The Thinking Machine Collected Stories Part 120

"And then if I demonstrated tangibly how it sounded you would be satisfied?"

"Yes, of course-yes."

"Very good." And the scientist turned to the reporter: "Mr. Hatch, 'phone the Weather Bureau and ask if there was a storm about midnight preceding the finding of Wagner's body; also if there was thunder. And get the direction and velocity of the wind. I know, of course, that there was thunder, and that the wind was either from the east, or there was no wind. I know it, not from personal observation, but by the pure logic of events."

The reporter nodded.

"Also I will have to ask you to borrow for me somewhere a violin and a champagne-gla.s.s."

There happened to be a violin in the house. Harvey Phillips went for it, and Hatch went to the 'phone. Five minutes later he reappeared; Harvey Phillips had preceded him.

"Light wind from the east, four miles an hour," Hatch reported tersely. "The storm threatened just before midnight. There was vivid lightning and heavy thunder."

To prosaic Doctor Perdue these preliminaries smacked a little of charlatanry. Mr. Phillips was interested, but impatient. The Thinking Machine, watch in hand, lay back in his chair, squinting steadily upward.

"Now, Mr. Phillips," he announced, "in just thirty-three and three-quarter minutes the bell will ring. It will sound ten times. I am taking pains to reproduce the exact conditions under which the bell has always sounded since you have known it, because if I show you there can be no doubt."

Mr. Phillips was leaning forward, gripping the arms of his chair.

"Meanwhile, I will reconstruct the events, not as they might have happened, but as they must have happened," continued The Thinking Machine. "They will not be in sequence, but as they were revealed to me by each added fact, for logic, Mr. Phillips, is only a sum in arithmetic, and the answer based on every known fact must be correct as inevitably as that two and two make four-not sometimes, but all the time.

"Well, a man was found dead here-shot. His mere presence indicated burglary. The open window showed how he probably entered. Considering only these superficial facts, we see instantly that more than one person might have entered that window. Yet it is hardly likely that two thieves entered, and one killed the other before they got their booty, for nothing was stolen, and it is still less likely that one man came here to commit suicide. What then?

"The blood mark on the bell. It was made by a human hand. Yet a man shot instantly dead could not have made it. Therefore we know there was another person. The door locked on the outside absolutely confirmed this. Ordinarily, I dare say, the door is never locked? No? Then who locked it? Certainly not a second thief, for he would not have risked escaping through the house after a shot which, for all he knew, had aroused every one. Ergo, some one in the house locked the door. Who?

"One of your servants, Giles Francis, is missing. Did he hear some one in the room? No, for he would have alarmed the household. What happened to him? Where is he? There is, of course, a chance that he ran out to find an officer and was disposed of in some way by an outside confederate of the man inside. But remember, please, the last we know of him he was asleep in bed. The vital point, therefore, is, what aroused him? From that we can easily develop his subsequent actions."

The Thinking Machine paused and glanced casually at his watch, then toward the east window, which was open with the screen in.

"We know," he resumed, "that if Francis had been aroused by burglars, or by a sound which he attributed to burglars, he would have awakened other servants. We must suppose he was awakened by some noise. What is most probable? Thunder! That would account for his every act. So let's say for the moment that it was thunder, that he remembered this window was open, partially dressed himself and came here to close it. This was, we will also presume, just before midnight. He met Wagner here, and in some way got Wagner's revolver. Then the fatal shot was fired.

"From this point, as the facts developed, Francis' acts became more difficult of comprehension. I could readily see how, when Wagner fell, Francis might have placed his hand over the heart to see if he were dead, and thus stained his hands; but why did Francis then smear blood on the fifth bell of the gong, leave this room, locking the door behind him, and run into the street? In other words, why did he lock the door and run?

"I had already attached considerable importance to the gong, primarily because of the blood, and had examined the bells closely. I even scratched them to a.s.sure myself that they were bronze and not a precious metal which would attract thieves. Then, Mr. Phillips, I heard your story, and instantly I knew why Francis locked the door and ran. It was because he was frightened-horribly, unspeakably frightened. Naturally there was a nerve-racking shock when he found he had killed a man. Then as he stood, horror-stricken perhaps, the bell rang. It affected him as it did you, Mr. Phillips, but under circ.u.mstances which were inconceivably more terrifying to a timid man. The bell rang six, seven, eight-perhaps a dozen times. To Francis, looking down upon a man he had killed, it was maddening, inexplicable. He placed his hand on it to stop the sound, then, crazed with terror, ran out of the room, locking the door behind him, and out of the house. The outer door closed with a spring-lock. He will return in time, because, of course, he was justified in killing Wagner."

Again The Thinking Machine glanced at his watch. Eighteen minutes of the specified thirty-three had elapsed.

"Now, as to the bell itself," he went on, "its history is of no consequence. It's j.a.panese and we know it's extremely old. We must a.s.sume from Mr. Matsumi's conduct that it is an object of-of, say, veneration. We can imagine it hanging in a temple; perhaps it rang there, and awed mult.i.tudes listened. Perhaps they regarded it as prophetic. After its disappearance from j.a.pan-we don't know how-Mr. Matsumi was naturally amazed to see it here, and was anxious to buy it. You refused to listen to him, Mr. Phillips. Then he went to Wagner and offered, we'll say, several thousand dollars for it. That accounts for Wagner's letters and his presence here. He came to steal the thing which he couldn't buy. His denial of all knowledge of the bell is explained readily by Detective Mallory's statement that he had long been suspected of handling stolen goods. He denied because he feared a trap.

"I may add that I attributed an ingenuity of construction to the bell which it did not possess. When I asked if you ever noted any odor when it sounded, Mr. Phillips, I had an idea that perhaps your present condition had been brought about by a subtle poison in which the gong had once been immersed, particles of which, when the bell sounded, might have been cast off and drawn into the lungs. I can a.s.sure you, however, that there was no poison. That is all, I think."

"But the sealed letter--" began Doctor Perdue.

"Oh, I opened that," was the casual rejoinder; but Doctor Perdue, as he looked, read a warning in the scientist's face. "It related to another matter entirely."

Doctor Perdue gazed at him a moment and understood. Unconsciously Hatch felt of the pocket where he had placed the letter. It was still there. He, too, understood. The Thinking Machine arose, glanced out of the window, then turned to the reporter.

"Now, Mr. Hatch," he requested, "please go across the street to the apartment-house, and open the rear window in the hall where we were. See that it remains open for twenty minutes; then return here. Keep out of the hall while the window is open, and if possible, keep others out."

Without a word or question, Hatch went out. The Thinking Machine dropped back into his chair, glanced at his watch, then scribbled something on a card which he handed to Doctor Perdue.

"By the way," he remarked irrelevantly, "there's an excellent compound for nervous indigestion I ran across the other day."

Doctor Perdue read the card. On it was:

"Letter dangerous. Probably predicts death. Has religious significance. Would advise Phillips not be informed."

"I'll try it some time," remarked Doctor Perdue.

There was a silence of two or three minutes. The Thinking Machine was idly twirling his watch in his slender fingers; Mr. Phillips sat staring at the bell, but there was no longer fright in his manner; it seemed rather curiosity.

"In just three minutes," said The Thinking Machine at last. A pause. "Now, two!" Again a pause. "Now, one! Be perfectly calm and listen!" Another pause, then suddenly: "Now!"

"Boom!" rang the bell, as if echoing the word. Despite himself, Mr. Phillips started a little, and the scientist's fingers closed on his pulse. "Boom!" again came the note. The bell hung motionless; the musical clangor seemed to roll out methodically, rhythmically. Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!

When the last note sounded, The Thinking Machine was staring into Mr. Phillips' face, seeking understanding. He found only bewilderment, and with quick impatience picked up the violin and bow.

"Here!" he exclaimed curtly. "Watch the champagne gla.s.s."

He tapped the fragile gla.s.s, and it sang shrilly. Then, on the violin, he sought the accompanying chord. Four times he drew the bow across the strings, and the gla.s.s was silent. Then the violin caught the pitch and the gla.s.s, three or four feet away, sang with it. Louder and louder the violin note grew, then suddenly, with a crash, the thin receptacle collapsed, shattered, tumbled to pieces before their eyes. Mr. Phillips stared in the utmost astonishment.

"A little demonstration in natural philosophy," explained The Thinking Machine. "In other words, vibration. Vibration sounded the gla.s.s, just as vibration sounded the bell on the gong there. You saw me sound the gla.s.s; the note which sounds the bell is a clock on a direct line half a mile away due east."

Mr. Phillips stared first at the shattered gla.s.s, then at the scientist. After a moment he understood, and an inexpressible feeling of relief swept over him.

"But the bell didn't always sound when the window was open," objected Doctor Perdue, after a moment.

"The bell can only sound when this window and both hall windows on the second floor across the way are open-on warm nights, for instance," replied The Thinking Machine. "Then, too, the wind must be from the east, or else there must be none. A gust of air, a person pa.s.sing through the hall, any one of a dozen things would interrupt the sensitive sound-waves and prevent all strokes of the clock reaching the bell here, while some of them might. Of course, any bell on the gong may be sounded with a violin, or, if they are true notes, with a piano, and I knew this at first. But Mr. Phillips had once heard the bell long after midnight-say two o'clock in the morning. Pianos and violins are not going so late, except perhaps at a ball. There was no ball across the street that night; therefore we came to the obvious remainder-a clock. It is visible from the rear window of the second-floor hall over there. It's all logic, logic!"

There was a pause. Doctor Perdue, looking into the face of his patient, was rea.s.sured by what he saw there, and something of his own professional jocundity a.s.serted itself.

"Instead of being a thing to make you nervous, Phillips," he said at last with a smile, "it seems to me that the bell is an excellent and reliable timepiece."

Mr. Phillips glanced at him quickly and the drawn, white face was relieved by a slight smile. After a while Hatch returned and for some time the little party sat in the room talking over the affair. Their conversation was interrupted at last by the clangor of the bell, and every person present rose and stared at it anew with the exception of The Thinking Machine. His squint eyes were still turned upward-he didn't even alter his position. There were eleven strokes of the bell, then silence.

"Eleven o'clock," remarked The Thinking Machine placidly. "You left the windows open over there, Mr. Hatch."

Hatch nodded.

Mr. Phillips was in bed sleeping when Doctor Perdue and The Thinking Machine, accompanied by Hatch, went away.

"Suppose we drop in at my place and look at that letter?" suggested the doctor.

The Thinking Machine, in Doctor Perdue's office, took the sealed packet from the reporter and opened it. Doctor Perdue was peering over his shoulder. The scientist squinted down the page with inscrutable face, then crumpled up the letter, struck a match and ignited it.

"But-but--" protested Doctor Perdue quickly, and Hatch saw that some strange pallor suddenly overspread his face, "it said that-that eleven strokes meant-meant--"

"You're a fool, Perdue!" snapped The Thinking Machine, and he glared straight into the physician's eyes. "Didn't I show why and how the bell rang? Do you expect me to account for every barbaric superst.i.tion of a half-civilized race regarding the bell."