The Thinking Machine Collected Stories Part 92

Mr. van Safford arose suddenly, stood glaring down at her for an instant, then turning abruptly left the house. Involuntarily she had started up, then she sat down again and wept softly over her coffee. Mr. van Safford seemed to have a very definite purpose for when he reached the club he went straight to a telephone booth, and called Miss Blakesley over the wire.

"My wife said something about-something about--" he stammered lamely, "something about calling on you to-morrow. Will you be in?"

"Yes, and I'll be so glad to see her," came the reply. "I'm dreadfully tired of staying cooped up here in the house, and really I was beginning to think all my friends had deserted me."

"Cooped up in the house?" Mr. van Safford repeated. "Are you ill?"

"I have been," replied Miss Blakesley. "I'm better now, but I haven't been out of the house for more than a week."

"Indeed!" remarked Mr. van Safford, sympathetically. "I'm awfully sorry, I a.s.sure you. Then you haven't had a chance to try your-your-'big new touring car' ?"

"Why, I haven't any new touring car," said Miss Blakesley. "I haven't any sort of a car. Where did you get that idea?"

Mr. van Safford didn't answer her; rudely enough he hung up the telephone and left the club with a face like marble. When finally he stopped walking he was opposite his own house. For a minute he stood looking at it much as if he had never seen it before, then he turned and went back to the club. There was something of fright, of horror even, in his white face when he entered.

As Mr. van Safford did not go to bed that night it was not surprising that his wife should find him in the breakfast room when she came down about eight o'clock. She smiled. He stared at her with a curt: "Good morning!" Then came an ominous silence. She finished her breakfast, arose and left the house without a word. He watched her from a window until she disappeared around the corner, just four doors below, then overcome by fears, suspicions, hideous possibilities, he ran out of the house after her.

She had not been out of his sight more than half a minute when he reached the corner, yet now-now she was gone. He looked on both sides of the street, up and down, but there was no sign of her-not a woman in sight. He knew that she would not have had time to reach the next street below, then he readily saw the two obvious possibilities. One was that she had stepped into a waiting cab and been driven away at full speed; another that she had entered one of the nearby houses. If so, which house? Who did she know in this street? He turned the problem over in his mind several times, and then he was convinced that she had hurried away in waiting cab. That emotion which had begun as curiosity was now a raging, turbulent torrent.

On the following morning Mrs. van Safford came down to breakfast at fifteen minutes of eight. She seemed a little tired, and there was a trace of tears about her eyes. Baxter looked at her curiously.

"Has Mr. van Safford been down yet?" she asked.

"No, Madam," he replied.

"Did he come in at all last night?"

"Yes, Madam. About half past two, I let him in. He had forgotten his key."

Now as a matter of fact at that particular moment Mr. van Safford was standing just around the corner, four doors down, waiting for his wife. Just what he intended to do when she appeared was not quite clear in his mind, but the affair had gone to a point where he felt that he must do something. So he waited impatiently, and smoked innumerable cigars. Two hours pa.s.sed. He glanced around the corner. No one in sight. He strolled back to the house, and met Baxter in the hall.

"Has Mrs. van Safford come down?" he asked of the servant.

"Yes, sir," was the reply. "She went out more than an hour ago."

Martha opened the door.

"Please, sir," she said, "there's a young gentleman having a fit in the reception room."

Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen-The Thinking Machine-turned away from his laboratory table and squinted at her aggressively. Her eyes were distended with nervous excitement, and her wrinkled hands twisted the ap.r.o.n she wore.

"Having a fit?" snapped the scientist.

"Yes, sir," she gasped.

"Dear me! Dear me! How annoying!" expostulated the man of achievement, petulantly. "Just what sort of a fit is it-epileptic, apoplectic, or merely a fit of laughter?"

"Lord, sir, I don't know," Martha confessed helplessly. "He's just a-walking and a-talking and a-pulling his hair, sir."

"What name?"

"I-I forgot to ask, sir," apologized the aged servant, "it surprised me so to see a gentleman a-wiggling like that. He said, though he'd been to Police Headquarters and Detective Mallory sent him."

The eminent logician dried his hands and started for the reception room. At the door he paused and peered in. With no knowledge of just what style of fit his visitor had chosen to have he felt the necessity of this caution. What he saw was not alarming-merely a good-looking young man pacing back and forth across the room with quick, savage stride. His eyes were blazing, and his face was flushed with anger. It was Mr. van Safford.

At sight of the diminutive figure of The Thinking Machine, topped by the enormous yellow head, the young man paused and his anger-distorted features relaxed into something closely approaching surprise.

"Well?" demanded The Thinking Machine, querulously.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. van Safford with a slight start. "I-I had expected to find a-a-rather a different sort of person."

"Yes, I know," said The Thinking Machine grumpily. "A man with a black moustache and big feet. Sit down."

Mr. van Safford sat down rather suddenly. It never occurred to anyone to do other than obey when the crabbed little scientist spoke. Then, with an incoherence which was thoroughly convincing, Mr. van Safford laid before The Thinking Machine in detail those singular happenings which had so disturbed him. The Thinking Machine leaned back in his chair, with finger tips pressed together, and listened to the end.

"My mental condition-my suffering-was such," explained Mr. van Safford in conclusion, "that when I proved to my own satisfaction that she had twice misrepresented the facts to me, wilfully, I-I could have strangled her."

"That would have been a nice thing to do," remarked the scientist crustily. "You believe, then, that there may be another--"

"Don't say it," burst out the young man pa.s.sionately. He arose. His face was dead white. "Don't say it," he repeated, menacingly.

The Thinking Machine was silent a moment, then glanced up in the blazing eyes and cleared his throat.

"She never did such a thing before?" he asked.

"No, never."

"Does she-did she-ever speculate?"

Mr. van Safford sat down again.

"Never," he responded, positively. "She wouldn't know one stock from another."

"Has her own bank account?"

"Yes-nearly four hundred thousand dollars. This was her father's gift at our wedding. It was deposited in her name, and has remained so. My own income is more than enough for our uses."

"You are rich, then?"

"My father left me nearly two million dollars," was the reply. "But this all doesn't matter. What I want--"

"Wait a minute," interrupted The Thinking Machine testily. There was a long pause. "You have never quarrelled seriously?"

"Never one cross word," was the reply.

"Remarkable," commented The Thinking Machine ambiguously. "How long have you been married?"