The Thinking Machine Collected Stories Part 212

"No smoking," said the conductor.

The reporter stared at him with dull eyes and then went in and sat down with the cigar in his mouth.

"No smoking, I told you," bawled the conductor.

"Certainly not," exclaimed Hatch indignantly. He turned and glared at the only other occupant of the car, a little girl. She wasn't smoking. Then he looked at the conductor and awoke suddenly.

"Miss Meredith is the girl," Hatch was thinking. "Mallory doesn't even dream it and never will. He won't send a man out there to do what I did. The Greytons are anxious to keep it quiet, and they won't say anything to anybody else until they know what really happened. I've got it bottled up, and don't know how to pull the cork. Now, the question is: What possible connection can there be between Dorothy Meredith and the Burglar? Was d.i.c.k Herbert the Burglar? Why, of course not! Then-what?"

Pondering all these things deeply, Hatch left the car and ran up to see d.i.c.k Herbert. He was too self-absorbed to notice that the blinds of the house were drawn. He rang, and after a long time a man-servant answered the bell.

"Mr. Herbert here?" Hatch asked.

"Yes, sir, he's here," replied the servant, "but I don't know if he can see you. He is not very well, sir."

"Not very well?" Hatch repeated.

"No, it's not that he's sick, sir. He was hurt and--"

"Who is it, Blair?" came Herbert's voice from the top of the stair.

"Mr. Hatch, sir."

"Come up, Hatch!" d.i.c.k called cordially. "Glad to see you. I'm so lonesome here I don't know what to do with myself."

The reporter ran up the steps and into d.i.c.k's room.

"Not that one," d.i.c.k smiled as Hatch reached for his right hand. "It's out of business. Try this one--" And he offered his left.

"What's the matter?" Hatch inquired.

"Little hurt, that's all," said d.i.c.k. "Sit down. I got it knocked out the other night and I've been here in this big house alone with Blair ever since. The doctor told me not to venture out yet. It has been lonesome, too. All the folks are away, up in Nova Scotia, and took the other servants along. How are you, anyhow?"

Hatch sat down and stared at d.i.c.k thoughtfully. Herbert was a good-looking, forceful person of twenty-eight or thirty, and a corking right-guard. Now he seemed a little washed out, and there was a sort of pallor beneath the natural tan. He was a young man of family, unburdened by superlative wealth, but possessing in his own person the primary elements of success. He looked what Hatch had said of him: a "good, clean-cut, straightforward, decent man."

"I came up here to say something to you in my professional capacity," the reporter began at last; "and frankly, I don't know how to say it."

d.i.c.k straightened up in his chair with a startled expression on his face. He didn't speak, but there was something in his eyes which interested Hatch immensely.

"Have you been reading the papers?" the reporter asked- "that is, during the last couple of days?"

"Yes."

"Of course, then, you've seen the stories about the Randolph robbery?"

d.i.c.k smiled a little.

"Yes," he said. "Clever, wasn't it?"

"It was," Hatch responded enthusiastically. "It was." He was silent for a moment as he accepted and lighted a cigarette. "It doesn't happen," he went on, "that, by any possible chance, you know anything about it, does it?"

"Not beyond what I saw in the papers. Why?"

"I'll be frank and ask you some questions, d.i.c.k," Hatch resumed in a tone which betrayed his discomfort. "Remember I am here in my official capacity-that is, not as a friend of yours, but as a reporter. You need not answer the questions if you don't want to."

d.i.c.k arose with a little agitation in his manner and went over and stood beside the window.

"What is it all about?" he demanded. "What are the questions?"

"Do you know where Miss Dorothy Meredith is?"

d.i.c.k turned suddenly and glared at him with a certain lowering of his eyebrows which Hatch knew from the football days.

"What about her?" he asked.

"Where is she?" Hatch insisted.

"At home, so far as I know. Why?"

"She is not there," the reporter informed him, "and the Greytons believe that you eloped with her."

"Eloped with her?" d.i.c.k repeated. "She is not at home?"

"No. She's been missing since Thursday evening-the evening of the Randolph affair. Mr. Greyton has asked the police to look for her, and they are doing so now, but quietly. It is not known to the newspapers-that is, to other newspapers. Your name has not been mentioned to the police. Now, isn't it a fact that you did intend to elope with her on Thursday evening?"

d.i.c.k strode feverishly across the room several times, then stopped in front of Hatch's chair.

"This isn't any silly joke?" he asked fiercely.

"Isn't it a fact that you did intend to elope with her on Thursday evening?" the reporter went on steadily.

"I won't answer that question."

"Did you get an invitation to the Randolph ball?"

"Yes."

"Did you go?"

d.i.c.k was staring straight down into his eyes.

"I won't answer that, either," he said after a pause.

"Where were you on the evening of the masked ball?"

"Nor will I answer that."

When the newspaper instinct is fully aroused a reporter has no friends. Hatch had forgotten that he ever knew d.i.c.k Herbert. To him the young man was now merely a thing from which he might wring certain information for the benefit of the palpitating public.