The Thinking Machine Collected Stories Part 113

"Come right up," he instructed.

There was that in his voice which caused Hatch to jump. He seized his hat and rushed out of his office. When he reached The Thinking Machine's apartments that gentleman was just emerging from the room where the telephone was.

"I have it," the scientist told the reporter, forestalling a question. "It's ridiculously simple. I can't imagine how I missed it except through stupidity."

Hatch smiled behind his hand. Certainly stupidity was not to be charged against The Thinking Machine.

"Come in a cab?" asked the scientist.

"Yes, it's waiting."

"Come on then."

They went out together. The scientist gave some instruction to the cabby and they clattered off.

"You're going to meet a very remarkable person," The Thinking Machine explained. "He may cause trouble and he may not-any way look out for him. He's tricky."

That was all. The cab drew up in front of a large building, evidently a boarding house of the middle cla.s.s. The Thinking Machine jumped out, Hatch following, and together they ascended the steps. A maid answered the bell.

"Is Mr.-Mr.-oh, what's his name?" and The Thinking Machine snapped his fingers as if trying to remember. "Mr--, the small gentleman who arrived from Liverpool yesterday--"

"Oh," and the maid smiled broadly, "you mean Mr. Berkerstrom?"

"Yes, that's the name," exclaimed the scientist. "Is he in, please?"

"I think so, sir," said the maid, still smiling. "Shall I take your card?"

"No, it isn't necessary," replied The Thinking Machine. "We are from the theatre. He is expecting us."

"Second floor, rear," said the maid.

They ascended the stairs and paused in front of a door. The Thinking Machine tried it softly. It was unlocked and he pushed it open. A bright light blazed from a gas jet but no person was in sight. As they stood silent, they heard a newspaper rattle and both looked in the direction whence came the sound.

Still no one appeared. The Thinking Machine raised a finger and tiptoed to a large upholstered chair which faced the other way. One slender hand disappeared on the other side to be lifted immediately. Wriggling in his grasp was a man-a toyman-a midget miniature in smoking jacket and slippers who swore fluently in German. Hatch burst out laughing, an uncontrollable fit which left him breathless.

"Mr. Berkerstrom, Mr. Hatch," said The Thinking Machine gravely. "This is the gentleman, Mr. Hatch, who stole the radium. Before you begin to talk, Mr. Berkerstrom, I will say that Mme. du Chastaigny has been arrested and has confessed."

"Ach, Gott!" raged the little German. "Let me down, der chair in, ef you blease."

The Thinking Machine lowered the tiny wriggling figure into the chair while Hatch closed and locked the door. When the reporter came back and looked, laughter was gone. The drawn wrinkled face of the midget, the babyish body, the toy clothing, added to the pitiful helplessness of the little figure. His age might have been fifteen or fifty, his weight was certainly not more than twenty-five pounds, his height barely thirty inches.

"It iss as we did him in der theatre, und--" Mr. Berkerstrom started to explain limpingly.

"Oh, that was it?" inquired The Thinking Machine curiously as if some question in his own mind had been settled. "What is Mme. du Chastaigny's correct name?"

"She iss der famous Mlle. Fanchon, und I am der marvellous midget, Count von Fritz," proclaimed Mr. Berkerstrom proudly in play-bill fas.h.i.+on.

Then a glimmer of what had actually happened flashed through Hatch's mind; he was staggered by the sublime audacity which made it possible. The Thinking Machine arose and opened a closet door at which he had been staring. From a dark recess he dragged out a suit case and from this in turn a small steel box.

"Ah, here is the radium," he remarked as he opened the box. "Think of it, Mr. Hatch. An actual value of millions in that small box."

Hatch was thinking of it, thinking all sorts of things, as he mentally framed an opening paragraph for this whooping big yarn. He was still thinking of it as he and The Thinking Machine accompanied willingly enough by the midget, entered the cab and were driven back to the scientist's house.

An hour later Mme. du Chastaigny called by request. She imagined her visit had something to do with the purchase of an ounce of radium; Detective Mallory, watching her out a corner of his official eye, imagined she imagined that. The next caller was Professor Dexter. Dumb anger gnawed at his heart, but he had heeded a telephone request. The Thinking Machine and Hatch completed the party.

"Now, Mme. du Chastaigny, please," The Thinking Machine began quietly, "will you please inform me if you have another ounce of radium in addition to that you stole from the Yarvard laboratory?"

Mme. du Chastaigny leaped to her feet. The Thinking Machine was staring upward with squint eyes and finger tips pressed together. He didn't alter his position in the slightest at her sudden move-but Detective Mallory did.

"Stole?" exclaimed Mme. du Chastaigny. "Stole?"

"That's the word I used," said The Thinking Machine almost pleasantly.

Into the woman's eyes there leapt a blaze of tigerish ferocity. Her face flushed, then the colour fled and she sat down again, perfectly pallid.

"Count von Fritz has recounted his part in the affair to me," went on The Thinking Machine. He leaned forward and took a package from the table. "Here is the radium. Now have you any radium in addition to this?"

"The radium!" gasped the Professor incredulously.

"If there is no denial Count von Fritz might as well come in, Mr. Hatch," remarked The Thinking Machine.

Hatch opened the door. The midget bounded into the room in true theatric style.

"Is it enough, Mlle. Fanchon?" inquired the scientist. There was an ironic touch in his voice.

Mme. du Chastaigny nodded, dumbly.

"It would interest you, of course, to know how it came out," went on The Thinking Machine. "I daresay your inspiration for the theft came from a newspaper article, therefore you probably know that I was directly interested in the experiments planned. I visited the laboratory immediately after you left with the radium. Professor Dexter told me your story. It was clever, clever, but there was too much radium, therefore unbelievable. If not true, then why had you been there? The answer is obvious.

"Neither you or anyone else save Mr. Dexter entered that laboratory. Yet the radium was gone. How? My first impression was that your part in the theft had been to detain Mr. Dexter while someone entered the laboratory or else fished out the radium through a window in the gla.s.s roof by some ingenious contrivance. I questioned Mr. Dexter as to your precise acts, and ventured the opinion that you had either sneezed or coughed. You had coughed twice-obviously a signal-thus that view was strengthened.

"Next, I examined window and roof fastenings-all were locked. I tapped over the gla.s.s to see if they had been tampered with. They had not. Apparently the radium had not gone through the reception room; certainly it had not gone any other way-yet it was gone. It was a nice problem until I recalled that Mr. Dexter had mentioned a suit case. Why did a woman, on business, go out carrying a suit case? Or why, granting that she had a good reason for it, should she take the trouble to drag it into the reception room instead of leaving it in the carriage?

"Now, I didn't believe you had any radium; I knew you had signalled to the real thief by coughing. Therefore I was prepared to believe that the suit case was the solution of the theft. How? Obviously, something concealed in it. What? A monkey? I dismissed that because the thief must have had the reasoning instinct. If not a monkey then what? A child? That seemed more probable, yet it was improbable. I proceeded, however, on the hypothesis that a child carefully instructed had been the actual thief."

Open eyes were opened wider. Mme. du Chastaigny, being chiefly concerned, followed the plain, cold reasoning as if fascinated. Count von Fritz straightened his necktie and smiled.

"I sent a cable to Mme. Curie asking if the letter of introduction was genuine, and sent Mr. Hatch to get a trace of a child. He informed me that there was no child just about the time I heard from Mme. Curie that the letter was genuine. The problem immediately went back to the starting point. Time after time I reasoned it out, always the same way-finally the solution came. If not a monkey or a child then what? A midget. Of course it was stupid of me not to have seen that possibility at first.

"Then there remained only the task of finding him. He probably came on the same boat with the woman, and I saw a plan to find him. It was through the driver of the carriage which Mme. du Chastaigny used. I got his number by 'phone at the Hotel Teutonic. Where had Mme. du Chastaigny left a suit case? He gave me an address. I went there.

"I won't attempt to explain how this woman obtained the letter from Mme. Curie. I will only say that a woman who undertakes to sell an ounce of radium to a man from whom she intends to steal it is clever enough to do anything. I may add that she and the midget are theatrical people, and that the idea of a person in a suit case came from some part of their stage performance. Of course the suit case is so built that the midget could open and close it from inside."

"Und it always gets der laugh," interposed the midget, complacently.

After awhile the prisoners were led away. Count von Fritz escaped three times the first day by the simple method of wriggling between the bars of his cell.