Detection by Gaslight

by Unknown

  Hereto I append a partial transcript of a statement made by Frederick Walpole immediately following his arrest on the charge of murdering his millionaire employer. This statement he repeated in substance at the trial:

  I am forty-eight years old. I had been in Mr. Ordway’s employ for twenty-two years. My salary was eight dollars a week.... I went to his apartments on the night of the murder in answer to a note. (Note produced.) I bought the revolver and gave it to him. He loaded it and thrust it under the covering beside him on the sofa.... He dictated four letters and was starting on another. I heard the door open behind me. I thought it was Mrs. Robinson, as I had not heard the front-door bell ring.

  Mr. Ordway stopped dictating, and I looked at him. He was staring toward the door. He seemed to be frightened. I looked around. A man had come in. He seemed very old. He had a flowing white beard and long white hair. His face was ruddy, like a seaman’s.

  “Who are you?” Mr. Ordway asked.

  “You know me all right,” said the man. “We were together long enough on that craft.” (Or “raft,” prisoner was not positive.)

  “I never saw you before,” said Mr. Ordway. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I have come for the reward,” said the man.

  “What reward?” Mr. Ordway asked.

  “One million dollars!” said the man.

  Nothing else was said. Mr. Ordway drew his revolver and fired. The other man must have fired at the same instant, for Mr. Ordway fell back dead. The man disappeared. I ran to Mr. Ordway and picked up the revolver. He had dropped it. Mr. Pingree and Mrs. Robinson came in....

  Reading of Peter Ordway’s will disclosed the fact that he had bequeathed unconditionally the sum of one million dollars to his secretary, Walpole, for “loyal services.” Despite Walpole’s denial of any knowledge of this bequest, he was immediately placed under arrest. At his trial, the facts appeared as I have related them. The district attorney summed up briefly. The motive was obvious—Walpole’s desire to get possession of one million dollars in cash. Mr. Pingree and Mrs. Robinson, entering the room directly after the shot had been fired, had met no one coming out, as they would have had there been another man—there was no other egress. Also, they had heard only one shot—and that shot had found Peter Ordway’s heart. Also, the bullet which killed Peter Ordway had been positively identified by experts as of the same make and same caliber as those others in the revolver Walpole had bought. The jury was out twenty minutes. The verdict was guilty. Walpole was sentenced to death.

  It was not until then that “The Thinking Machine”—otherwise Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D., F. R. S., M. D., LL. D., et cetera, et cetera, logician, analyst, master mind in the sciences—turned his crabbed genius upon the problem.

  Five days before the date set for Walpole’s execution, Hutchinson Hatch, newspaper reporter, intruded himself into The Thinking Machine’s laboratory, bringing with him a small roll of newspapers. Incongruously enough, they were old friends, these two—on one hand, the man of science, absorbed in that profession of which he was already the master, small, almost grotesque in appearance, and living the life of a recluse; on the other, a young man of the world, worldly, enthusiastic, capable, indefatigable.

  So it came about The Thinking Machine curled himself in a great chair, and sat for nearly two hours partially submerged in newspaper accounts of the murder and of the trial. The last paper finished, he dropped his enormous head back against his chair, turned his petulant, squinting eyes upward, and sat for minute after minute staring into nothingness.

  “Why,” he queried, at last, “do you think he is innocent?”

  “I don’t know that I do think it,” Hatch replied. “It is simply that attention has been attracted to Walpole’s story again because of a letter the governor received. Here is a copy of it.”

  The Thinking Machine read it:

  You are about to allow the execution of an innocent man. Walpole’s story on the witness stand was true. He didn’t kill Peter Ordway. I killed him for a good and sufficient reason.

  “Of course,” the reporter explained, “the letter wasn’t signed. However, three handwriting experts say it was written by the same hand that wrote the ‘One million dollar’ slips. Incidentally the prosecution made no attempt to connect Walpole’s handwriting with those slips. They couldn’t have done it, and it would have weakened their case.”

  “And what,” inquired the diminutive scientist, “does the governor propose doing?”

  “Nothing,” was the reply. “To him it is merely one of a thousand crank letters.”

  “He knows the opinions of the experts?”

  “He does. I told him.”

  “The governor,” remarked The Thinking Machine gratuitously, “is a fool.” Then: “It is sometimes interesting to assume the truth of the improbable. Suppose we assume Walpole’s story to be true, assuming at the same time that this letter is true—what have we?”

  Tiny, cobwebby lines of thought furrowed the domelike brow as Hatch watched; the slender fingers were brought precisely tip to tip; the pale-blue eyes narrowed still more.

  “If,” Hatch pointed out, “Walpole’s attorney had been able to find a bullet mark anywhere in that room, or a single isolated drop of blood, it would have proven that Peter Ordway did fire as Walpole says he did, and—”

  “If Walpole’s story is true,” The Thinking Machine went on serenely, heedless of the interruption, “we must believe that a man—say, Mr. X—entered a private apartment without ringing. Very well. Either the door was unlocked, he entered by a window, or he had a false key. We must believe that two shots were fired simultaneously, sounding as one. We must believe that Mr. X was either wounded or the bullet mark has been overlooked; we must believe Mr. X went out by the one door at the same instant Mr. Pingree and Mrs. Robinson entered. We must believe they either did not see him or they lied.”

  “That’s what convicted Walpole,” Hatch declared. “Of course, it’s impossible——”

  “Nothing is impossible, Mr. Hatch,” stormed The Thinking Machine suddenly. “Don’t say that. It annoys me exceedingly.”

  Hatch shrugged his shoulders, and was silent. Again minute after minute passed, and the scientist sat motionless, staring now at a plan of Peter Ordway’s apartment he had found in a newspaper, the while his keen brain dissected the known facts.

  “After all,” he announced, at last, “there’s only one vital question: Why Peter Ordway’s deadly fear of water?”

  The reporter shook his head blankly. He was never surprised any more at The Thinking Machine’s manner of approaching a problem. Never by any chance did he take hold of it as any one else would have.

  “Some personal eccentricity, perhaps,” Hatch suggested hopefully. “Some people are afraid of cats, others of——”

  “Go to Peter Ordway’s place,” The Thinking Machine interrupted tartly, “and find if it has been necessary to replace a broken windowpane anywhere in the building since Mr. Ordway’s death.”

  “You mean, perhaps, that Mr. X, as you call him, may have escaped——” the newspaper man began.

  “Also find out if there was a curtain hanging over or near the door where Mr. X must have gone out.”

  “Right!”

  “We’ll assume that the room where Ordway died has been gone over inch by inch in the search for a stray shot,” the scientist continued. “Let’s go farther. If Ordway fired, it was probably toward the door where Mr. X entered. If Mr. X left the door open behind him, the shot may have gone into the private hall beyond, and may be buried in the door immediately opposite.” He indicated on the plan as he talked. “This second door opens into a rear hall. If both doors chanced to be open——”

  Hatch came to his feet with blazing eyes. He understood. It was a possibility no one had considered. Ordway’s shot, if he had fired one, might have lodged a hundred feet away.

  “Then, if we find a bullet mark——” he questioned tensely.


  “Walpole will not go to the electric chair.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “We will look farther,” said The Thinking Machine. “We will look for a wounded man of perhaps sixty years, who is now, or has been, a sailor; who is either clean-shaven or else has a close-cropped beard, probably dyed—a man who may have a false key to the Ordway apartment—the man who wrote this note to the governor.”

  “You believe, then,” Hatch demanded, “that Walpole is innocent?”

  “I believe nothing of the sort,” snapped the scientist. “He’s probably guilty. If we find no bullet mark, I’m merely saying what sort of man we must look for.”

  “But—but how do you know so much about him—what he looks like?” asked the reporter, in bewilderment.

  “How do I know?” repeated the crabbed little scientist. “How do I know that two and two make four, not sometimes, but all the time? By adding the units together. Logic, that’s all—logic, logic!”

  While Hatch was scrutinizing the shabby walls of the old building where Peter Ordway had lived his miserly life, The Thinking Machine called on Doctor Anderson, who had been Peter Ordway’s physician for a score of years. Doctor Anderson couldn’t explain the old millionaire’s aversion to water, but perhaps if the scientist went farther back in his inquiries there was an old man, John Page, still living who had been Ordway’s classmate in school. Doctor Anderson knew of him because he had once treated him at Peter Ordway’s request. So The Thinking Machine came to discuss this curious trait of character with John Page. What the scientist learned didn’t appear, but whatever it was it sent him to the public library, where he spent several hours pulling over the files of old newspapers.

  All his enthusiasm gone, Hatch returned to report.

  “Nothing,” he said. “No trace of a bullet.”

  “Any windowpanes changed or broken?”

  “Not one.”

  “There were curtains, of course, over the door through which Mr. X entered Ordway’s room.” It was not a question.

  “There were. They’re there yet.”

  “In that case,” and The Thinking Machine raised his squinting eyes to the ceiling, “our sailorman was wounded.”

  “There is a sailorman, then?” Hatch questioned eagerly.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” was the astonishing reply. “If there is, he answers generally the description I gave. His name is Ben Holderby. His age is not sixty; it’s fifty-eight.”

  The newspaper man took a long breath of amazement. Surely here was the logical faculty lifted to the nth power! The Thinking Machine was describing, naming, and giving the age of a man whose existence he didn’t even venture to assert—a man who never had been in existence so far as the reporter knew! Hatch fanned himself weakly with his hat.

  “Odd situation, isn’t it?” asked The Thinking Machine. “It only proves that logic is inexorable—that it can only fail when the units fail; and no unit has failed yet. Meantime, I shall leave you to find Holderby. Begin with the sailors’ lodging houses, and don’t scare him off. I can add nothing to the description except that he is probably using another name.”

  Followed a feverish two days for Hatch—a hurried, nightmarish effort to find a man who might or might not exist, in order to prevent a legal murder. With half a dozen other clever men from his office, he finally achieved the impossible.

  “I’ve found him!” he announced triumphantly over the telephone to The Thinking Machine. “He’s stopping at Werner’s, in the North End, under the name of Benjamin Goode. He is clean-shaven, his hair and brows are dyed black, and he is wounded in the left arm.”

  “Thanks,” said The Thinking Machine simply. “Bring Detective Mallory, of the bureau of criminal investigation, and come here to-morrow at noon prepared to spend the day. You might go by and inform the governor, if you like, that Walpole will not be electrocuted Friday.”

  Detective Mallory came at Hatch’s request—came with a mouthful of questions into the laboratory, where The Thinking Machine was at work.

  “What’s it all about?” he demanded.

  “Precisely at five o’clock this afternoon a man will try to murder me,” the scientist informed him placidly, without lifting his eyes. “I’d like to have you here to prevent it.”

  Mallory was much given to outbursts of amazement; he humored himself now:

  “Who is the man? What’s he going to try to kill you for? Why not arrest him now?”

  “His name is Benjamin Holderby.” The Thinking Machine answered the questions in order. “He’ll try to kill me because I shall accuse him of murder. If he should be arrested now, he wouldn’t talk. If I told you whom he murdered, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  Detective Mallory stared without comprehension.

  “If he isn’t to try to kill you until five o’clock,” he asked, “why send for me at noon?”

  “Because he may know you, and if he watched and saw you enter he wouldn’t come. At half past four you and Mr. Hatch will step into the adjoining room. When Holderby enters, he will face me. Come behind him, but don’t lift a finger until he threatens me. If you have to shoot-kill! He’ll be dangerous until he’s dead.”

  It was just two minutes of five o’clock when the bell rang, and Martha ushered Benjamin Holderby into the laboratory. He was past middle age, powerful, with the deep-bronzed face and the keen eyes of the sea. His hair and brows were dyed—badly dyed; his left arm hung limply. He found The Thinking Machine alone.

  “I got your letter, sir,” he said respectfully. “If it’s a yacht, I’m willing to ship as master; but I’m too old to do much——”

  “Sit down, please,” the little scientist invited courteously, dropping into a chair as he spoke. “There are one or two questions I should like to ask. First”—the petulant blue eyes were raised toward the ceiling; the slender fingers came together precisely, tip to tip—“first: Why did you kill Peter Ordway?”

  Fell an instant’s amazed silence. Benjamin Holderby’s muscles flexed, the ruddy face was contorted suddenly with hideous anger, the sinewy right hand closed until great knots appeared in the tendons. Possibly The Thinking Machine had never been nearer death than in that moment when the sailorman towered above him—’twas giant and weakling. The tiger was about to spring. Then, suddenly as it had come, anger passed from Holderby’s face; came instead curiosity, bewilderment, perplexity.

  The silence was broken by the sinister click of a revolver. Holderby turned his head slowly, to face Detective Mallory, stared at him oddly, then drew his own revolver, and passed it over, butt foremost.

  No word had been spoken. Not once had The Thinking Machine lowered his eyes.

  “I killed Peter Ordway,” Holderby explained distinctly, “for good and sufficient reasons.”

  “So you wrote the governor,” the scientist observed. “Your motive was born thirty-two years ago?”

  “Yes.” The sailor seemed merely astonished.

  “On a raft at sea?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was murder done on that raft?”

  “Yes.”

  “Instigated by Peter Ordway, who offered you——”

  “One million dollars—yes.”

  “So Peter Ordway is the second man you have killed?”

  “Yes.”

  With mouth agape, Hutchinson Hatch listened greedily; he had—they had—saved Walpole! Mallory’s mind was a chaos. What sort of tommyrot was this? This man confessing to a murder for which Walpole was to be electrocuted! His line of thought was broken by the petulant voice of the Thinking Machine.

  “Sit down, Mr. Holderby!” he was saying, “and tell us precisely what happened on that raft.”

  ’Twas a dramatic story Benjamin Holderby told—a tragedy tale of the sea—a tale of starvation and thirst torture and madness, and ceaseless battling for life—of crime and greed and the power of money even in that awful moment when death seemed the portion of all. The tale began with the foundering of the ste
amship Neptune, Liverpool to Boston, ninety-one passengers and crew, some thirty-two years ago. In mid-ocean she was smashed to bits by a gale, and went down. Of those aboard only nine persons reached shore alive.

  Holderby told the story simply:

  “God knows how any of us went through that storm; it raged for days. There were ten of us on our raft when the ship settled, and by dusk of the second day there were only six—one woman, and one child, and four men. The waves would simply smash over us, and when we came to daylight again there was some one missing. There was little enough food and water aboard, anyway, so the people dropping off that way was really what saved—what saved two of us at the end. Peter Ordway was one, and I was the other.

  “The first five days were bad enough—short rations, little or no water, no sleep, and all that; but what came after was hell! At the end of that fifth day there were only five of us—Ordway and me, the woman and child, and another man. I don’t know whether I went to sleep or was just unconscious; anyway, when I came to there were only the three of us left. I asked Ordway where the woman and child was. He said they were washed off while I was asleep.

  “‘And a good thing,’ he says.

  “‘Why?’ I says.

  “‘Too many mouths to feed,’ he says. ‘And still too many.’ He meant the other man. ‘I’ve been looking at the rations and the water,’ he says. ‘There’s enough to keep three people alive three days, but if there were only two people—me and you, for instance?’ he says.

  “‘You mean throw him off?’ I says.

  “‘You’re a sailor,’ says he. ‘If you go, we all go. But we may not be picked up for days. We may starve or die of thirst first. If there were only two of us, we’d have a better chance. I’m worth millions of dollars,’ he says. ‘If you’ll get rid of this other fellow, and we ever come out alive, I’ll give you one million dollars!’ I didn’t say anything. ‘If there were only two of us,’ says he, ‘we would increase our chances of being saved one-third. One million dollars!’ says he. ‘One million dollars!’