Читать книгу 49 Tales of The Thinking Machine (49 detective stories featuring Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, also known as "The Thinking Machine") - Jacques Futrelle - Страница 20

It was an affecting scene Hutchinson Hatch witnessed in the Blake home about halfpast seven o’clock. It was that of a mother clasping a baby to her breast while tears of joy and hysteria streamed from her eyes. Baby Blake struggled manfully to free himself, but the mother clung to him.

“My boy, my boy,” she sobbed again and again.

Miss Barton sat on the floor beside the mother and wept too. Hatch saw it, and received some thanks, heartfelt, but broken with a little sobbing laughter. Then he had to dry his eyes, too, and Hutchinson Hatch was not a sentimental man.

“There will be no prosecution, Mrs. Blake, I suppose?” he asked.

“No, no, no,” was the half laughing, half tearful reply. “I am content.”

“I would like to ask a favor, if you don’t mind?” he suggested.

“Anything—anything for you and Professor Van Dusen,” was the reply.

“Will you lend me the baby’s picture book until tomorrow?” he asked.

“Certainly,” and in her happiness the mother forgot to note the strangeness of the request.

Hatch’s purpose in borrowing the book was not clear even to himself; in his mind had grown the idea that in some way The Thinking Machine connected this book with the disappearance of the child, and he was burning with curiosity to get the book and return to Boston, where The Thinking Machine might throw some light on the mystery. For it was still a mystery—a perplexing, baffling mystery that he could in no way grasp, even now that the baby was safe at home again.

In Boston the reporter went straight to the home of The Thinking Machine. The scientist was pottering about the little laboratory and only turned to look at Hatch when he entered.

“Baby back home?” he asked, shortly.

“Yes,” said the reporter.

“Good,” said the other, and he rubbed his slender hands together briskly. “Sit down, Mr. Hatch. It was a little better after all than I hoped for. Now your story first. What happened when the baby was brought back home?”

“I waited as you directed from afternoon until a few minutes to seven,” Hatch explained. “I could plainly see anyone who approached the front gate of the Blake place, although I could not be seen well, remaining in the shadow of the building opposite.

“I saw two or three people go up to the gate and enter the yard, but they were tradespeople. I spoke to them as they came out and ascertained this for myself. At last I saw a man approaching carrying something closely wrapped in his arms. He stopped at the gate, stared up the path a moment, glanced around several times and entered the yard. He was carrying Baby Blake. I knew it instinctively.

“He went to the front door of the house and there I lost him in the shadow for a moment. Subsequent developments showed that he opened this front door, which was not locked, put the baby down and closed the door softly. Then he came rapidly down the path toward the gate. An instant later I heard two screams from the house. I knew then that the baby was there, dead or alive—probably alive.

“The man who had brought it also heard the screams and accelerated his pace somewhat, so that I had to run. He heard me coming and he ran, too. It was a two-block chase before I caught him, and when I did he turned on me. I thought it was to fight.

“‘There was a promise of no arrest or prosecution,’ he said.

“I assured him hurriedly, and then walked on down the street beside him. He told me a queer story—it might be true or it might not, but I believe it. This was that the baby had been in his and his wife’s care from about halfpast six o’clock of the evening it disappeared until a few minutes before when he had returned it to its home.

“The man’s name is Sheldon—Michael Sheldon—and he is an exconvict. He served four years for burglary, and at one time had a pretty nasty record. He told me of it in explanation of his reasons for not turning the baby over to the police. Now he has reformed and is leading a new life. He is a clerk in a store here in Lynn, and despite his previous record is, I ascertained, a trusted and reliable man.

“Now here comes the queer part of the story. It seems that Sheldon and his wife live on the third floor of a tenement in northern Lynn. Their dining room has one window, which leads to a fire escape. He and his wife were at supper about halfpast six—in other words, a little more than half an hour from the time the baby disappeared from the Blake home.

“After awhile they heard a noise—they didn’t know what—on the fire escape. They paid no attention. Finally they heard another noise from the fire escape—that of a baby crying. Then Sheldon went to the window and opened it. There on the fire escape was Baby Blake. How he got there no human being knows.”

“I know now,” said The Thinking Machine. “Go on.”

“Puzzled and bewildered they took the child off the iron structure, where only the barest chance had prevented it from falling and being killed on the pavement below. The baby was apparently uninjured save for a few bruises, but his clothing was soiled and rumpled, and he was terribly cold. The wife, mother-like, set out to warm the little fellow and make him comfortable with hot milk and a steaming bath. The husband, Sheldon, says he went out to find how it was possible for the baby to have reached the fire escape. He knew no baby lived in the building.

“He looked long and carefully. There was no possible way by which a man could have climbed the fire escape to the third floor, and therefore certainly no way by which a fourteenmonth-old baby could climb there. There is a fence there which is pretty tall, say six feet, but even standing on this a man would have had to leap straight up in the air for five feet, and nobody I know could do it with a baby in his arms, particularly when the snow was there and everything was so slippery a person could hardly hold on.

“It seems that then Sheldon made inquiries of some of his neighbors, occupants of the house, but no one could throw any light on the subject. He did not tell them then of the baby, indeed, never told them. First, from the fine quality of the clothing, there had been an idea in his mind that the baby was one of a well-to-do family, and he remained quiet that night hoping that next day he might be able to learn something and possibly get a reward for the return of the child. He had given up the problem of how it got where he found it.”

Hatch paused a moment and lighted a cigar.

“Well, next day,” he went on, “Sheldon and his wife both saw the newspaper account of the mysterious disappearance of Baby Blake. The photographs of the missing child convinced them that Baby Blake was the child they had—the child they had really saved from death. Then came the question of returning the child to its home or turning it over to the police.

“Instantly the fact that a threat had been made to kidnap the child and a demand for ten thousand dollars made was borne in on Sheldon he became frightened. Remember he had a bad record. He was afraid of the police. He did not believe that he—however innocent he might be-could go to the police, turn over the baby and make them believe the strange story. I readily see how some wooden-headed department officials would have made his life a burden. I know the police. It is ninety-nine dollars to a cent they would have made him a prisoner and perhaps railroaded him for the kidnapping.”

“Yes, I see,” interrupted The Thinking Machine.

“So then he and his wife tried to devise a method of getting the baby back home. They thought of all sorts of things, but none satisfied them entirely. And they were still debating this point and considering it when your advertisement promised immunity. As a matter of fact it scared Sheldon. He imagined that you knew, and knew if he were even remotely connected with the matter it would get him in trouble. Then he resolved to take the baby back home on the promise of immunity.”

There was a little pause. The Thinking Machine sat staring steadily at the ceiling.

“Is that all?” he asked at last.

“I think so,” replied Hatch. “And now how—how in the name of all that’s good or evil did that baby disappear from the middle of its own back yard and then suddenly appear on a fire escape three blocks away, to be taken in by strangers?”

“It’s quite the most remarkable thing I have ever come across,” The Thinking Machine said. “A balloon anchor, which picked up the child by its clothing, through accident, and then dropped it safely on the fire escape might answer the question in a way. But it does not fully answer it. The baby was carried there.

“Frankly I will say that I could see no possible explanation of the affair until the day you and I were talking to Mrs. Blake and I stood looking out of the library window. Then it all flashed on me instantly. I went out and satisfied myself. When I returned to the library I was satisfied in all reason that Baby Blake was dead; I had had such an idea before. I was firmly convinced the child was dead when I put those advertisements in the newspapers. But there was still a chance that he was not.

“Several seemingly unanswerable questions faced me when I found the end of the baby’s footprints in the snow. I instantly saw that if the baby had made those tracks it had been lifted suddenly from the ground, but by what? From where? How had it been taken away? The balloon I could not consider seriously, although as I say it offered a possible solution. An eagle? I could not consider that seriously. Eagles are rare; eagles powerful enough to lift a baby weighing thirty pounds are extremely rare, practically unknown save in the far West; certainly I never heard of one doing such a thing as this. Therefore I passed the eagle by as an improbability.

“I satisfied myself that there were no other footsteps save the baby’s in the yard. Then—what? It occurred to me that someone standing on the little box might have reached over and lifted the child out of its tracks. But it was too far away, I thought, and if someone did stand there and lift the child that someone could not have leaped from that box over the stone wall, which was approximately a hundred feet away in all directions.

“I saw the stone ten feet away. Could a man stand on the box and leap to the stone? Generally, no. And from the stone, where could he have gone? Obviously nowhere. I considered this matter not minutes, but hours and days, and no light came to me. I was convinced, though, that the box was the starting point if the baby had made the tracks. I was now fairly certain that the baby did make the tracks. He wanted to get out in the snow, was left alone, opened the front door and wandered out.

“Then it all occurred to me in a new light. What living animal could have stood on the box and lifted the child clear four feet away, then leaped from there to the stone, and from the stone where? The clothes line is eight feet or so from the stone. It is a pretty sturdy rope and capable of bearing a considerable weight, supported as it is.”

He stopped and turned his eyes toward Hatch, who listened eagerly.

“Do you see it now?” he asked.

The reporter shook his head, bewildered.

“The thing that lifted Baby Blake from the snow stood on the box, leaped from there to the stone, from there to the clothes line, along which it climbed to the end. From the wooden support at the end it is a clear distance of fifteen feet to the nearest thing—the swing. This thing made that leap, climbed the swing rope, disappeared into the trees, moving through the branches freely from one tree to another, and dropped to the ground nearly a block away.”

“A monkey?” suggested Hatch.

“An orang-outang,” nodded The Thinking Machine.

“An orang-outang?” gasped Hatch, and he shuddered a little. “I see now why you were positive the child was dead.”

“An orang-outang is the only living thing within the knowledge of man which could have done all these things—therefore an orang-outang did them,” said the other emphatically. “Remember a full-sized orang-outang is nearly as tall as a man, has a reach relatively a third longer than a very tall man would have, and a strength which is enormous. It could have made the leaps and probably would have made them rather than step in the snow. They despise snow, being from the tropics themselves, and will not step in it unless they are compelled to. The leap of fifteen feet to the swing rope from the clothes line would have been comparatively easy, even with a child in its arms.

“Where could it have come from? I don’t know. Possibly escaped from a ship, because sailors have strange pets; might have gotten away from a menagerie somewhere, or a circus. I only knew that an orang-outang was the actual abductor. The difficulties of a man climbing the fire escape where the baby was found were nothing to an orang-outang. There it would have merely been a leap up of five feet.”

The Thinking Machine stopped as if he had finished. Hatch respected this silence for a moment, but he had questions yet to be answered.

“Who wrote the kidnapping letters demanding money?” was the first.

“You found him—Charles Gates,” was the reply.

“And the letter written after the abduction demanding twenty-five thousand dollars?”

“Was written by him, of course—but this was a bluff. This poor deluded fool imagined that someone would actually go out and toss $25,000 on a trash-heap where he could find it, and then he could escape. That was his purpose. He knew nothing of the whereabouts of the baby. He beat his wife when he found, instead of money, I had put some good advice in the newspaper bundle for him.”

“But the stocking in his room, and your question to Miss Barton?”

“This man did write a letter threatening kidnapping before the baby disappeared. It was perfectly possible that after the kidnapping he stole the little stocking and two or three other things from the laundry, for Miss Barton noticed they were missing, or got someone to do so for him. And, the baby being gone, he was intending to send these to the mother, one at a time, I imagine, to make her believe he had the child. That is transparent. I asked Miss Barton the question about giving them to Gates to see if she did—her manner would have told me. I instantly saw she did not—had never even heard of him, as a matter of fact. I also dropped that remark about there being $25,000 in the package to see what effect it would have on her.”

“And the facts you had about the baby’s fortune going to relatives of Mrs. Blake in the event of the baby’s death?”

“I got from her, by a casual question as to the succession of the estate. There was still a possibility that the baby was in their hands despite the manner of its disappearance. As it transpired they had nothing whatever to do with it. The advertisement I put in the paper was a palpable trick—but it had the desired effect. It touched a guilty conscience. The guilty conscience feared it was trapped and acted accordingly.”

“It seems perfectly incomprehensible that the baby should have come out of it alive,” mused Hatch. “I had always imagined orang-outangs to be extremely ferocious.”

“Read up on them a bit, Mr. Hatch,” said The Thinking Machine. “You will find they are of strangely contradictory and mischievous natures. Where this child was permitted to escape safely others might have been torn limb from limb.”

There was silence for a time. Hatch considered the matter all explained, until suddenly the picture book occurred to him.

“You ‘phoned to me to see the picture book and tell you what’s in it,” he said. “Why?”

“Suppose there was a picture of a monkey in it,” rejoined the other. “I merely wanted to know if the baby would know a monkey, in other words an orang-outang, if it saw one. Why? Because if the baby knew one it would not necessarily be afraid of one in the flesh, and would not of necessity cry out when the orang-outang picked it up. As a matter of fact no one heard it scream when taken away.”

“Oh, I see,” said Hatch. “There was a picture of a monkey in the book. I told you.” He took out the book and looked at it. “Here,” and he extended it to the scientist who glanced at it casually, and nodded.

“If you want to prove this just as I have told it,” said The Thinking Machine, “go to the Blake home tomorrow, put your finger on that picture and show it to Baby Blake. He will prove it.”

It came to pass that Hatch did this very thing.

“Pitty monkey,” said Baby Blake. “Doe, doe.”

“He means he wants to go,” Miss Barton exclaimed to Hatch.

Hatch was satisfied.

Two days later the Boston American carried a dispatch from a village near Lynn stating that a semi-tame orang-outang had been killed by a policeman. It had belonged to a sailor, from whose vessel it had escaped more than two weeks before.