The Jacques Futrelle Megapack. Jacques Futrelle
Hatch leaped out, and The Thinking Machine followed. Together they approached the house, a small cottage some distance back from the road. As they went up the path they came upon another automobile, but it had no lights and the engine was still. Even in the darkness they could see that one of the forward wheels was gone, and the front of the car was demolished.
“That fellow had a bad accident,” Hatch remarked.
An old woman and a boy appeared at the door in answer to their rap.
“I am looking for a gentleman who was injured last night in an automobile accident,” said The Thinking Machine. “Is he still here?”
“Yes. Come in.”
They stepped inside as a man’s voice called from another room:
“Who is it?”
“Two gentlemen to see the man who was hurt,” the woman called.
“Do you know his name?” asked The Thinking Machine.
“No, sir,” the woman replied. Then the man who had spoken appeared.
“Would it be possible for us to see the gentleman who was hurt?” asked The Thinking Machine.
“Well, the doctor said we would have to keep folks away from him,” was the reply. “Is there anything I could tell you?”
“We would like to know who he is,” said The Thinking Machine. “It may be that we can take him off your hands.”
“I don’t know his name,” the man explained; “but here are the things we took off him. He was hurt on the head, and hasn’t been able to speak since he was brought here.”
The Thinking Machine took a gold watch, a small notebook, two or three cards of various business concerns, two railroad tickets to New York and one thousand dollars in large bills. He merely glanced at the papers. No name appeared anywhere on them; the same with the railroad tickets. The business cards meant nothing at the moment. It was the gold watch on which the scientist concentrated his attention. He looked on both sides, then inside, carefully. Finally he handed it back.
“What time did this gentleman come here?” he asked.
“We brought him in from the road about nine o’clock,” was the reply. “We heard his automobile smash into something and found him there beside it a moment later. He was unconscious. His car had struck a stone on the curve and he was thrown out head first.”
“And where is his wife?”
“His wife?” The man looked from The Thinking Machine to the woman. “His wife? We didn’t see anybody else.”
“Nobody ran away from the machine as you went out?” insisted the scientist.
“No, sir,” was the positive reply.
“And no woman has been here to inquire for him?”
“No, sir.”
“Has anybody?”
“No, sir.”
“What direction was the car going when it struck?”
“I couldn’t tell you, sir. It had turned entirely over and was in the middle of the road when we found it.”
“What’s the number of the car?”
“It didn’t have any.”
“This gentleman has good medical attention, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir. Dr. Leonard is attending him. He says his condition isn’t dangerous, and meanwhile we’re letting him stay here, because we suppose he’ll make it all right with us when he gets well.”
“Thank you—that’s all,” said The Thinking Machine. “Good-night.”
With Hatch he turned and left the house.
“What is all this?” asked Hatch, bewildered.
“That man is Morgan Mason,” said The Thinking Machine.
“The man who eloped with Miss Dow?” asked Hatch, breathlessly.
“Now, where is Miss Dow?” asked The Thinking Machine, in turn.
“You mean—”
The Thinking Machine waved his hand off into the vague night; it was a gesture which Hatch understood perfectly.
V
Hutchinson Hatch was deeply thoughtful on the swift run back to the village. There he and The Thinking Machine took train to Boston. Hatch was turning over possibilities. Had Miss Dow eloped with some one besides Mason? There had been no other name mentioned. Was it possible that she killed Miss Melrose? Vaguely his mind clutched for a motive for this, yet none appeared, and he dismissed the idea with a laugh at its absurdity. Then, What? Where? How? Why?
“I suppose the story of an actress having been murdered in an automobile under mysterious circumstances would have been telegraphed all over the country, Mr. Hatch?” asked The Thinking Machine.
“Yes,” said Hatch. “If you mean this story, there’s not a city in the country that doesn’t know of it by this time.”
“It’s perfectly wonderful, the resources of the press,” the scientist mused.
Hatch nodded his acquiescence. He had hoped for a moment that The Thinking Machine had asked the question as a preliminary to something else, but that was apparently all. After awhile the train jerked a little and The Thinking Machine spoke again.
“I think, Mr. Hatch I wouldn’t yet print anything about the disappearance of Miss Dow,” he said. “It might be unwise at present. No one else will find it out, so—”
“I understand,” said Hatch. It was a command.
“By the way,” the other went on, “do you happen to remember the name of that Winter Street store that Curtis went in?”
“Yes,” and he named it.
It was nearly midnight when The Thinking Machine and Hatch reached Boston. The reporter was dismissed with a curt:
“Come up at noon tomorrow.”
Hatch went his way. Next day at noon promptly he was waiting in the reception room of The Thinking Machine’s home. The scientist was out—down in Winter Street, Martha explained—and Hatch waited impatiently for his return. He came in finally.
“Well?” inquired the reporter.
“Impossible to say anything until day after tomorrow,” said The Thinking Machine.
“And then?” asked Hatch.
“The solution,” replied the scientist positively. “Now I’m waiting for some one.”
“Miss Dow?”
“Meanwhile you might see Reid and find out in some way if he ever happened to make a gift of any little thing, a thing that a woman would wear on the outside of her coat, for instance, to Miss Dow.”
“Lord, I don’t think he’ll say anything.”
“Find out, too, when he intends to go back West.”
It took Hatch three hours, and required a vast deal of patience and skill, to find out that on a recent birthday Miss Dow had received a present of a monogram belt buckle from Reid. That was all; and that was not what The Thinking Machine meant. Hatch had the word of Miss Dow’s maid for it that while Miss Dow wore this belt at the time of her elopement, it was underneath the automobile coat.
“Have you heard anything more from Miss Dow?” asked Hatch.
“Yes,” responded the maid. “Her father received a letter from her this morning. It was from Chicago, and said that she and her husband were on their way to San Francisco and that the family might not hear from