IV
Curtis was led away and locked up. He raved and bitterly denounced Reid for the information he had given, but he did not deny it. Indeed, after the first burst of fury he said nothing.
Once he was under lock and key the police, led by Detective Mallory, searched his rooms at the Hotel Teutonic and there they found a handkerchief stained with blood. It was slight, still it was a stain. This was immediately placed in the hands of an expert, who pronounced it human blood. Then the case against Curtis seemed complete; it was his knife, he had been in love with Miss Melrose, therefore probably jealous of her, and here was the tell-tale blood-stain.
Meanwhile Reid was permitted to go his way. He seemed crushed by the rapid sequence of events, and read eagerly every line he could find in the public prints concerning both the murder and the elopement of Miss Dow. This latter affair, indeed, seemed to have greater sway over his mind than the murder, or that a lifetime friend was now held as the murderer.
Meanwhile The Thinking Machine had signified to Hatch his desire to visit the scene of the crime and see what might be done there. Late in the afternoon, therefore, they started, taking a train for a village nearest the Monarch Inn.
“It’s a most extraordinary ease,” The Thinking Machine said, “much more extraordinary than you can imagine.”
“In what respect?” asked the reporter.
“In motive, in the actual manner of the girl meeting her death and in a dozen other details which I can’t state now because I haven’t all the facts.”
“You don’t doubt but what it was murder?”
“It doesn’t necessarily follow,” said The Thinking Machine, evasively. “Suppose we were seeking a motive for Miss Melrose’s suicide, what would we have? We would have her love affair with this man MacLean whom she refused to marry because she knew he would be disinherited. Suppose she had not seen him for a couple of years—suppose she had made up her mind to give him up—that he had suddenly appeared when she sat alone in the automobile in front of the Monarch Inn—suppose, then, finding all her love reawakened, she had decided to end it all?”
“But Curtis’s knife and the blood on his handkerchief?”
“Suppose, having made up her mind to kill herself, she had sought a weapon?” went on The Thinking Machine, as if there had been no interruption. “What is more natural than she should have sought something—the knife, say—in the tool bag or kit, which must have been near her? Suppose she stabbed herself while the men were away from the automobile, or even after they had started on again in the darkness?”
Hatch looked a little crestfallen.
“You believe, then, that she did kill herself?” he asked.
“Certainly not,” was the prompt response. “I don’t believe Miss Melrose killed herself—but as yet I know nothing to the contrary. As for the blood on Curtis’s handkerchief, remember he helped carry the body to Dr. Leonard; it might have come from that—it might have come from a slight spattering of blood.”
“But circumstances certainly implicate Curtis.”
“I wouldn’t convict any man of any crime on any circumstantial evidence,” was the response. “It’s worthless unless a man is forced to confess.”
The reporter was puzzled, bewildered, and his face showed it. There were many things he did not understand, but the principal question in his mind took form:
“Why did you turn Curtis over to the police, then?”
“Because he is the man who owned the knife,” was the reply. “I knew he was lying to me from the first about the knife. Men have been executed on less evidence than that.”
The train stopped and they proceeded to the office of the medical examiner, where the body of the woman lay. Professor Van Dusen was readily permitted to see the body, even to offer his expert assistance in an autopsy which was then being performed; but the reporter was stopped at the door. After an hour The Thinking Machine came out.
“She was stabbed from the right,” he said answer to Hatch’s inquiring look, “either by some one sitting at her right, by some one leaning over her right shoulder, or she might have done it herself.”
Then they went on to Monarch Inn, five miles way. Here, after a comprehensive squint at the landscape, The Thinking Machine entered and for an hour questioned three waiters there.
Did these waiters see Mr. Reid? Yes. They identified his published picture as a gentleman who had come in and taken a hot Scotch at the bar. Any one with him? No. Speak to anyone in the inn? Yes, a lady.
“What did she look like?” asked The Thinking Machine.
“Couldn’t say, sir,” the waiter replied. “She came in an automobile and wore a mask, with a veil tied about her head and a long tan automobile coat.”
“With the mask on you couldn’t see her face?”
“Only her chin, sir.”
“No glimpse of her hair?”
“No, sir. It was covered by the veil.”
Then The Thinking Machine turned loose a flood of questions. He learned that the woman had been waiting at the inn for nearly an hour when Reid entered; that she had come there alone and at her request had been shown into a private parlor—“to wait for a gentleman,” she had told the waiter.
She had opened the door when she heard Reid enter and had glanced out, but he had disappeared into the bar before she saw him. When he started away she looked out again. Then she saw him and he saw her. She seemed surprised and started to close the door, when he spoke to her. No one heard what was said, but he went in and the door was closed.
No one knew just when either Reid or the woman left the inn. Some half an hour or so after Reid entered the room a waiter rapped on the door. There was no answer. He opened the door and went in, but there was no one there. It was presumed then that the gentleman she had been waiting for had appeared and they had gone out together. It was a fact that an automobile had come up meanwhile—in addition to that in which Curtis, Miss Melrose and Reid had come—and had gone away again.
When all this questioning had come to an end and these facts were in possession of The Thinking Machine, the reporter advanced a theory.
“That woman was unquestionably Miss Dow, who knew Reid and who eloped that night with Morgan Mason.”
The Thinking Machine looked at him a moment without speaking, then led the way into the private room where the lady had been waiting. Hatch followed. They remained there five or ten minutes, then The Thinking Machine came out and started toward the front door, only eight or ten feet from this room. The road was twenty feet away.
“Let’s go,” he said, finally.
“Where?” asked Hatch.
“Don’t you see?” asked The Thinking Machine, irrelevantly, “that it would have been perfectly possible for Miss Melrose herself to have left the automobile and gone inside the inn for a few minutes?”
Following previously received directions The Thinking Machine now set out to find the man who had charge of the gasoline tank. They went away together and remained half an hour.
On the scientist’s return to where Hatch had been waiting impatiently they climbed into the car which had brought them to the inn.
“Two miles down this road, then the first road to your right until I tell you to stop,” was the order to the chauffeur.
“Where are you going?” asked Hatch, curiously.
“Don’t know yet,” was the enigmatic reply.
The car