The Jacques Futrelle Megapack. Jacques Futrelle
what it is—then return to Brookline and telephone me. It is of the greatest importance.”
The reporter was thoughtful for a moment; it sounded like a page from a Dumas romance.
“What’s it all about?” he asked curiously.
“Will you go?” came the counter question.
“Yes, certainly.”
“Good-bye.”
Hatch heard a click as the receiver was hung up at the other end. He shrugged his shoulders, said “Good-night” to the city editor, and went out. An hour later he was at Randall’s Crossing. The night was dark—so dark that the road was barely visible. The car whirled on, and as its lights were swallowed up Hatch set out to find the white house. He came upon it at last, and, turning, faced across an open field toward the wood. Far away over there outlined vaguely against the distant glow of the city, was a tall tree.
Having fixed its location, the reporter moved along for a hundred yards or more to where the wood ran down to the road. Here he climbed a fence and stumbled on through the dark, doing sundry injuries to his shins. After a disagreeable ten minutes he reached the tree.
With a small electric flash light he found the hole. It was only a little larger than his hand, a place where decay had eaten its way into the tree trunk. For just a moment he hesitated about putting his hand into it—he didn’t know what might be there. Then, with a grim smile, he obeyed orders.
He felt nothing save crumblings of decayed wood, and finally dragged out a handful, only to spill it on the ground. That couldn’t be what was meant. For the second time he thrust in his hand, and after a deal of grabbing about produced—a piece of string. It was just a plain, ordinary, common piece of string—white string. He stared at it and smiled.
“I wonder what Van Dusen will make of that?” he asked himself.
Again his hand was thrust into the hole. But that was all—the piece of string. Then came another thought, and with that due regard for detail which made him a good reporter he went looking around the big tree for a possible second opening of some sort. He found none.
About three quarters of an hour later he stepped into an all-night drug store in Brookline and telephoned The Thinking Machine. There was an instant response to his ring.
“Well, well, what did you find?” came the query.
“Nothing to interest you, I imagine,” replied the reporter grimly. “Just a piece of string.”
“Good, good!” exclaimed The Thinking Machine. “What does it look like?”
“Well,” replied the newspaper man judicially, “it’s just a piece of white string—cotton, I imagine—about six inches long.”
“Any knots in it?”
“Wait till I see.”
He was reaching into his pocket to take it out, when the startled voice of The Thinking Machine came over the line.
“Didn’t you leave it there?” it demanded.
“No; I have it in my pocket.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed the scientist irritably. “That’s bad. Well, has it any knots in it?” he asked with marked resignation.
Hatch felt that he had committed the unpardonable sin. “Yes,” he replied after an examination. “It has two knots in it—just plain knots—about two inches apart.”
“Single or double knots?”
“Single knots.”
“Excellent! Now, Mr. Hatch, listen. Untie one of those knots—it doesn’t matter which one—and carefully smooth out the string. Then take it and put it back where you found it. ’Phone me as soon after that as you can.”
“Now, tonight?”
“Now, immediately.”
“But—but—” began the astonished reporter.
“It is a matter of the utmost consequence,” the irritated voice assured him. “You should not have taken the string. I told you merely to see what was there. But as you have brought it away you must put it back as soon as possible. Believe me, it is of the highest importance. And don’t forget to ’phone me.”
The sharp, commanding tone stirred the reporter to new action and interest. A car was just going past the door, outward bound. He raced for it and got aboard. Once settled, he untied one of the knots, straightened out the string, and fell to wondering what sort of fool’s errand he was on.
“Randall’s Crossing!” called the conductor at last.
Hatch left the car and retraced his tortuous way along the road and through the wood to the tall tree, found the hole, and had just thrust in his hand to replace the string when he heard a woman’s voice directly behind him, almost in his ear. It was a calm, placid, convincing sort of voice. It said:
“Hands up!”
Hatch was a rational human being with ambitions and hopes for the future; therefore his hands went up without hesitation. “I knew something would happen,” he told himself.
He turned to see the woman. In the darkness he could only dimly trace a tall, slender figure. Steadily poised just a couple of dozen inches from his nose was a revolver. He could see that without any difficulty. It glinted a little, even in the gloom, and made itself conspicuous.
“Well,” asked the reporter at last, as he stood reaching upward, “it’s your move.”
“Who are you?” asked the woman. Her voice was steady and rather pleasant.
The reporter considered the question in the light of all he didn’t know. He felt it wouldn’t be a sensible thing to say just who he was. Somewhere at the end of this thing The Thinking Machine was working on a problem; he was presumably helping in a modest, unobtrusive sort of way; therefore he would be cautious.
“My name is Williams,” he said promptly. “Jim Williams,” he added circumstantially.
“What are you doing here?”
Another subject for thought. That was a question he couldn’t answer; he didn’t know what he was doing there; he was wondering himself. He could only hazard a guess, and he did that with trepidation.
“I came from him,” he said with deep meaning.
“Who?” demanded the woman suspiciously.
“It would be useless to name him,” replied the reporter.
“Yes, yes, of course,” the woman mused. “I understand.”
There was a little pause. Hatch was still watching the revolver. He had a lively interest in it. It had not moved a hair’s breath since he first looked at it; hanging up there in the night it fairly stared him out of countenance.
“And the string?” asked the woman at last.
Now the reporter felt that he was in the mire. The woman herself relieved this new embarrassment.
“Is it in the tree?” she went on.
“Yes.”
“How many knots are in it?”
“One.”
“One?” she repeated eagerly. “Put your hand in there and hand me the string. No tricks, now!”
Hatch complied with a certain deprecatory manner which he intended should convey to her the impression that there would be no tricks. As she took the string her fingers brushed against his. They were smooth and delicate. He knew that even in the dark.
“And what did he say?” she went on.
Having gone this far without falling into anything, the reporter was willing to plunge—felt that he had to, as a matter