“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 glass.”
He tapped the fragile glass, and it sang shrilly. Then, on the violin, he sought the accompanying chord. Four times he drew the bow across the strings, and the glass was silent. Then the violin caught the pitch and the glass, 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 glass, just as vibration sounded the bell on the gong there. You saw me sound the glass; 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 glass, 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 passing 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 reassured by what he saw there, and something of his own professional jocundity asserted 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 superstition of a half-civilized race regarding the bell.”
The paper burned, and The Thinking Machine crumpled up the ashes and dropped them in a waste-basket.
* * * *
Two days later Franklin Phillips was himself again; on the fourth day he appeared at his office. On the sixth the market began to feel the master’s clutch; on the eighth Francis was taken into custody and related a story identical with that told by The Thinking Machine to account for his disappearance; on the eleventh Franklin Phillips was found dead in bed. On his forehead was a pallid, white spot, faintly visible. It was a circle with three dots inside and three rays extending out from it.
THE LEAK
“Really great criminals are never found out, for the simple reason that the greatest crimes—their crimes—are never discovered,” remarked Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen positively. “There is genius in the perpetration of crime, Mr. Grayson, just as there must be in its detection, unless it is the shallow work of a bungler. In this latter case there have been instances where even the police have uncovered the truth. But the expert criminal, the man of genius—the professional, I may say—regards as perfect only that crime which does not and cannot be made to appear a crime at all; therefore one that can never under any circumstances involve him, or anyone else.”
The financier, J. Morgan Grayson, regarded this wizened little man of science—The Thinking Machine—thoughtfully, through the smoke of his cigar.
“It is a strange psychological fact that the casual criminal glories in his crime beforehand, and from one to ten minutes afterward,” The Thinking Machine continued. “For instance, the man who kills for revenge wants the world to know it is his work; but at the end of ten minutes comes fear, and then paradoxically enough, he will seek to hide his crime and protect himself. With fear comes panic, with panic irresponsibility, and then he makes the mistake—hews a pathway which the trained mind follows from motive to a prison cell.”
“These are the men who are found out. But there are men of genius, Mr. Grayson, professionally engaged in crime. We never hear of them because they are never caught, and we never even suspect them because they make no mistake. Imagine the great brains of history turned to crime. Well, there are today brains as great as any of those of history; there is murder and theft and robbery under our noses that we never dream of. If I, for instance, should become an active criminal—”