The Thinking Machine Collected Stories Part 167

He closed the door and turned back toward the secretary. The color came back into Swayne's face with a rush under the impetus of some powerful emotion, and he stood swaying a little, closing and unclosing his hands spasmodically. At length he found tongue, and now his voice was as steady and quiet as was the others.

"Do I understand you accuse me of-of stealing those bonds?" he demanded.

"The bonds are missing," was the reply. "They were in your care. It really is of no concern whether they were misappropriated or lost. The result is the same. Bonds were intrusted to us to protect our customers. We are responsible for them; you are responsible to us."

Swayne dropped back into a chair with his head in his hands. Utterly at a loss for words, he sat thus until there came a respectful rap on the door. Carroll opened it, and a clerk entered with a package of the securities.

"Is this all of them?" inquired Carroll.

"All except about six hundred thousand dollars' worth which were in a safety deposit vault farther up town," was the reply. "A messenger is on his way with them now."

Carroll dismissed him with a curt nod and spilled the securities on the table before him. Then he spoke to Swayne again. There was a singular softening of his tone-Swayne chose to read it as mocking.

"Really I'm very sorry, Mr. Swayne," the president said soothingly. "I had trusted you to the utmost: indeed, I dare say every stockholder in the company did, and whether you are at fault or not now remains to be seen. We know if those bonds are missing, as the affidavit a.s.serts, there may be others missing, and the entire amount will have to be verified. I shall do that personally."

Still Swayne didn't speak. There seemed to be nothing to say. Once he glanced up into the steady gaze which was directed toward him, and relapsed immediately into his former position, with his head resting in his hands.

"Don't misunderstand me, please," said Carroll. "You are not a prisoner. This is a matter that will not go to the police-as yet anyway. It would not be safe for our office force to know what has happened. It might precipitate disaster. Meanwhile go on about your duties as if nothing has happened."

"My G.o.d, Charlie! you don't believe I stole them, do you?" Swayne burst out at last piteously as he rose to his feet.

"That's the first time you have called me by that name since I have been president of this company," Carroll remarked irrelevantly. "I want to like you,-I've always wanted to like you,-but of late you have wilfully antagonized me. Now, my first duty is here," and he indicated the heap of securities on his desk. "I must not be interrupted until I have finished. It is as necessary to you as to me; so go on about your work. Afterward we'll see what we can do."

For an hour, perhaps, Swayne sat at his desk gazing dreamily across the office. Half a dozen questions were asked; he didn't answer. But slowly there came a subtle change in his face; slowly some strong determination seized upon him, and at last it brought him to his feet, with staring eyes. For only an instant he hesitated over this idea which had come to him, and then spoke to the girl in charge of the office telephone exchange.

"Connect booth 3 with Central," he commanded sharply, "then leave the exchange there and don't answer a ring under any circ.u.mstances!"

Within less than a minute Swayne was talking to The Thinking Machine over the wire.

"This is Gordon Swayne," he began abruptly. "Something has happened, I don't know what. You told me I might call on you if something did happen. Can you come to the office at once?"

"What happened?" demanded The Thinking Machine irritably.

"I'm afraid it's a huge defalcation," was the instant response. "Carroll has locked himself in the room from which he had disappeared previously, with millions of dollars in securities which came into his possession by a trick, and I believe as firmly as I believe I'm living that he has run away with them. It's the only thing to account for his strange actions. He went into the room an hour ago-I'd wager my life he isn't there now."

"Why don't you rap on the door and ask for him?" came an imperturbable question.

"Can you come at once?" demanded Swayne abruptly.

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes," was the reply. "Don't do anything absurd until I get there; and don't call the police, because you are probably only suffering from another manifestation of that complaint with which I found you suffering before. Good by."

Swayne forced himself to calmness again, and after a few minutes' wait rapped quietly on the door of the private office. There was no response from inside. He tried the door. It was locked. It was just then that the door from the hall opened, and The Thinking Machine entered, peering about his curiously. In tones subdued by sheer force, Swayne related the incidents of the morning in detail.

"I believe-I know-Carroll has stolen those securities!" Swayne burst out at last. "What shall I do?"

For a minute or more The Thinking Machine sat silently squinting upward with white fingers at rest tip to tip, then he arose and readjusted his gla.s.ses.

"I believe," he said quietly, "I'd smash in the door. It might be something worse than you think."

Swayne called to two of the clerks as he went, and the four men paused for an instant at the entrance to the private office.

"Well, do it!" commanded The Thinking Machine irritably.

Swayne and the clerks placed their shoulders against the door; then from inside there came a sharp click. It was the key turning in the lock. They drew back and waited. The door swung open, and Carroll in person appeared before them, with both hands behind his back. There was an instant's pause, then in the strained, harsh voice of Swayne came the question-an accusation:

"Where are those securities?"

"Here," responded Carroll, and he produced them from behind his back. "Swayne, you are a childish idiot!" he added sharply.

The Thinking Machine nearly smiled.

The explanation of the problem of the vanis.h.i.+ng man, as The Thinking Machine stated it, was ludicrously simple. After Carroll had so mercilessly smashed Swayne's hypothesis of a defalcation, by appearing in person with the bonds and other securities, the secretary had stalked out moodily, and now he was in The Thinking Machine's small reception room, staring gloomily at the floor.

"My first diagnosis fits the case," remarked the diminutive scientist; "idle curiosity with complications. You see, Mr. Swayne, you business men are too practical, if I may say so. You in this instance could not or would not see beyond the obvious. A little imagination would have aided you-imagination coupled with a knowledge of the rudimentary rules of logic. Logic doesn't make mistakes-it is as certainly infallible as that two and two make four, not sometimes but all the time.

"Briefly I knew from your first statement of the case that Mr. Carroll was comparatively poor, despite the fact that he is the head of this great company. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred every man wants to get rich. Mr. Carroll had increased the earnings of his company; but he had not increased his own, therefore let us credit him with a desire to get rich. If he did not have such a desire, he would not be in the position he now holds. The moment we allow for this, and also allow for the fact that the securities were returned intact, we have the solution of the entire affair. I am admitting that not only did Mr. Carroll disappear from his private office at the times you specify; but that he was also gone from that office practically all the time he kept the door locked.

"In the stock markets (I have just enough acquaintance with them to know that money begets money) it is possible to make or lose millions in an hour. Therefore if Mr. Carroll could get all the securities of the company into his possession for an hour, and cared to do so, he could work wonders in the open market. This is precisely what he did. By a trick, we'll say, he got them together in a way which could not arouse even your suspicions, and used them on the market. The inference is that he made money by the use of those securities for that hour-the fact that he brought them back shows that he did not lose money, or he would not have had them. So, that's all of it: Mr. Carroll used the firm's money to make money for himself. Technically he has committed a crime; but--"

"It is a crime then?" demanded Swayne. "He was the criminal then, when he accused me of-of stealing the United States bonds?"

"By accusing you of appropriating or misplacing those bonds he did the necessary thing," replied The Thinking Machine; "that is, distracted your attention and gave himself, even in your eyes, the best possible excuse for getting all the securities together, without even a glimmer of light as to his purpose when he got them. Mr. Carroll is a very remarkable and very able man; he knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it. In other words, he is tremendously resourceful."

"But how-how did he leave that private office to use the securities, say in a market transaction?" Swayne insisted.

"Simply enough," was the reply. "I don't know; but I dare say through a window. It is a simple matter to stand on a window sill and swing yourself to the sill of the next window, particularly when a man has the steady nerve and strength of this man. If perchance the next room was unoccupied, you see how simple it would have been for Mr. Carroll to leave his office and remain away for hours, with the door of his private office locked behind him. There is really no mystery about the affair at all. It is simply a question of how much the transaction netted Mr. Carroll."

An hour later the board of directors of the Carroll-Swayne-McPartland Company met in the room adjoining Carroll's private office. The call had been issued by Swayne without consulting President Carroll. The secretary stated the case pithily, violently even. Carroll listened to the end.

"I am very glad that the directors have met," he said then as he arose. "I have committed a crime technically, as Mr. Swayne says. By that crime I have made a little more than two million dollars. The tremendous power which the millions of securities of this company gave me allowed me to turn the market upside down, to manipulate it at will, then to withdraw. This company is old; it's conservative. If this thing becomes known outside, it will hurt. But this company has its securities again, intact; I have made a fortune. If the company chooses to accept one-half of what I made, I to hold the other half, it is agreeable to me. I had intended to make this proposition anyway."

There was a long argument, a great many words, and finally acquiescence.

"And now shall I resign?" inquired Carroll finally.

"No," returned old Nick Carroll. "You young scoundrel, if you even think about resigning, why-why, confound it, we'll fire you! A man who can do such a thing as that-- Why, Charlie, you're a wonder! You'll stay! do you understand?"

He arose and glared defiantly about the room. There was not even a head shake-nothing.

"You stay on the job, Charlie," said the old man. "That's all."

THE CASE OF THE SCIENTIFIC MURDERER.

Certainly no problem that ever came to the attention of The Thinking Machine required in a greater degree subtlety of mind, exquisite a.n.a.lytical sense, and precise knowledge of the marvels of science than did that singular series of events which began with the death of the Honorable Violet Danbury, only daughter and sole heir of the late Sir Duval Danbury, of Leamington, England. In this case The Thinking Machine-more properly, Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D., M. D., F. R. S., et cetera, et cetera-brought to bear upon an extraordinary mystery of crime that intangible genius of logic which had made him the court of last appeal in his profession. "Logic is inexorable," he has said; and no greater proof of his a.s.sertion was possible than in this instance where literally he seemed to pluck a solution of the riddle from the void.

Shortly after eleven o'clock on the morning of Thursday, May 4, Miss Danbury was found dead, sitting in the drawing-room of apartments she was temporarily occupying in a big family hotel on Beacon Street. She was richly gowned, just as she had come from the opera the night before; her marble-white bosom and arms aglitter with jewels. On her face, dark in death as are the faces of those who die of strangulation, was an expression of unspeakable terror. Her parted lips were slightly bruised, as if from a light blow; in her left cheek was an insignificant, bloodless wound. On the floor at her feet was a shattered goblet. There was nothing else unusual, no disorder, no sign of a struggle. Obviously she had been dead for several hours.