The Thinking Machine Collected Stories Part 168

All these things considered, the snap judgement of the police-specifically, the snap judgement of Detective Mallory, of the bureau of criminal investigation-was suicide by poison. Miss Danbury had poured some deadly drug into a goblet, sat down, drained it off, and died. Simple and obvious enough. But the darkness in her face? Oh, that! Probably some effect of a poison he didn't happen to be acquainted with. But it looked as if she might have been strangled! Pooh! Pooh! There were no marks on her neck, of fingers or anything else. Suicide, that's what it was-the autopsy would disclose the nature of the poison.

Cursory questions of the usual nature were asked and answered. Had Miss Danbury lived alone? No; she had a companion upon whom, too, devolved the duties of chaperon-a Mrs. Cecelia Montgomery. Where was she? She'd left the city the day before to visit friends in Concord; the manager of the hotel had telegraphed the facts to her. No servants? No. She had availed herself of the service in the hotel. Who had last seem Miss Danbury alive? The elevator attendant the night before, when she had returned form the opera, about half past eleven o'clock. Had she gone alone? No. She had been accompanied by Professor Charles Meredith, of the university. He had returned with her, and left her at the elevator.

"How did she come to know Professor Meredith?" Mallory inquired. "Friend, relative--"

"I don't know," said the hotel manager. "She knew a great many people here. She'd only been in the city two months this time, but once, three years ago, she spent six months here."

"Any particular reason for her coming over? Business, for instance, or merely a visit?"

"Merely a visit, I imagine."

The front door swung open, and there entered at the moment a middle-aged man, sharp-featured, rather spare, brisk in his movements, and distinctly well groomed. He went straight to the inquiry desk.

"Will you please phone to Miss Danbury, and ask her if she will join Mr. Herbert Willing for luncheon at the country club?" he requested. "Tell her I am below with my motor."

At mention of Miss Danbury's name both Mallory and the house manager turned. The boy behind the inquiry desk glanced at the detective blankly. Mr. Willing rapped upon the desk sharply.

"Well, well?" he demanded impatiently. "Are you asleep?"

"Good morning, Mr. Willing," Mallory greeted him.

"h.e.l.lo, Mallory," and Mr. Willing turned to face him. "What are you doing here?"

"You don't know that Miss Danbury is"-the detective paused a little-"is dead?"

"Dead!" Mr. Willing gasped. "Dead!" he repeated incredulously. "What are you talking about?" He seized Mallory by the arm, and shook him. "Miss Danbury is--"

"Dead," the detective a.s.sured him again. "She probably committed suicide. She was found in her apartments two hours ago."

For half a minute Mr. Willing continued to stare at him as if without comprehension, then he dropped weakly into a chair, with his head in his hands. When he glanced up again there was deep grief in his keen face.

"It's my fault," he said simply. "I feel like a murderer. I gave her some bad news yesterday, but I didn't dream she would--" He stopped.

"Bad news?" Mallory urged.

"I've been doing some legal work for her," Mr. Willing explained. "She's been trying to sell a huge estate in England, and just at the moment the deal seemed a.s.sured it fell through. I-I suppose it was a mistake to tell her. This morning I received another offer from an unexpected quarter, and I came by to inform her of it." He stared tensely into Mallory's face for a moment without speaking. "I feel like her murderer!" he said again.

"But I don't understand why the failure of the deal--" the detective began; then: "She was rich, wasn't she? What did it matter particularly if the deal did fail?"

"Rich, yes; but land poor," the lawyer elucidated. "The estates to which she held t.i.tle were frightfully involved. She had jewels and all those things, but see how simply she lived. She was actually in need of money. It would take me an hour to make you understand. How did she die? When? What was the manner of her death?"

Detective Mallory placed before him those facts he had, and finally went away with him in his motor car to see Professor Meredith at the university. Nothing bearing on the case developed as the result of that interview. Mr. Meredith seemed greatly shocked, and explained that his acquaintance with Miss Danbury dated some weeks back, and friends.h.i.+p had grown out of it through a mutual love of music. He had accompanied her to the opera half a dozen times.

"Suicide!" the detective declared, as he came away. "Obviously suicide by poison."

On the following day he discovered for the first time that the obvious is not necessarily true. The autopsy revealed absolutely no trace of poison, either in the body or clinging to the shattered goblet, carefully gathered up and examined. The heart was normal, showing neither constriction nor dilation, as would have been the case had poison been swallowed, or even inhaled.

"It's the small wound in her cheek, then," Mallory a.s.serted. "Maybe she didn't swallow or inhale poison-she injected it directly into her blood through that wound."

"No," one of the examining physicians pointed out. "Even that way the heart would have shown constriction or dilation."

"Oh, maybe not," Mallory argued hopefully.

"Besides," the physician went on, "that wound was made after death. That is proven by the fact that it did not bleed." His brow clouded in perplexity. "There doesn't seem to be the slightest reason for that wound, anyway. It's really a hole, you know. It goes straight through her cheek. It looks as if it might have been made with a large hatpin."

The detective was staring at him. If that wound had been made after death, certainly Miss Danbury didn't make it-she had been murdered! And not murdered for robbery, since her jewels had been undisturbed.

"Straight through her cheek!" he repeated blankly. "By George! Say, if it wasn't poison, what killed her?"

The three examining physicians exchanged glances.

"I don't know that I can make you understand," said one. "She died of absence of air in her lungs, if you follow me."

"Absence of air-well, that's illuminating!" the detective sneered heavily. "You mean she was strangled, or choked to death?"

"I mean precisely what I say," was the reply. "She was not strangled-there is no mark on her throat; or choked-there is no obstruction in her throat. Literally she died of absence of air in her lungs."

Mallory stood silently glowering at them. A fine lot of physicians, these!

"Let's understand one another," he said at last. "Miss Danbury did not die a natural death?"

"No!" emphatically.

"She wasn't poisoned? Or strangled? Or shot? Or stabbed? Or run over by a truck? Or blown up by dynamite? Or kicked by a mule? Nor," he concluded, "did she fall from an aeroplane?"

"No."

"In other words, she just quit living?"

"Something like that," the physician admitted. He seemed to be seeking a means of making himself more explicit. "You know the old nursery theory that a cat will suck a sleeping baby's breath?" he asked. "Well, the death of Miss Danbury was like that, if you understand. It is as if some great animal or-or thing had--" He stopped.

Detective Mallory was an able man, the ablest, perhaps, in the bureau of criminal investigation, but a yellow primrose by the river's brim was to him a yellow primrose, nothing more. He lacked imagination, a common fault of that type of sleuth who combines, more or less happily, a number eleven shoe and a number six hat. The only vital thing he had to go on was the fact that Miss Danbury was dead-murdered, in some mysterious, uncanny way. Vampires were something like that, weren't they? He shuddered a little.

"Regular vampire sort of thing," the youngest of the three physicians remarked, echoing the thought in the detective's mind. "They're supposed to make a slight wound, and--"

Detective Mallory didn't hear the remainder of it. He turned abruptly, and left the room.

On the following Monday morning, one Henry Sumner, a longsh.o.r.eman in Atlantic Avenue, was found dead sitting in his squalid room. On his face, dark in death, as are the faces of those who die of strangulation, was an expression of unspeakable terror. His parted lips were slightly bruised, as if from a light blow; in his left cheek was an insignificant, bloodless wound. On the floor at his feet was a shattered drinking gla.s.s!

'Twas Hutchinson Hatch, newspaper reporter, long, lean, and rather prepossessing in appearance, who brought this double mystery to the attention of The Thinking Machine. Martha, the eminent scientist's one servant, admitted the newspaper man, and he went straight to the laboratory. As he opened the door The Thinking Machine turned testily from his worktable.

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Hatch. Glad to see you. Sit down. What is it?" That was his idea of extreme cordiality.

"If you can spare me five minutes?" the reporter began apologetically.

"What is it?" repeated The Thinking Machine, without raising his eyes.

"I wish I knew," the reporter said ruefully. "Two persons are dead-two persons as widely apart as the poles, at least in social position, have been murdered in precisely the same manner, and it seems impossible that--"