million
The gray hand of Death had already left its ashen mark upon the wrinkled, venomous face of the old man, who lay huddled up in bed. Save for the feverishly brilliant eyes—cunning, vindictive, hateful—there seemed to be no spark of life in the aged form. The withered lips were mute, and the thin, yellow, claw-like hands lay helplessly outstretched on the white sheets. All physical power was gone; only the brain remained doggedly alive. Two men and two women stood beside the death bed. Upon each in turn the glittering eyes rested with the merciless, unreasoning hatred of age. Crouched on the floor was a huge St. Bernard dog; and on a perch across the room was a parrot which screeched abominably.
The gloom of the wretched little room was suddenly relieved by a ruddy sunbeam