The Thinking Machine Collected Stories Part 49

"Oh, I see what you mean. Shot from the outside. No, there was no hole."

The brow of the scientist had been smooth and unruffled as the summer sea; but now the minute corrugations which Hatch knew so well appeared again, and he sat silent for a time.

"When you came in you started to say--" he remarked at last.

"That Devore lied as to where he was the night Miss Farrar was killed," Hatch hastened to explain. "He said he was at home in bed. I have the word of two servants that he was not, and have learned that he was at Troy that night."

"Well?" inquired the scientist impa.s.sively.

"Troy is just a short distance from Albany," the reporter rushed on. "The train had to pa.s.s so near there, don't you see, that Devore might have boarded it, and--"

He paused. The Thinking Machine arose suddenly, and paced back and forth across the room twice.

"Why was he in Troy?" he asked.

"It was some sort of dinner-a stag affair, I imagine-the night before the day of the wedding," said Hatch.

"And I dare say young Farrar, Miss Farrar's brother, was with him?"

"Yes, he was. You didn't give me time."

The Thinking Machine pa.s.sed into the adjoining room, and Hatch heard the telephone bell. Fifteen minutes later he came out.

"Devore and Farrar spent the night-that is from midnight until eight o'clock in the morning of the murder-in adjoining rooms at a hotel in Troy," explained the scientist. "They were asleep there. So that makes the affair perfectly clear."

"Perfectly clear?" exclaimed Hatch. "Perfectly clear? I don't see how you make that out, when--"

The Thinking Machine started out, with Hatch following. They went straight to the Hotel Bellevoir, and sent their cards to Langham. He was staring blankly at a telegram when they entered. He recognized The Thinking Machine by name as a physician who had called on his daughter.

"Your daughter is engaged to be married, isn't she, Mr. Langham?" inquired the scientist.

"Yes, she was," he replied wonderingly. "Why?"

"And she was, I believe, on her way to visit some friends in a small city just beyond Albany when this-this unhappy event occurred?"

"Yes," Langham a.s.sented again.

"Perhaps the family of the man to whom she was betrothed?"

Again Langham a.s.sented.

"And what is the man of this man, please?"

"J. Charles Wingate," was the reply. "I've just got a telegram from him. Here it is."

The Thinking Machine glanced at the yellow slip of paper. The message was dated at New York city, and said tersely:

Wedding impossible. I cannot explain. Wingate.

"It's an outrage," declared Langham.

"It's a confession," remarked The Thinking Machine.

"When we remove Miss Langham as a possibility," The Thinking Machine told Hatch and Detective Mallory, "we inevitably bring the murder of Miss Farrar down to a man. And I may say that I personally demonstrated Miss Langham's innocence by a little experiment in mechanical hypnotism. She confessed that she had a revolver on the train. But her revolver was a twenty-two caliber, and the bullet that killed Miss Farrar was a thirty-two. So there was no further need to consider her.

"I also removed Devore by establis.h.i.+ng an alibi for him even after he had lied to the police as to his whereabouts on the night of the crime. Why he lied doesn't appear, and is of no consequence now. I proved his whereabouts conclusively by telephone, and at the same time proved the whereabouts of Miss Farrar's brother, thus eliminating both at the same time. Then what?

"Everyone had presumed-and I also did at first-that the person who killed Miss Farrar was in the private compartment with her. And yet, if that was true, why didn't the shot awake Miss Langham? When I knew that she was innocent the logic of the thing indicated that the shot came from the outside.

"It was a warm night, and we shall suppose the window was open. Was the screen in it? It did not have a hole in it; so I presumed it was not. Then the possibilities became infinite. The first thing to do was dispose of Devore and Miss Farrar's brother. I did that. Both you gentlemen recall, I dare say, the peculiar circ.u.mstances surrounding the murder of the young woman in a box at the opera? Yes. Instantly that came to me-perhaps the wrong woman had been killed. If so, we must look for a motive for the murder of Miss Langham.

"Well, we know that there had once been a love affair between Miss Langham and Devore. Was it possible that, despite her engagement to another man, Miss Langham still loved Devore?-that she learned Miss Farrar's story, and then and there decided to jilt the man to whom she was engaged, because of this love for Devore, who was now, by the act of Miss Farrar, cast aside? If so, would she have telegraphed to him this change of mind? If we suppose that she was expecting to meet him in a few hours-in other words, visit his family-we can imagine her telegraphing from the train, while her intention was to go no further than Albany, where she would turn back.

"That hypothesis made the entire matter perfectly clear. She did telegraph her decision to J. Charles Wingate, and a motive for her murder was instantly created-revenge. Now, he probably knew what train she was on, that she had taken the private compartment in a certain sleeping car on that train, and it is not only possible but probable that he took a train to meet it.

"Some time between the moment he received the telegram and met the train on which she was a pa.s.senger he resolved upon murder. The method? What better than firing through the window while the train was standing at some small station? The shot might not attract attention, particularly as the sleeping car was the last on the train, and it was, say, four o'clock in the morning. He did fire through the window; therefore the shot, being outside, did not disturb Miss Langham, already accustomed to the roar and clatter of the train. Wingate merely looked in, saw a woman asleep, and fired. He did not know that he had killed the wrong woman, perhaps, until the matter got into the newspapers."

There was a long silence. Detective Mallory and Hatch exchanged glances; then the detective turned to The Thinking Machine.

"And where is Wingate?" he inquired.

"Mr. Langham received a telegram from him dated at New York," was the reply. "I imagine it was sent on the eve of his flight, perhaps abroad. I should advise, anyway, that a watch be kept on the steamers as they arrive on the other side."

And eight days later J. Charles Wingate was arrested as he walked down the gangplank of a steamer at Liverpool. He had gone over in the steerage.

MYSTERY OF THE RALSTON BANK BURGLARY.

I.

With expert fingers Phillip Dunston, receiving teller, verified the last package of one-hundred-dollar bills he had made up-ten thousand dollars in all-and tossed it over on the pile beside him, while he checked off a memorandum. It was correct; there were eighteen packages of bills, containing $107,231. Then he took the bundles, one by one, and on each placed his initials, "P. D." This was a system of checking in the Ralston National Bank.

It was care in such trivial details, perhaps, that had a great deal to do with the fact that the Ralston National had advanced from a small beginning to the first rank of those banks which were financial powers. President Quinton Fraser had inaugurated the system under which the Ralston National had so prospered, and now, despite his seventy-four years, he was still its active head. For fifty years he had been in its employ; for thirty-five years of that time he had been its president.

Publicly the aged banker was credited with the possession of a vast fortune, this public estimate being based on large sums he had given to charity. But as a matter of fact the private fortune of the old man, who had no one to share it save his wife, was not large; it was merely a comfortable living sum for an aged couple of simple tastes.

Dunston gathered up the packages of money and took them into the cas.h.i.+er's private office, where he dumped them on the great flat-top desk at which that official, Randolph West, sat figuring. The cas.h.i.+er thrust the sheet of paper on which he had been working into his pocket and took the memorandum which Dunston offered.

"All right?" he asked.

"It tallies perfectly," Dunston replied.

"Thanks. You may go now."