“Please go into the little room and close the window,” he instructed. “Mr. Phillips has heard the bell again, and I imagine Doctor Perdue needs me. Meanwhile, put this envelope in your pocket.” And he handed to Hatch the mysterious sealed packet.
It was twenty minutes past nine o’clock that evening. In the little room where the gong hung were Franklin Phillips, pale and weak, but eager; Doctor Perdue, The Thinking Machine, Harvey Phillips and Hatch. For four hours Doctor Perdue and the scientist had labored over the unconscious financier, and finally a tinge of color returned to the pale lips; then came consciousness.
“It was my suggestion, Mr. Phillips, that we are here,” explained The Thinking Machine quietly. “I want to show you just why and how the bell rings, and incidentally clear up the other points of the mystery. Now, if I should tell you that the bell will sound a given number of times at a given instant, and it should sound, you would know that I was aware of the cause?”
“Certainly,” assented Mr. Phillips eagerly.
“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-glass.”
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 assure 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 circumstances 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 Japanese and we know it’s extremely old. We must assume 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 multitudes listened. Perhaps they regarded it as prophetic. After its disappearance from Japan—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 assure 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