The Thinking Machine Collected Stories Part 15

"Find anything?" asked Hatch, finally.

The Thinking Machine shook his head impatiently.

"It's amazing," he exclaimed petulantly, like a disappointed child.

"It is," Hatch agreed, cheerfully.

The Thinking Machine turned and walked back toward the house as he had come, Hatch following.

"I think we'd better go back to Boston," he said tartly.

Hatch silently acquiesced. Neither spoke until they were in the train, and The Thinking Machine turned suddenly to the wondering reporter.

"Did it seem possible to you that those are not the footprints of Baby Blake at all, only the prints of his shoes?" he demanded suddenly.

"How did they get there?" asked Hatch, in turn.

The Thinking Machine shook his head.

On the afternoon of the next day, when the newspapers were full of the mystery, Mrs. Blake received this letter, signed "Three" as before:

"We hav the baby and will bring him bak for twenny fiv thousan dolers. Will you give it. Advertis as befour dereckted, YES or NOA."

III.

When Hutchinson Hatch went to inform The Thinking Machine of the appearance of this second letter late in the afternoon, he found the scientist sitting in his little laboratory, finger tips pressed together, squinting steadily at the ceiling. There was a little puzzled line on the high brow, a line Hatch never saw there before, and frank perplexity was in the blue eyes.

The Thinking Machine listened without changing his position as Hatch told him of the letter and its contents.

"What do you make of it all, professor?" asked the reporter.

"I don't know," was the reply-one which was a little startling to Hatch. "It's most perplexing."

"The only known facts seem to be that Baby Blake was kidnapped, and is now in the possession of the kidnappers," said Hatch.

"Those tracks-the footprints in the snow, I mean-furnish the real problem in this case," said the other after a moment. "Presumably they were made by the baby-yet they might not have been. They might have been put there merely to mislead anyone who began a search. If the baby made them-how and why do they stop as they do? If they were made merely with the baby's shoes, to mislead investigation, the same question remains-how?

"Let's see a moment. We will dismiss the seeming fact that the baby walked on off into the air and disappeared, granting that those tracks were made by the baby. We will also dismiss the possibility that the baby was with anyone when it made the tracks, if it did make them. There were certainly no other footprints but those. There were no footprints leading from or to that point where the baby tracks stopped.

"What are the possibilities? What remains? A balloon? If we accept the balloon as a possibility we must at the same time relinquish the theory of a preconceived plan of abduction. Why? Because no successful plan could have been arranged so that that baby, of its own will, would have been in that particular spot at that particular moment. Therefore a balloon might have been floated over the place a thousand times without success, and balloons are large-they attract attention, therefore are to be avoided.

"There is a possibility-a bare one-that a balloon with a trailing anchor or hook did pa.s.s over the place, and that this hook caught up the baby by its clothing, lifting it clear of the ground. But in that event it was not kidnapping-it was accident. But here against the theory of accident we have the kidnappers' letters.

"If not a balloon, then an eagle? Hardly possible. It would take a bird of exceptional strength to have lifted a fourteen-month child, and besides there are a thousand things against such a possibility. Certainly the winged man is not known to science, yet there is every evidence of his handiwork here. Briefly, the problem is-granting that the baby itself made the tracks-how was a baby lifted out of the relative centre of a large yard?

"Consider for a moment that the baby did not make the tracks-that they were placed there by some one else. Then we are confronted by the same question-how? A person might have fastened shoes to a long pole and rigged up some arrangement of the sort, and made the tracks for a distance say of twenty feet out into the snow, but remember the tracks run out forty-eight feet to the box you say.

"If it would have been possible for a person to stand on that box without leaving a track to it or from it, he might have finished the tracks with the shoes on a pole, but n.o.body went to that box."

The Thinking Machine was silent for several minutes. Hatch had nothing to say. The Thinking Machine seemed to have covered the possibilities thoroughly.

"Of course, it might have been possible for a person in a balloon to have put the tracks there, but it would have been a senseless proceeding," the scientist went on. "Certainly there could have been no motive for it strong enough to make a person invite discovery by sailing about the house in a balloon even at night. We face a stone wall, Mr. Hatch-a stone wall. It is possible for the mind to follow it only to a certain point as it now stands."

He arose and disappeared into an adjoining room, returning in a few minutes with his hat and overcoat.

"Of course," he said to Hatch, "if the baby is alive and in the possession of the kidnappers, it is possible to recover it, and we'll do that, but the real problem remains."

"If it is alive?" Hatch repeated.

"Yes, if," said the other shortly. "There are in my mind grave doubts on that point."

"But the kidnappers' letters?" said Hatch

"Let's go find out who wrote them," said the other, enigmatically.

Together the two men went to Lynn, and there for half an hour The Thinking Machine talked to Mrs. Blake. He came out finally with a package in his hand.

Miss Barton, with eyes red, apparently from weeping, and evident sorrow imprinted on her pretty face, entered the room almost at the same moment.

"Miss Barton," the scientist asked, "could you tell me how much the baby Douglas weighed-relatively, I mean?"

The girl gazed at him a moment as if startled. "About thirty pounds, I should say," she answered.

"Thanks," said The Thinking Machine, and turned to Hatch. "I have twenty-five thousand dollars in this package," he said.

Miss Barton turned and glanced quickly toward him, then pa.s.sed out of the room.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked Hatch.

"It's for the kidnappers," was the reply. "The police advised Mrs. Blake not to try to make terms-I advised her the other way and she gave me this."

"What's the next step?" Hatch asked.

"To put the advertis.e.m.e.nt 'Yes' signed by Mrs. Blake in the newspaper," said The Thinking Machine. "That's in accordance with the stipulations of the letters."

An hour later the two men were in Boston. The advertis.e.m.e.nt was inserted in the Boston American as directed. The next day Mrs. Blake received a third letter.

"Rapp the munny in a ole nuspaipr ann thow it onn the trash-heape at the addge of the vakant lott one blok down the street frum wear you liv," it directed. "Putt it on topp. We wil gett it ann yore baby wil be in yore armms two ours latter. Three (3)."

This letter was immediately placed in the hands of The Thinking Machine. Mrs. Blake's face flushed with hope, and believing that the child would be restored to her, she waited in a fever of impatience.

"Now, Mr. Hatch," instructed The Thinking Machine. "Do with this package as directed. A man will come for it some time. I shall leave the task of finding out who he is, where he goes and all about him to you. He is probably a man of low mentality, though not so low as the misspelled words of his letter would have you believe. He should be easily trapped. Don't interfere with him-merely report to me when you find out these things."

Alone The Thinking Machine returned to Boston. Thirty-six hours later, in the early morning, a telegram came for him. It was as follows: