the matter with him?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. Doctor Perdue has declined to make any statement.”
Half an hour later The Thinking Machine and Hatch called at the Phillips’ house. They met Doctor Perdue coming out. His face was grave and preoccupied; his professional air of jocundity was wholly absent. He shook hands with The Thinking Machine, whom he had met years before beside an operating-table, and reëntered the house with him. Together the three went to the little room—the scene of the tragedy.
The Japanese gong still swung over the desk. The crabbed little scientist went straight to it, and for five minutes devoted his undivided attention to a study of the splotch on the fifth bell. From the expression of his face Hatch could gather nothing. What the scientist saw might or might not have been illuminating. Was the splotch the mark of a hand? If it were, Hatch argued, it offered no clew, as the intricate lines of the flesh were smeared together, obliterated.
Next The Thinking Machine critically glanced about him, and finally threw open the window facing east. For a long time he stood silently squinting out; and, save for the minute lines in his forehead, there was no indication whatever of his mental workings. The little room was on the second floor and jutted out at right angles across a narrow alley which ran beneath them to the kitchen in the back. The dead-wall of the next building was only four feet from the Phillips’ wall, and was without windows, so it was easily seen how a man, unobserved, might climb up from below despite an arc-light above the wide front door of an apartment-house across the street, visible in the vista of the alley.
“Do you happen to know, Perdue,” asked The Thinking Machine at last, “if this west window was ever opened?”
“Never,” replied the physician. “Detective Mallory questioned the servants about it. It seems that the kitchen is beneath, somewhat to the back, and the odors of cooking came up.”
“How many outside doors has this house?”
“Only two,” was the reply: “the one you entered, and one opening into the alley below us.”
“Both were found locked yesterday morning?”
“Yes. Both doors have spring-locks, therefore each locks itself when closed.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the scientist suddenly.
He turned away from the window, and, for a second time, examined the still and silent gong. Somewhere in his mind seemed to be an inkling that the gong might be more closely associated than appeared with the mystery of death, and yet, watching him curiously, Doctor Perdue knew he could have no knowledge of the sinister part it had played in the affair. With a penknife The Thinking Machine made a slight mark on the under side of each bell in turn; then squinted at them, one after another. On the inside of the top bell—the largest—he found something—a mark, a symbol perhaps—but it seemed meaningless to Hatch and Doctor Perdue, who were peering over his shoulder.
It was merely a circle with three upward rays and three dots inside it.
“The manufacturer’s mark, perhaps,” Hatch suggested.
“Of course, it’s impossible that the bell could have had anything to do—” Doctor Perdue began.
“Nothing is impossible, Perdue,” snapped the scientist crabbedly. “Do not say that. It annoys me exceedingly.” He continued to stare at the symbol. “Just where was the body found?” he asked after a little.
“Here,” replied Doctor Perdue, and he indicated a spot near the window.
The Thinking Machine measured the distance with his eye.
“The only real problem here,” he remarked musingly, after a moment, as if supplementing a previous statement, “is what made him lock the door and run?”
“What made—who?” Hatch asked eagerly.
The Thinking Machine merely squinted at him, through him, beyond him with glassy eyes. His thoughts seemed far away and the cobwebby lines in his forehead grew deeper. Doctor Perdue was apparently at the moment too self-absorbed to heed.
“Now, Perdue,” demanded The Thinking Machine suddenly, “what is really the matter with Mr. Phillips?”
“Well, it’s rather—” he started haltingly, then went on as if his mind were made up: “You know, Van Dusen, there’s something back of all this that hasn’t been told, for reasons which I consider good ones. It might interest you, because you are keen on these things, but I doubt if it would help you. And besides, I should have to insist that you alone should hear it.”
He glanced meaningly at Hatch, whom he knew to be present only in his capacity as reporter.
“There’s something else—about the bell,” said The Thinking Machine quickly. It was not a question, but a statement.
“Yes, about the bell,” acquiesced the physician, as if a little surprised that the other should know. “But as I said it—”
“I undertook to get at the facts here to aid Mr. Hatch,” explained The Thinking Machine; “but I can assure you he will print nothing without my permission.”
Doctor Perdue looked at the newspaperman inquiringly; Hatch nodded.
“I guess perhaps it would be better for you to hear it from Phillips himself,” went on the physician. “Come along. I think he would be willing to tell you.”
Thus the scientist and the reporter met Franklin Phillips. He was in bed. The once masterful financier seemed but a shadow of what he had been. His strong face was now white and haggard, and lined almost beyond recognition. The lips were pale, the hands nervously clutched at the sheet, and in his eyes was horror—hideous horror. They glittered at times, and only at intervals reflected the strength, the power which once lay there. His present condition was as pitiable as it was inexplicable to Hatch, who remembered him as the rugged storm-centre of half a dozen spectacular financial battles.
Mr. Phillips talked willingly—seemed, indeed, relieved to be able to relate in detail those circumstances which, in a way, accounted for his utter collapse. As he went on volubly, yet coherently enough, his roving eyes settled on the petulant, inscrutable face of The Thinking Machine as if seeking, above all things, belief. He found it, for the scientist nodded time after time, and gradually the lines in the dome-like forehead were dissipated.
“Now I know why he ran,” declared the scientist positively, enigmatically. The remark was hopelessly without meaning to the others. “As I understand it, Mr. Phillips,” he asked, “the east window was always open when the bell sounded?”
“Yes, I believe it was, always,” replied Mr. Phillips after a moment’s thought.
“And you always heard it when the window was open?”
“Oh, no,” replied the financier. “There were many times when the window was open that I didn’t hear anything.”
A fleeting bewilderment crossed the scientist’s face, then was gone.
“Of course, of course,” he said after a moment. “Stupid of me. I should have known that. Now, the first time you ever noticed it the bell rang twice—that is, twice with an interval of, say, a few seconds between?”
“Yes.”
