a chance of suffocation, but a great deal of air may enter a trunk.”
“And the candy?” Hatch asked.
“Yes, the candy. We know that two pieces of candy nearly killed the maid. Yet Mr. Mason admitted having bought it. This admission indicated that this poisoned candy is not the candy he bought. Is Mr. Mason a hypnotist? No. He hasn’t the eyes. His picture tells me that. We know that Mr. Mason did buy candy for Miss Wallack on several occasions. We know that sometimes he left it with the stage doorkeeper. We know that members of the company stopped there for mail. We instantly see that it is possible for one to take away that box and substitute poisoned candy. All the boxes are alike.
“Madness and the cunning of madness lie back of all this. It was a deliberate attempt to murder Miss Wallack, long pondered and due, perhaps, to unrequited or hopeless infatuation. It began with the poisoned candy, and that failing, went to a point immediately following the moment when the stage manager last spoke to the actress. The hypnotist was probably in her room then. You must remember that it would have been possible for him to ease the headache, and at the same time leave Miss Wallack free to play. She might have known this from previous experience.”
“Is Miss Wallack still in the trunk?” asked Hatch after a silence.
“No,” replied the Thinking Machine. “She is out now, dead or alive—I am inclined to believe alive.”
“And the man?”
“I will turn him over to the police in half an hour after we reach Boston.”
From South Station the scientist and Hatch were driven immediately to Police Headquarters. Detective Mallory, whom Hatch knew well, received them.
“We got your ’phone from Springfield—” he began.
“Was she dead?” interrupted the scientist.
“No,” Mallory replied. “She was unconscious when we took her out of the trunk, but no bones are broken. She is badly bruised. The doctor says she’s hypnotized.”
“Was the piece of candy taken from her mouth?”
“Sure, a chocolate cream. It hadn’t melted.”
“I’ll come back here in a few minutes and awake her,” said The Thinking Machine. “Come with us now, and get the man.”
Wonderingly the detective entered the cab and the three were driven to a big hotel a dozen blocks away. Before they entered the lobby The Thinking Machine handed a photograph to Mallory, who studied it under an electric light.
“That man is upstairs with several others,” explained the scientist. “Pick him out and get behind him when we enter the room. He may attempt to shoot. Don’t touch him until I say so.”
In a large room on the fifth floor Manager Stanfeld of the Irene Wallack Company had assembled the men of her support. This was done at the ’phoned request of The Thinking Machine. There were no preliminaries when Professor Van Dusen entered. He squinted comprehensively about him, then went straight to Langdon Mason.
“Were you on the stage in the third act of your play before Miss Wallack was to appear—I mean the play last Saturday night?” he asked.
“I was,” Mason replied, “for at least three minutes.”
“Mr. Stanfeld, is that correct?”
“Yes,” replied the manager.
There was a long tense silence broken only by the heavy footsteps of Mallory as he walked toward a distant corner of the room. A faint flush crept into Mason’s face as he realized that the questions were almost an accusation. He started to speak, but the steady, impassive voice of The Thinking Machine stopped him.
“Mr. Mallory, take your prisoner,” it said.
Instantly there was a fierce, frantic struggle, and those present turned to see the detective with his great arms locked about Stanley Wightman, the melancholy Jaques of “As You Like It.” The actor’s face was distorted, madness blazed in the eyes, and he snarled like a beast at bay. By a sudden movement Mallory threw Wightman and manacled him, then looked up to find The Thinking Machine peering over his shoulder at the prostrate man.
“Yes, he’s a hypnotist,” the scientist remarked in self-satisfied conclusion. “It always tells in the pupils of the eyes.”
This, then, was the beginning and end of the first problem. Miss Wallack was aroused, and told a story almost identical with that of The Thinking Machine. Stanley Wightman, whose brooding over a hopeless love for her made a maniac of him, raves and shrieks the lines of Jaques in the seclusion of a padded cell.
THE GREAT AUTO MYSTERY
With a little laugh of sheer light-heartedness on her lips and a twinkle in her blue eyes, Marguerite Melrose bound on a grotesque automobile mask, and stuffed the last strand of her recalcitrant hair beneath her veil. The pretty face was hidden from mouth to brow; and her curls were ruthlessly imprisoned under a cap held in place by the tightly tied veil.
“It’s perfectly hideous, isn’t it?” she demanded of her companions.
Jack Curtis laughed.
“Well,” he remarked, quizzically, “it’s just as well that we know you are pretty.”
“We could never discover it as you are now,” added Charles Reid. “Can’t see enough of your face to tell whether you are white or black.”
The girl’s red lips were pursed into a pout, which ungraciously hid her white teeth, as she considered the matter seriously.
“I think I’ll take it off,” she said at last.
“Don’t,” Curtis warned her. “On a good road The Green Dragon only hits the tall places.”
“Tear your hair off,” supplemented Reid. “When Jack lets her loose it’s just a pszzzzt!—and wherever you’re going you’re there.”
“Not on a night as dark as this?” protested the girl, quickly.
“I’ve got lights like twin locomotives,” Curtis assured her, smilingly. “It’s perfectly safe. Don’t get nervous.”
He tied on his own mask with its bleary goggles, while Reid did the same. The Green Dragon, a low, gasoline car of racing build, stood panting impatiently, awaiting them at a side door of the hotel. Curtis assisted Miss Melrose into the front seat and climbed in beside her, while Reid sat behind in the tonneau. There was a preparatory quiver, the car jerked a little and then began to move.
The three persons in it were Marguerite Melrose, an actress who had attracted attention in the West five years before by her great beauty and had afterwards, by her art, achieved a distinct place; Jack Curtis, a friend since childhood, when both lived in San Francisco and attended the same school, and Charles Reid, his chum, son of a mine owner at Denver.
The unexpected meeting of the three in Boston had been a source of mutual pleasure. It had been two years since they had seen one another in Denver, where Miss Melrose was playing. Now she was in Boston, pursuing certain vocal studies before returning West for her next season.
Reid
