the next fifth word was ‘Bible’; thus, ‘on page seven family Bible’.
“It is unnecessary to go further into the study I made of the cipher. I worked upward from the seven, taking each fifth word until I had all the cipher words. I have underscored them here. Read the words underscored and you have the cipher.”
Hatch took the letter marked as follows:
To those Concerned:
Tired of it all I seek the end, and am content. Ambition is dead; the grave yawns greedily at my feet, and with the labor of my own hands lost I greet death of my own will, by my own act.
To my son I leave all, and you who maligned me, you who discouraged me, you may read this and know I punish you thus. It’s for him, my son, to forgive.
I dared in life and dare dead your everlasting anger, not alone that you didn’t speak, but that you cherished secret, and my ears are locked forever against you. My vault is my resting place.
On the brightest and dearest page of life I wrote (7) my love for him. Family ties, binding as the Bible itself, bade me give all to my son.
Good-bye. I die.
Pomeroy Stockton
Slowly Hatch read this:
“I am dead at the hands of my son. You who read punish him. I dare not speak. Secret locked vault on page 7 family Bible.”
“Well, by George!” exclaimed the reporter. It was a tribute to The Thinking Machine, as well as an expression of amazement at what he read.
“You see,” explained The Thinking Machine, “if the word ‘in’ had appeared between ‘cherished’ and ‘secret’, as it would naturally have done, it would have lost the order of the cipher, therefore it was purposely left out.”
“It’s enough to send Stockton to the electric chair,” said Hatch.
“It would be if it were not a forgery,” said the scientist testily.
“A forgery,” gasped Hatch. “Didn’t Pomeroy Stockton write it?”
“No.”
“Surely not John Stockton?”
“No.”
“Well, who then?”
“Miss Devan.”
“Miss Devan!” Hatch repeated in amazement. “Then, Miss Devan killed Pomeroy Stockton?”
“No, he died a natural death.”
Hatch’s head was whirling. A thousand questions demanded an immediate answer. He stared mouth agape at The Thinking Machine. All his ideas of the case were tumbling about him. Nothing remained.
“Briefly, here is what happened,” said The Thinking Machine. “Pomeroy Stockton died a natural death of heart disease. Miss Devan found him dead, wrote this letter, put it in his pocket, put a drop of prussic acid on his tongue, smashed the bottle of acid, left the room, locked the door, and next day had it broken down. It was she who shot John Stockton. It was she who tore out page seven of that family Bible, and then hid the book in Stockton’s room. It was she who in some way got hold of the will. She either has it or destroyed it. It was she who took advantage of her aged benefactor’s sudden death to further as weird and inhuman a plot against another as a woman can devise. There is nothing on God’s earth as bad as a bad woman, and nothing as good as a good one. I think that has been said before.”
“But as to this case,” Hatch interrupted. “How? what? why?”
“I read the cipher within a few hours after I got the letter,” replied The Thinking Machine. “Naturally I wanted to find out then who and what this son was.
“I had Miss Devan’s story, of course—a story of disagreement between father and son, quarreling and all that. It was also a story which showed a certain underlying animosity despite Miss Devan’s cleverness. She had so mingled fact with fiction that it was not altogether easy to weed out the truth, therefore I believed what I chose.
“Miss Devan’s idea, as expressed to me, was that the letter was written under coercion. Men who are being murdered don’t write cipher letters as intricate as that; and men who are committing suicide have no obvious reasons for writing such letters. The line ‘I dare not speak’ was silly. Pomeroy Stockton was not a prisoner. If he had feared a conspiracy to kill him why shouldn’t he speak?
“All these things were in my mind when I asked you to see Stockton. I was particularly anxious to hear what he had to say as to the family Bible. And yet I may say I knew that page seven had been torn out of the book and was then in Miss Devan’s possession.
“I may say, too, that I knew that the secret vault was empty. Whatever these two things contained, supposing she wrote the cipher, had been removed or she would not have called attention to them in this cipher. I had an idea that she might have written it from the mere fact that it was she who first called my attention to the possibility of a cipher.
“Assuming then that the cipher was a forgery, that she wrote it, that it directly accused John Stockton, that she brought it to me, I had fairly conclusive proof that if Pomery Stockton had been murdered she had had a hand in it. John Stockton’s motive in trying to suppress the fact of a suicide, as he thought it, was perfectly clear. It was, as he said, to avoid disgrace. Such things are done frequently.
“From the moment you told him of the possibility of murder, he suspected Miss Devan. Why? Because, above all, she had the opportunity, because she wanted the bulk of the estate, because there was some animosity against John Stockton.
“This now proves to have been a broken-off love affair. John Stockton broke it off. He himself had loved Miss Devan. She had refused him. Later, when he broke off the love affair, she hated him.
“Her plan for revenge was almost diabolical. It was intended to give her full revenge and the estate at the same time. She hoped, she knew, that I would read that cipher. She planned that it would send John Stockton to the electric chair.”
“Horrible!” commented Hatch with a little shudder.
“It was a fear that this plan might go wrong that induced her to try to kill Stockton by shooting him. The cellar was dark, but she forgot that ninety-nine revolvers out of a hundred leave slight powder stains on the hand of the person who fires them. Stockton said that she did not shoot him, because of that inexplicable loyalty which some men show to a woman they love or have loved.
“Stockton made his secret visit to the house that night to get what was in that vault without her knowledge. He knew of its existence. His father had probably told him. The thing that appeared on page seven of the family Bible was in all probability the copper hardening process he was perfecting. I should think it had been written there in invisible ink. John Stockton knew this was there. His father told him. If his father told it, Miss Devan probably overheard it. She knew it, too.
“Now the actual circumstances of the death. The girl must have had and used a key to the work room. After John Stockton left the house that Monday night she entered that room. She found his father dead of heart disease. The autopsy proved this.
“Then the
