 DEVERO'S DREAM by J. Sheridan LaFannou. I give you this story only at second hand, but you have it in substance and he wasted few words over it as Paul Devereaux told it me. It was not the only queer story he could have told about himself if he had chosen, by a good many I should say. Paul's life had been an eminently unconventional one. The man's face certified to that. Hard, bronzed, war-worn, seemed and scarred with strange battle-marks. The face of a man who had dared and done most things. It was not his custom to speak much of what he had done, however. Probably only because he and I were little likely to meet again, that he told me this, I am free to tell you now. We had come across one another for the first time for years that afternoon on the Italian boulevard. Paul had landed a couple of weeks previously at Marseille, from a long yacht cruise in southern waters, the monotony of which we heard had been agreeably diversified by a little pirate hunting and slaver chasing. The evil tongues called it piracy and slave-running. And certainly Devereaux was quite equal to either Medillier, and he was about starting on a promising little filibustering expedition across the Atlantic, where the chances were he would be shot, and the certainty was that he would be starved. So perhaps he felt inclined to be a trifle more communicative than usual, as we sat late that night over a blazing pyre of logs and in a cloud of Cavendish. At all events he was, and after this fashion. I forget now exactly how the subject was led up to. Expression of some philosophic incredulity on my part regarding certain matters, followed by a ten minutes silence on his side, pregnant with unwanted words to come. That was it, perhaps. At last he said, more to himself it seemed than to me. Such stuff is dreams are made of. Well, who knows. You're a sad you see, birdie. You call this sort of thing politely indigestion. Perhaps you're right. But yet I had a queer dream once. Not unlikely, I assented. You're wrong. I never dream as a rule. But, as I say, I had a queer dream once and queer because it came literally true three years afterward. Queer indeed, Paul. Happens to be true. What's queerer still? My dream was the means of my finding a man I owed a long score and a heavy one, and of my paying him in full. Bad for the payee, I thought. Paul's face had grown terribly eloquent as he spoke those last words. On a sudden the expression of it changed. Another memory was staring in him. Wonderfully tender the fierce eyes grew. Wonderfully tender the faint, sad smile that was like sunshine on storm-scathed granite. That smile transfigured the man before me. How poor child. Poor Lucille, I heard him mutter. That was it, was it? So I let him be. Presently he lifted his head. If he had let himself get the least thing out of hand for a moment, he had got back his self-mastery the next. I'll tell you that queer story, birdie, if you like, he said. The proposition was flatteringly unusual, but the voice was quite his own. Somehow I'd sooner talk than think about her. He went on after a pause. I nodded. He might talk about this, you see, but I couldn't. He began with a question, an odd one. Did you ever hear I'd been married? Paul Devereux and a wife had always seemed and been to me a most unheard of conjunction, so I leconically said no. Well, I was once years ago. She was my wife, that child, for a week, and then I easily filled up the pause, but, as it happened, I filled it up wrongly, for he added, and then she was murdered. I was not unused to our Paul's stony style of talk, but this last sentence was sufficiently startling. Eh? Murdered in her sleep. They never found the man who did it, either, though I had Durbeck and all of the rude Dejeureux's lament work. But I forgave them that, for I found the man myself and killed him. He was filling his pipe again as he told me this, and he perhaps rammed the cavendish in a little tighter, but that was all. The thing was a matter of course. I knew my Paul well enough to know that. Of course he killed him. Mind you, he continued, kindling the black, brool-gill-the-wile. Mind you, I'd never seen this man before, never known of his existence, except in a way that, however, it was this way. He let his grizzled head drop back on the cushions of his chair, and his eyes seemed to see the queer story he was telling and acted once more before him, in the red hollows of the fire. As I said, it was years ago. I was waiting here in Paris for some fellows who were to join me in a campaign we'd arranged against the African big game. I never was more fit for anything of that sort than I was then. I only tell you this to show that the thing can't be accounted for by my nerves having been out of order at all. Well, I was dining alone that day at the café Anglais. It was late when I sat down to my dinner and the little salon as usual. Only two other men were still lingering over theirs. All the time they stayed, they bored me so persistently with some confounded story of a murder they were discussing, that I was once or twice more than half inclined to tell them so. At last, though, they went away. But their talk kept buzzing abominably in my head. When the waiter brought me the evening paper, the first thing that caught my eye was a circumstantial account of the probable way the fellow did his murder. I say probable, for they never caught him, and as you will see directly, they could only suppose how it occurred. It seemed that a well-known Paris banker, who was ascertained beyond doubt to have left one station alive and well, and with a couple of hundred thousand francs in a leathered sack under his seat, arrived at the next station the train stopped at with his throat cut, and minus all his money, except a few bank notes to no great amount, which the assassin had been wise enough to leave behind him. The train was a night express on one of the southern lines, the banker traveled quite alone in a first-class carriage, and the murder must have taken place between midnight and one a.m. next morning. The newspapers supposed, rightly enough, I think, that the murderer must have entered the carriage from without, stabbed his victim in his sleep, there were no signs of any struggle, opened the sack, taken what he wanted, and retreated, loot and all, by the way he came. I fully endorsed my particular writer's opinion that the murderer was an uncommonly cool and clever individual, especially as I fancy he got clear off and was never afterward laid hands on. When I had done that, I thought I had done with the affair altogether. Not at all. I was regularly ridden with this confounded murder. You see, the banker was rather a swell. Everybody knew him, and that, of course, made it so shocking. So everybody kept talking about him. They were talking about him at the opera, and over the back row and wallet at La Tepaz's later. To escape him I went to bed and smoked myself to sleep. And then a queer thing came to pass. I had a dream, I, who never dreamed, and this is what I dreamed. I saw a wide rich country that I knew. A starless night hung over it like a pall. I saw a narrow track running through it, straight, both ways, for leagues. Something sped along this track with a hurtling rush and roar. This something that at first had looked like a red-eyed devil with dark sides full of dim fire, resolved itself, as I watched it presently, into a more conventional night express train. It flew long, though as no express train ever traveled yet. For all that I was able to keep it quite easily in view. I could count the carriages as they world by. One, two, three, four, five, six. But I could only see distinctly into one. Into that one, with perfect distinctness. Into that one I seemed forced to look. It was the fourth carriage. Two people were in it. They sat in opposite corners. Both were sleeping. The one who sat facing forward was a woman, a girl, rather. I could see that, but I couldn't see her face. The blind was drawn across the lamp in the roof, and the light was very dim. Moreover, this girl lay back in the shadow. Yet I seemed to know her, and I knew that her face was very fair. She wore a cloak that shrouded her form completely. Yet her form was familiar to me. The figure opposite to her was a man's. Strangely familiar to me, too, this figure was. But, as he slept, his head had sunk upon his breast, and the shadow cast upon his face, by the low-drawn traveling cap he wore, hid it from me. Yet if I had seemed to know the girl's face, I was certain I knew the man's. But as I could see, so I could remember, neither. And there was an absolute torture in this, which I can't explain to you, in this inability, and in my inability to wake them from their sleep. From the first, I had been conscious of a desire to do that. This desire grew stronger every second. I tried to call to them, and my tongue wouldn't move. I tried to spring toward them, to thrust out my arms and touch them, and my limbs were paralyzed. And then I tried to shut my eyes to what I knew must happen, and my eyes were held open, and dragged to look on in spite of me. And I saw this. I saw the door of the carriage, where these two sleepers, whose sleep was so horribly sound, were sitting. I saw this door open, and out of the thick darkness another face looked in. The light, as I have said, was very dim. But I could see his face as plainly as I can see yours. A large yellow face it was, like a wax mask. The lips were full, and lustful and cruel. The eyes were little eyes of an evil gray. Thin yellow streaks marked the absence of the eyebrows. Thin yellow hair showed itself under a huge fur traveling cap. The whole face seemed to grow slowly into absolute distinctness as I looked, by the sort of devilish light that it, as it were, irradiated. I had chanced upon a good many damnable visages before then, but there was such a cold fiendishness about this one, such as I had seen on no man's face, alive or dead, till then. The next moment the man this face belonged to was standing in the carriage, that seemed to plunge and sway more furiously, as though to waken them that still slept on. He wore a long fur traveling robe, girded about the waist with a fur girdle. Abnormally tall and broad as he was, he looked in this dress gigantic. Yet there was a marvelous cat-like lightness and agility about all his movements. He bent over the girl lying there helpless in her sleep. I don't make rash bargains as a rule, but I felt I would have given years of my life for five minutes of my lost freedom of limb just then. I tell you, the torture was infernal. The assassin, I knew he was an assassin, bent a while gloatingly over the girl. His great yellow hands were both bare, and on the forefinger of the right hand I could see some great stone blazing like an evil eye. In that right hand there gleamed something else. I saw him draw it slowly from his sleeve, and, as he drew it, turn round and look at the other sleeper with an infernal triumphant malignity and hate the devil himself might have envied. But the man he looked at slept heavily on, and then, God, I feel the agony I felt in my dream then now. Then I saw the great yellow hand with the great evil eye upon it lifted murderously, and the bright steel had held shimmer as the assassin turned again and bent his yellow face down closer to that other face hidden for me in the shadow, the girl's face that I knew was so fair. How can I tell this? The blade flashed and fell. There was the sound of a heavy sigh stifled under a heavy hand. Then the huge form of the assassin was rear-direct, and the bloated yellow face seemed to laugh silently while the hand that held the steel pointed at the sleeping man in diabolical menace. And so the huge form and the bloated yellow face seemed to fade away while I watched. The express rushed and roared through the blinding darkness without. The sleeping man slept on still, till suddenly a strong light fell full upon him and he woke, and then I saw why I had been so certain that I knew him. For as he lifted his head I saw his face in the strong light, and the face was my own face, and the sleeper was myself. Paul Devereux made a pause in his queer story here. Except when he had spoken of the girl he had spoken in his usual cool, hard way. The pipe he had been smoking all the time was smoked out. He took time to fill another before he went on. I said never a word, for I guessed who the sleeping girl was. Well, Paul remarked presently, that was a devilish queer dream, wasn't it? You'll account for it by telling me I'd been so pestered with the story of the banker's murder that I naturally had nightmare, perhaps two that my digestion was out of order. Call it a nightmare, call it dyspepsia if you like. I don't, because, but you'll see why I don't directly. At the same moment that my dream self awoke in my dream, my actual self woke in reality, and with the same ghastly horror, I say the same horror for neither then nor afterward could I separate my one self from my other self. They seemed identical, so that this queer dream made a more lasting impression upon me than you'd think. However, in the life I led, that sort of thing couldn't last very long. Before I came back from Africa, I had utterly forgotten all about it. Before I left Paris though, and while it was quite fresh in my memory, I sketched the big murderer just as I'd seen him in my dream. The great yellow face, the great broad frame and the fur traveling robe, the great hand with the great evil eye upon it. Everything, carefully, minutely, as though I had been going to paint a portrait that I wanted to make life-like. I think at the time I had some such intention. If I had, I never fulfilled it. But I made the sketch, as I say, carefully, and then I forgot all about it. Time passed, three years nearly. I was wintering in the south of France that year. There it was that I met her, Lucille. Old Davray, her father, and I had met before in Algeria. He was dying now. He left the child on his deathbed to me. The end was I married her. Poor little thing. I think I might have made her happy, who knows. She used to tell me often she was happy with me. Poor little thing. Well, we were to come straight to London. That was Lucille's notion. She wanted to go to my London first, nowhere else. Now I would rather have gone anywhere else, but naturally I let the child have her way. She seemed nervously eager about it, I remembered afterward. Seemed to have a nervous objection to every other place I proposed. But I saw or suspected nothing to make me question her very closely, or the reasons for her preference for our grimy old pandemonium. What could I suspect, not the truth, if I only had? If I had only guessed what it was that made her, as she said, long to be safe there already. Safe? What had she to fear with me? Ah, what indeed? So we started on our journey to England. It was a cold dark night early in March. We reached Lyon somewhere about seven. I should have stayed there that night but for Lucille. She entreated me so earnestly and with such strange vehemence to go on by the night mail to Paris, that at last, to satisfy her, I consented. Though it struck me unpleasantly at the time that I had let her travel too long already, and that this feverishness was the consequence of over-fatigue, but she became pacified at once when I told her it should be as she wanted, and declared she should sleep perfectly well in the carriage with me beside her. She should feel quite safe then, she said. Safe? Where safer, you might ask? Nowhere, I believe. Alone with me? Surely nowhere safer. The Paris Express was a short train that night, but I managed to secure a compartment for ourselves. I left Lucille in her corner there while I went across to the buffet to fill a flask. I was gone barely five minutes, but when I came back, the change in the child's face fairly startled me. I had seen it last with the smile it always wore for me on it, looking so childishly happy in the lamp-light. Now it was all grey-pale and distorted, and the great blue eyes told me directly with what? Fear. Sudden, terrible fear, I thought. But fear? Fear of what, I asked her. She clung close to me, half sobbing a while before she could answer, and then she told me, nothing. There was nothing the matter. Only she had felt a pain, a cruel pain at her heart, and it had frightened her. Yes, that was it. It had frightened her, but it had passed, and she was well, quite well again now. All this time her eyes seemed to be telling me another story, but I said nothing. She was obviously too excited already. I did my best to soothe her, and I succeeded. She told me she felt quite well once more before we started. No, she had rather much rather go on to Paris as I had promised her she should. She should sleep all the way if no one came into the carriage to disturb her. No one could come in, then nothing could be better. And so it was that she and I started that night by the Paris Mail. I made her up a bit of rugs and wraps upon the cushions, but she had rather rest her head upon my shoulder, she said, and feel my arm about her. Nothing could hurt her then. Ah, how strange she harped on that. She lay there, then, as she loved best, with her head resting on my shoulder, not sleeping much or soundly, uneasily, with sudden waking starts, and with glances round her till I would speak to her. And then she would look up into my face and smile, and so drop into that uneasy sleep again. And I would think she was overtired, that was all, and reproach myself with having let her come on. And three or four hours passed like this, and then we got as far as Dijon. But the child was fairly worn out now, and she offered no opposition when I asked her to let me pillow her head on something softer than my shoulder. So I folded a great thick shawl she was too well cloaked to need, and she made that her pillow. We were rushing full swing through the wild dark night when she lifted up her face and bade me kiss her and bit her sleep well. And I put my arm around her and kissed the child's loving lips, for the last time while she lived. Then I flung myself on the seat opposite her, and watching her till she slept soundly and peacefully, slept at last myself also. I had drawn the blind across the lamp in the roof, and the light in the carriage was very dim. How long I slept I don't know. It couldn't have been more than an hour and a half, because the express was slackening speed for its first halt beyond Dijon. I'd slept heavily I knew, but I woke with a sudden sharp sense of danger that made me broad awake and strung every nerve in a moment. The sort of feeling you have when you wake on a prairie, where you've come across Indian sign, on outpost duty when your felt vebbled plucks gently at your cloak. You know what I mean. I was on my feet at once. As I said, the light in the carriage was very dim, and the shadow was deepest where Lucille lay. I looked there instinctively. She must have moved in her sleep, for her face was turned away from me, and the cloak I had put so carefully about her had partly fallen off. But she slept on still, only soundly, very soundly. She scarcely seemed to breathe. And did she breathe? A ghastly fear ran through my blood and froze it. I understood why I had awakened. In my nostrils was an awful odor that I knew well enough. I bent over her, I touched her. Her face was very cold, her eyes glared glassily at me. My hands were wet with something. My hands were wet with blood, her blood. I tore away the blind from the lamp, and then I could see that my wife of a week lay there stubbed straight to the heart, dead, dead beyond doubting, murdered in her sleep. Devereux's stern, low voice shook ever so little as he spoke those last words, and we both sat very silent after them for a good while. Only when he could trust his utterance again he went on. A curious piece of devilry wasn't it? That child! Whom had she ever harmed? Who could hate her like that? I remember I thought that in a dull, confused sort of way, when I found myself alone in that carriage with her lying dead on the cushions before me. Alone with her, you understand? It was confusing. I passed over what immediately followed. The express came duly to a halt, and then I called people to me, and the Paris Express went on without that particular carriage. The inquiry began before some local authority next day. Very little came of it. What could come of it, unless they had convicted me of the murder of this child I would have given my own life to save? They might have done that at home, but they knew better here and didn't. They couldn't find me the actual assassin, however, though I believe they did their best. All they found was his weapon, which he most purposely had left behind. I asked for this and got it. It gave their police no clue, and it gave me none. But I had a fancy for it. It was a plain, double-edged, admirably tempered dagger, a very workman-like article indeed. On the cross-hilt of it I swore one day that I would live thenceforth for one thing alone, the discovery of the murderer of Old Davray's child, whom I had promised him to care for before all. When I had found this man, whoever he was, I also swore that I would kill him. Kill him myself, you understand, without any of the law's delay or uncertainty, without troubling Borough or Hangman. Kill him as he had killed her. To do this was what I meant to live for. There was war to the knife between him and me. I started, of course, under one heavy disadvantage. He knew me, probably, whereas I didn't know him at all. When he found that his amiable intention of fixing the crime on me had been frustrated, it must, I imagined, have occurred to him that the said crime might eventually be fixed by me on him. And he had proved himself to be a person who didn't stick at trifles. It behooved me, therefore, to go to work cautiously. But I hadn't fought Indians for nothing, and I was very cautious. I waited quiet till I got a clue. It was a curious one, and I got it in this way. It struck me one day, suddenly, that I had heard of a murder precisely similar to this already. I could not at first call the thing to mind, but presently I remembered, my dream. And then I asked myself this. Had not this murder been done before my eyes three years ago? I came to the conclusion that the circumstances of the murder in my dream were absolutely identical with the circumstances of the actual crime. Yes, the girl whose face in that dream I had never been able to see was Lucille. Yes, the assassin whose face I had seen so plainly in that dream was the real assassin. In short, I believe that that murder had been rehearsed before me three years previous to its actual committal. Now, this sounds rather wild. Yet I came to this conviction quite coolly and deliberately. It was a conviction. Assuming it to be true, the odds against me grew shorter directly. For I had the portrait of the man I wanted drawn by myself the day after I had seen him in my dream. And the original of that portrait was a man not to be easily mistaken, supposing him to exist at all. The day I came across that sketch of him and that old forgotten sketchbook of mine, I was as sure he did exist as that I was alive myself. What I had to do was to find this man, and then I never doubted I should find the man I wanted. You see how the odds had shortened. If he knew me, I knew him now, and he had no notion that I did know him. It was a good deal fairer fight between us. I fought it out alone. My story was hardly one the rude de jureuse lem would have acted upon. And besides, I wanted no interference. So with the portrait before me, I sat down and began to consider who this man was, and why he had murdered that child. The big, burly frame, the heavy yellow face, the sandy yellow hair, the physiognomy generally was teutonic. My man I put down is North German. Now there were, and are probably, plenty of men who would have no objection whatever to put a knife into me if they got the chance. But this man, whom I had never met, could have had no such quarrel as theirs with me. His quarrel with me must have been then Lucille. Yes, that was it, Lucille. I began to see clearly a thwarted, devilish passion, a cool infernal revenge. The child had feared something of this sort, had perhaps seen him that night. This explained her nervous terror, her nervous anxiety to stop nowhere, to travel on. In the carriage of that express train alone with me, where could she be safer? This accounted too for her anxiety to reach England. He would not dare follow her there, she had thought, or at least could not without my noticing him. And then she would have told me. She had not told me before evidently because she feared for me, too, and a quarrel with this man. She must, innocent child as she was, have had some instinctive knowledge of what he was capable. I, a cool infernal revenge indeed, to kill her, to fix the murder on me. That dagger he had left behind, the apparent impossibility of anyone's entering the carriage as he must have entered it at all, to say nothing of the almost absolute impossibility of his doing so without disturbing either of us. You see, it might have gone hard with me if a British jury had had to decide on the case. Well, to cut this as short as may be, I made at my mind that the man I wanted was a North German, that he had conceived a hideous passion for Lucille before I knew her, that she had shrunk from it and him so unmistakably that he knew he had no chance, that my taking her away as my wife, to which he might have been a witness, drove him to his hideous revenge, that hearing we were going to England, and seeing that we were likely to stop nowhere on the way, and so give him a chance of doing what he had made up his mind to do, he had decided to do what he had done as he had done it. Counting on finding us asleep as he had found us, or on his strength if it came to a fight between him and me, but coolly reckless enough to brave everything in any case, and the devil-aiding he had in great part, and only too well succeeded. He was now either so far satisfied that if I made no move against him, and how he might think could I, he, feeling himself all safe, would let me be, or, on the other hand, he did not feel safe and was not satisfied, and was arranging for my being disposed of by and by. I considered the latter frame of mind as his most probable one. I went to work cautiously, as I say. I ascertained that Lucille had made no mention of any obnoxious pretendant at any time. I didn't expect to find that she had. Her terror of the man was too intense. But this man must have met her somewhere. Where? When old Devrey came home to die, his daughter was just leaving her Paris pension at. All through his last illness he had seen no visitor but me, and Lucille had never quitted him. Besides, I had been there all the time. I presumed, then, that this man and she had met him Paris, and I believe they were only likely to have met at one of the half-dozen houses where the child would now and again be asked. I got a list of all these. One name only struck me. It happened to be a German name, Steinmetz. I wondered if Monsieur Steinmetz was my man. In the meantime, who was he? I had no trouble in finding that out. Monsieur Steinmetz was a German banker of good standing and repute, reasonably well off, and recently left a widower. Personally. Dummy! Personally, Steinmetz was a great man, and fat, with a big face and blonde hair, and the appearance of what he really was, a bon vivant and a bon enfant, yet, n'avais-je-mais-fait-de-mal-a-person-allait? All yes, in fact. Madame had died about a year ago, and Monsieur had been inconsolable for a long time. He had changed his residence now, and inhabited a house in one of the new streets off the Champs-Elysees. From another source, I discovered that in the lifetime of Madame Steinmetz, Lucille was frequently at the house. She had ceased to come there about the date of the commencement of Madame's sudden illness. I got this information by degrees, while I lay Perdue in an old haunt of mine by the Pays-Latin yonder, for I had always had an idea that I should find them and I wanted in Paris. When I got it, I thought I should like to see Monsieur Steinmetz, the agreeable banker. One night I strolled up as far as his new residence in the street off the Champs-Elysees. Monsieur Steinmetz lived on the first floor. There was a brilliant light there. Monsieur Steinmetz was entertaining friends, it seemed. It was a fine night. I established myself out of sight under the doorway of an unfinished house opposite, and waited. I don't know why. Perhaps I fancied that when his friends were gone, the fineness of the night might induce Monsieur Steinmetz to take a stroll. And that then I should be able to gratify my curiosity. You see, I knew that if he were my man, I should know him directly. I waited a good while. Shadows crossed the lighted blinds. Once a big broad shadow appeared there. That made me fancy I mightn't have been waiting for nothing after all somehow. Presently, Monsieur Steinmetz's guests departed, and a little while after there appeared on the little balcony of Monsieur Steinmetz's apartment, the man I wanted. There was a moon that night, and the cold white light fell on the great yellow face with the full lustful lips and the full cruel chin, just as I'd seen the light fall on it in my dream. It was the same face, Bertie, the same face, the same man. I couldn't be mistaken. I had no doubt. I knew that the assassin of my wife, of that tender, innocent, helpless child, stood there twenty yards from me on that balcony. I had got myself pretty well in hand, and it was as well. I never moved. The face I knew turned presently toward the spot where I stood hidden. The face I'd seen in my dream beyond all doubting. The evil gray eyes glanced carelessly into the shadow, and up and down the quiet street, and then Monsieur Steinmetz, humming in air, got inside the window again and closed it after him. Once more, the great burly shadow that had at first told me I should not wait in that dark doorway in vain, crossed the blinds, and then it disappeared. I saw my man no more that night, but I had seen enough. I knew who he was now, and where to find him. As I walked along home, I thought what I should do. I quite meant to kill Monsieur Steinmetz, but I also meant to have no demolay with an imperial procurier and the court to seize for doing so. I didn't want to murder him, either. I thought I would wait a little for the chance of a suitable opportunity for settling my business satisfactorily, and I did wait. I turned this delay to account and got together a case of circumstantial evidence against my man, that though it might have broken down in a law court, would have been alone amply sufficient for me. The reason why Lucille's visits to the banker's house ceased was, it appeared, because Madame Steinmetz had conceived all at once a jealous dislike to her. How far this was owing to Lucille herself, I could well understand, but I could understand Madame's jealousy equally well. Madame's illness, strangely sudden, dated from the cessation of Lucille's visits. Was it hard to find a cause for that illness? A cause for the wife's subsequent suspected death? I thought not. Then had followed Lucille's departure from Paris. The child's anxiety for her father hit her other fear from his eyes and mine. But that fear must have been on her then. With us she forgot it in time. Yet it or another reason had always prevented all mention of what it occasioned it. She became my wife. At that very time I easily ascertained that Steinmetz was absent from Paris. Less easily, but indubitably, that he had, at all events, been as far south as Lyon. At Lyon it must have been that Lucille first discovered he was dogging us. Hence her alarm, which I had remembered, and her anxiety to proceed on our journey without stopping for the night as I had previously arranged. The morning after the murder Steinmetz reappeared in Paris. From the hour at which he was seen at the Gare, it was certain that he had traveled by the Night Express train in which Lucille and I started from Lyon. And he wore that morning a traveling coat of fur, in all respects similar to the one I remembered so well. If I had ever had any doubt of my man after actually seeing him, I should probably have convinced myself that he was my man by the general tendency of these facts, which I got at slowly in one by one. But I had no need of such evidence, and of course no case, even with such evidence for a court of law. However, courts of law I had never intended to trouble in the matter. The opportunity I was waiting was some time before it offered. Monsieur Steinmetz was a man of regular habits, I found, from his first floor on the street off the Champs-Élysées, every morning at eleven, to the Bourse, thence to his bureau hard by till four, from the bureau to his café, where he read papers and played dominoes till six, and then home slowly by the boulevards. He might consider himself tolerably safe for me while he led this sort of life, even supposing he was aware he was incurring any danger. I don't think he troubled much about that. Till one night, when over the count of the beloved domino points, his eyes met mine fixed right upon him. I had arranged this little surprise to see how it would affect him. Perhaps my gaze may have expressed something more than the mere distraction I intended. But I noticed, though a more indifferent observer might easily have failed to notice, how the great yellow face, expanded in childish interest in the childish game, seemed suddenly to grow gray and hardened, how the fat smile became a cruel bearing of sharp white teeth, how the fat chin squared itself. The man knew me, and sent in danger. A moment's reflection convinced Monsieur Steinmetz, though, that it could be by no means so certain that I knew him. Five minutes' observation of me, more than half satisfied him that I did not. Yet what did I want there? What was I doing in Paris? This might concern him nearly, he must have thought. I kept my own face in order, and watched his. It wasn't an easy one to read, but you see I had studied it closely, and in a way he couldn't have dreamed of. Monsieur Steinmetz was outwardly his wanted self, but inwardly not quite comfortable when he rose, and I saw the evil eye gleam on his great yellow finger, as he took out his purse to pay the garcon, just as I had seen it when that finger pointed at myself in my dream. I felt curious sensations, birdie, as I sat there, and looked abstractedly at Monsieur Steinmetz. I wondered how long it would be before— but my time hadn't come yet. He went out without another glance at me. I saw his huge form on the other side of the street when I left the café in my turn. This I had expected. Monsieur Steinmetz was naturally curious. It was hardly possible that I could know him, but it was quite certain that he ought to know all about me. So when I moved on, he moved on. In short, Monsieur Steinmetz dogged me up one street, down the other, till he finally dogged me home to my hiding-place in the Pé Latine. He did it very well, too— much better than you would have expected from so apparently unwieldy a mouchard. But I remembered how lightly he could move. Next day I had, of course, disappeared from my old quarters, and gone no one knew where. I suppose Monsieur Steinmetz didn't like this fact when he heard of it. It might have seemed suspicious. Suppose I had recognized him. In that case I had evidently a little game of my own, and was as evidently desirous to keep it dark. He was a cool hand, but I fancy my man began to get a little uneasy. He took some trouble to find me again. After a while I permitted him to do that. Once found he seemed determined that I should not be lost sight of again for want of watching. I permitted that, too. It helped play my game, and I wanted to bring it to an end. To which intent Monsieur Steinmetz got to hear from sources, best known to himself, as much of my plans as should bring him to the state I wanted. That was a murderous state. I wanted to get him to think that I was dangerous enough to be worth putting out of the way. I presume he was aware there were, or would be, weak joints in his armor, impenetrable as it seemed, and he preferred not risking the ordeal of legal battle if he could help it. At all events he elected at last to rid himself of a person who might be dangerous, and was troublesome, by the shortest and simplest means. I say so because when believing my man was right for this, I left Paris about midday for a certain secluded little spot on the seacoast. I saw one of Monsieur Steinmetz's employees on the platform, and because, two days after my arrival in my secluded spot, I met Monsieur Steinmetz in person, nearly arrived also. Now this was exactly what I had intended and anticipated. Monsieur Steinmetz had come down there to put me out of his way if he could. He passed me, leisurely strolling in the opposite direction, humming his favorite aria, bigger and yellower than ever, the evil eye fiery on his finger. His own eyes shot me as evil fire, but he said nothing. I saw he was right, though. My time was close at hand. It came. Monsieur Steinmetz and I met once more in the very place where I, knowing my ground, had intended we should meet. It was a dip in the cliffs like a hollowed palm, and just there the cliff jutted out a good bit, with a sheer fall onto the rocks below. It was a gray afternoon at the end of summer. The wind was rising fast. There was a thunder of heavy waves already. I think he had been dogging me, but I hadn't chosen to let him get up to me till now. We were quite out of sight when he had reached the level bottom of the dip where I had halted, quite out of sight and quite alone. To do him justice he came on steadily enough. His face was likeer the sketch I had made of it, likeer the face that I had seen in my dream than it had ever looked before. Evidently he had made up his mind. At last, then, well, I had been waiting long. He was close beside me. Ah, bonjour, cher Monsieur Steinmetz. So, he said, his little eyes contracting like a cobra's. Ah, Monsieur knows my name. Among other things about you, yes. So, the yellow face was turning grayer and harder every minute, likeer and likeer to my likeness of it. And what other things, has it never appeared to you that this you do have been doing, this meddling, may be dangerous, hi? He had changed his tone, as he had changed the person in which he addressed me. Yes, he had certainly made up his mind, and his big right hand was hidden inside his waistcoat, so that I could not see the evil eye I knew was on his finger. Dangerous, he repeated slowly. Possibly. I surely, I shall crush you. Try. In good time, wait, you plot against me. Take care, I am strong, I warn you. There must be an end of this, you understand, or... He nodded his big head significantly. You are right, I told him. There must be an end. It is coming. So, yes, I know you. You know me now. I know you. What do you want? To kill you. So, yes, as you killed her. As I killed her. That is it then. You know that? I know that. Well, it is true. I killed her. Now you can guess what I'm going to do to you. To you, curse you, whom she loved. The very face I'd seen in my dream now, Bertie. The very face. There was something besides the evil eye that gleamed in his right hand when he drew it from his breast. Once more he spoke. Yes, I killed her. I meant worse for you. You escaped that, but you will not escape me now. Fool, were you mad to do this? Did not I hate you enough? And I would have let you be. Ah, die then if you will have it so. His heavy right arm swung high as he spoke, and I saw the sharp steel gleam as it turned to fall. And I twisted from his grip and caught the falling arm, and bent it till the dagger dropped to the ground. And then, for a fierce, desperate, devilish minute, I had him in my clutch, dragging him nearer the smooth, slippery edge. He was no match for me at this, I knew, and he knew, but he held me with the hold of his despair, and I could not loose myself. Both of us together, he meant, but not I. Yet I only freed myself just as he rolled, exhausted, but clutching at the tough, short bushes wildly toward the brink, and partly over it, only the hold of his hands between him and his death. And I knelt above him with a knife in my hand that was stained with her blood. The great yellow face, ashen now on its mortal agony, looked silently up at me, for three or four awful seconds, and then it disappeared. Bah, Paul concluded, that was the end of it. Once, when the gentle rain fell, I glided in a barge down a sunless stream under the earth, till I reached another world of purple twilight, iridescent arbors, and undying roses. And once I walked through a golden valley that led to shadowy groves and ruins, and ended in a mighty wall green with antique vines, and pierced by a little gate of bronze. Many times I walked through that valley, and longer and longer would I pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely, and the gray ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes disclosing the mold-stained stones of buried temples. And always the goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall with the little gate of bronze therein. After a while, as the days of walking became less and less bearable from their greyness and sameness, I would often drift in opiate peace through the valley and the shadowy groves, and wonder how I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place, so that I need no more crawl back into a dull world stripped of interest and new colors. And as I looked upon that little gate in the mighty wall, I felt that beyond it lay a dream-country from which, once it was entered, there would be no return. So each night in sleep I strove to find the hidden latch of the gate in the ivied antique wall, though it was exceedingly well hidden. And I would tell myself that the realm beyond the wall was not more lasting merely, but more lovely and radiant as well. Then one night in the dream-city of Zecharion I found a yellowed papyrus filled with the thoughts of dream-sages who dwelt of old in that city, and who were too wise ever to be born in the waking world. Therein were written many things concerning the world of dream, and among them was the lore of a golden valley and a sacred grove with temples and a high wall pierced by a little bronze gate. When I saw this lore I knew that it touched on the scenes I had haunted, and I therefore read long in the yellowed papyrus. Some of the dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the wonders beyond the irrepassible gate, but others told of horror and disappointment. I knew not which to believe, yet longed more and more to cross forever into the unknown land. For doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace. So when I learned of the drug which would unlock the gate and drive me through, I resolved to take it when next I awaked. Last night I swallowed the drug and floated dreamily into the golden valley and the shadowy groves, and when I came this time to the antique wall I saw that the small gate of bronze was a jar. From beyond came a glow that weirdly lit the giant twisted trees and the tops of the buried temples, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the glories of the land from whence I should never return. But as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of the drug and the dream pushed me through, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end, for in that new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and illimitable space. So, happier than I ever dared hope to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon life had called me for one brief and desolate hour. End of X Oblivione. Seemingly inexplicable chain of circumstances, which had to do with the mysterious disappearance of a famous actress, Irene Wallach, from her dressing room in a Springfield Theater in the course of a performance, while the echo of tumultuous appreciation still rang in her ears, was perhaps the first problem which was not purely scientific that the thinking machine was ever asked to solve. The scientist's aide was enlisted, in this case, by Hutchinson Hatch, reporter. But I am a scientist, a logician the thinking machine had protested. I know nothing whatever of crime. No one knows that a crime has been committed, the reporter hastened to say. There is something far beyond the ordinary in this affair. A woman has disappeared, evaporated into thin air in the hearing, almost inside of her friends. The police can make nothing of it. It is a problem for a greater mind than theirs. Professor Von Duesen waved the newspaper man to a seat and himself sank back into a great cushioned chair in which his diminutive figure seemed even more childlike than it really was. Tell me the story, he said petulantly. All of it. The enormous yellow head rested against the chair back. The blue eyes squinted steadily upward. The slender fingers were pressed, tip to tip. The thinking machine was in a receptive mood. Hatch was triumphant. He had had only a vague hope that he could interest this man in an affair which was as bizarre as it was incomprehensible. Miss Wallach is thirty years old and beautiful, the reporter began. As an actress, she is one high recognition not only in this country but in England. You may have read something of her in the daily papers, and if I never read the papers, the other interrupted curtly. Go on. She is unmarried, and as far as anyone knows had no immediate intention of changing her condition, Hatch resumed, staring curiously at the thin face of the scientist. I presume she had admirers, most beautiful women of the stage have, but she is one whose life has been perfectly clean, whose record is an open book. I tell you this because it might have a bearing on your conclusion as to a possible reason for her disappearance. Now the actual circumstances of that disappearance. Miss Wallach has been playing in Shakespeare and repertoire. Last week she was in Springfield. On Saturday night, which concluded her engagement there, she appeared as Rosalind in As You Like It. The house was crowded. She played the first two acts amid great enthusiasm, and this despite the fact that she was suffering intensely from headache to which she was subject at times. After the second act she returned to her dressing room, and just before the curtain went up for the third, the stage manager called her. She replied that she would be out immediately. There seems no possible shadow of doubt that it was her voice. Rosalind does not appear in the third act until the curtain has been up for six minutes. When Miss Wallach's cue came, she did not answer it. The stage manager rushed to her door and again called her. There was no answer. Then, fearing that she might have fainted, he went in. She was not there. A hurried search was made without result, and the stage manager finally was compelled to announce to the audience that the sudden illness of the star would make it impossible to finish the performance. The curtain was lowered, and the search resumed. Every nook and corner back of the footlights was gone over. The stage doorkeeper William Meaghan had seen no one go out. He and a policeman had been standing at the stage door talking for at least twenty minutes. It is therefore conclusive that Miss Wallach did not leave by that exit. The only other way it was possible to leave the stage was over the footlights. Of course, she didn't go that way. Yet no trace of her has been found. Where is she? The windows ask the thinking machine. The stage is below the street level, explained Hatch. The window of her dressing room, room A, is small and barred with iron. It opens into an air shaft that goes straight up for ten feet, and that is covered with an iron grating fixed in the granite. The other windows on the stage are not only inaccessible, but are also barred with iron. She could not have approached either of these windows without being seen by other members of the company or the stage hands. Under the stage suggested the scientist. Nothing, the reporter went on. It is a large cemented basement which was vacant. It was searched, because there was of course a chance that Miss Wallach might have become temporarily unbalanced and wandered down there. There was even a search made of the flies. That is the galleries over the stage where the men who work the drop curtains are stationed. There was silence for a long time. The thinking machine twiddled his fingers and continued to stare upward. He had not looked at the reporter. He broke the silence after a time. How was Miss Wallach dressed at the time of her disappearance? In doublet and hose, that is, tights, the newspaper man responded, she wears that costume from the second act until practically the end of the play. Was all her street clothing in the room? Yes, everything, spread across an unopened trunk of costumes. It was all as if she had left the room to answer her queue, all in order even to an open box of chocolate cream candy on her table. No sign of a struggle, nor any noise heard? No, nor trace of blood. Nothing. Her maid, did she have one? Oh, yes, I neglected to tell you that the maid, Gertrude Manning, had gone home immediately after the first act. She grew suddenly ill and was excused. The thinking machine turned his squint eyes on the reporter for the first time. Ill, he repeated. What was the matter? That I can't say, replied the reporter. Where is she now? I don't know. Everyone forgot all about her and the excitement about Miss Wallach. What kind of candy was it? I'm afraid I don't know that, either. Where was it bought? The reporter shrugged his shoulders. That was something else he didn't know. The thinking machine shot out the questions aggressively, staring meanwhile studly at Hatch, who squirmed uncomfortably. Where is the candy now? demanded the scientist. Again, Hatch shrugged his shoulders. How much does Miss Wallach weigh? The reporter was willing to guess at this. He had seen her half a dozen times. Between a hundred and thirty and a hundred and forty, he ventured. Does there happen to be a hypnotist connected with the company? I don't know, Hatch replied. The thinking machine waved his slender hands impatiently. He was annoyed. It is perfectly absurd, Mr. Hatch, he expostulated, to come to me with only a few facts and ask advice. If you had all the facts, I might be able to do something. But this, the newspaper man was netled, in his own profession he was accredited a man of discernment and acumen. He resented the tone, the manner, even the seemingly trivial questions which the other asked. I don't see, he began, that the candy, even if it had been poisoned, as I imagine you think possible, or a hypnotist could have had anything to do with Miss Wallach's disappearance. Certainly neither poison nor hypnotism would have made her invisible. Of course you don't see, blazed the thinking machine. If you did, you wouldn't have come to me. When did this thing happen? Saturday night, as I said, the reporter informed him, a little more humbly. It closed the engagement in Springfield. Miss Wallach was to have appeared here, in Boston, to-night. When did she disappear? By the clock, I mean. The stage manager's time slip shows that the curtain for the third act went up at nine forty-one. He spoke to her, say, one minute before or at nine forty. The action of the play before she appears in the third act takes six minutes. Therefore, in precisely seven minutes, a woman, weighing more than a hundred and thirty pounds, certainly not dressed for the street, disappeared completely from her dressing room. It is now five-eighteen, Monday afternoon. I think we may solve this crime within a few hours. Crime, Hatch repeated eagerly. Do you imagine there is a crime, then? Professor Von Duesen didn't heed the question. Instead, he rose and paced back and forth across the reception room half a dozen times. His hands behind his back and his eyes cast down. At last he stopped and faced the reporter, who had also risen. Miss Wallach's company, I presume, with the baggage, is now in Boston, he said. See every male member of the company. Talk to them and particularly study their eyes. Don't overlook anyone, however humble. Also find out what became of the box of chocolate candy, and if possible, how many pieces are out of it. Then report here to me. Miss Wallach's safety may depend upon your speed and accuracy. Hatch was frankly startled. How, he began. Don't stop to talk. Hurry, commanded the thinking machine. I will have a cab waiting when you come back. We must get to Springfield. The newspaper man rushed away to obey orders. He didn't understand them at all. Studying men's eyes was not in his line, but he obeyed, nevertheless. An hour and a half later, he returned to be thrust unceremoniously into a waiting cab by the thinking machine. The cab rattled away toward South Station, where the two men caught a train, just about to move out for Springfield. Once settled in their seats, the scientists turned to Hatch, who was nearly suffocating with suppressed information. Well, he asked. I found out several things, the reporter burst out. First, Miss Wallach's leading man, Langdon Mason, who has been in love with her for three years, bought the candy at Shilers in Springfield early Saturday evening before he went to the theater. He told me so himself rather reluctantly, but I made him say it. Ah! exclaimed the thinking machine. It was a most unequivocal ejaculation. How many pieces of candy are out of the box? Only three explained Hatch. Miss Wallach's things were packed into the open trunk in her dressing room, the candy with them. I induced the manager. Yes, yes, yes! interrupted the thinking machine impatiently. What sort of eyes has Mason? What color? Blue, frank in expression. Nothing unusual at all, said the reporter. And the others? I didn't quite know what you meant by studying their eyes, so I got a set of photographs. I thought perhaps they might help. Excellent, excellent! commented the thinking machine. He shuffled the pictures through his fingers, stopping now and then to study one, and to read the name printed below. Is that the leading man? He asked at last, and handed one to Hatch. Yes. Professor Von Duesen did not speak again. The train pulled into Springfield at 9.21. Hatch followed the scientist without a word into a cab. Shilor's candy store quickly commanded the thinking machine. Hurry! The cab rushed off through the night. Ten minutes later it stopped before a brilliantly lighted candy store. The thinking machine led the way inside and approached the girl behind the chocolate counter. Will you please tell me if you remember this man's face? He asked as he produced Mason's photograph. Oh yes, I remember him, the girl replied. He's an actor. Did he buy a small box of chocolates of you Saturday evening, early? Was the next question. Yes, I recall it because he seemed to be in a hurry, in fact. I believe he said he was anxious to get to the theater to pack. And do you recall that this man ever bought chocolates here? Asked the scientist. He produced another photograph and handed it to the girl. She studied it a moment while Hatch craned his neck, vainly, to see. I don't recall that he ever did, the girl answered, finally. The thinking machine turned away abruptly and disappeared into a public telephone booth. He remained there for five minutes, then rushed out to the cab again, with Hatch following closely. City hospital, he commanded. Again the cab dashed away. Hatch was dumb. There seemed to be nothing to say. The thinking machine was plainly pursuing some definite line of inquiry. Yet the reporter didn't know what. The case was getting kaleidoscopic. This impression was strengthened when he found himself standing beside the thinking machine in City hospital, conversing with the house surgeon, Dr. Carlton. Is there a misgurtrude manning here? was the scientist's first question. Yes, replied the surgeon. She was brought here Saturday night, suffering from strickenine poisoning. Yes, I know. Interrupted the other. Picked up in the street. Probably. I'm a physician. If she is well enough, I should like to ask her a couple of questions. Dr. Carlton agreed, and Professor Von Dusen still followed faithfully by Hatch, was ushered into the ward where Ms. Wallach's maid lay, pallid, and weak. The thinking machine picked up her hand, and his slender fingers rested for a minute on her pulse. He nodded and seemed satisfied. Miss Manning, can you understand me? he asked. The girl nodded, weakly. How many pieces of the candy did you eat? Two, she replied. She stared into the face above her with dull eyes. Did Ms. Wallach eat any of it up to the time you left the theater? No. If the thinking machine had been in a hurry previously, he was racing now. Hatch trailed on dutifully behind, down the stairs, and into the cab, whence Professor Von Dusen shouted a word of thanks to Dr. Carlton. This time their destination was the stage door of the theater from which Ms. Wallach had disappeared. The reporter was muddled. He didn't know anything very clearly, except that three pieces of candy were missing from the box. Of these the maid had eaten only two. She had been poisoned. Therefore it seemed reasonable to suppose that if Ms. Wallach had eaten the third piece, she also would be poisoned. But poison would not make her invisible. At this point the reporter shook his head hopelessly. William Meaghan, the stage doorkeeper, was easily found. Can you inform me, please? began the thinking machine. If Mr. Mason left a box of candy with you last Saturday night for Ms. Wallach. Yes, Meaghan replied goodnaturally. He was amused at the little man. Ms. Wallach hadn't arrived. Mason brought a box of candy for her nearly every night, and usually left it here. I put the one Saturday night on the shelf here. Did Mr. Mason come to the theater before or after the others on Saturday night? Before, replied Meaghan. He was unusually early, I suppose, to pack. And the other members of the company coming in to stop here, I imagine, to get their mail, and the scientists squinted up at the mailbox above the shelf. Sure, always. The thinking machine drew a long breath. Up to this time there had been little perplexed wrinkles in his brow. Now they disappeared. Now, please, he went on. Was any package or box of any kind taken from the stage on Saturday night between nine and eleven o'clock? No, said Meaghan positively. Nothing at all until the company's baggage was removed at midnight. Ms. Wallach had two trunks in her dressing room? Yes, two whackin' big ones. How do you know? Because I helped put them in and helped take them out, replied Meaghan sharply. What's it to you? Suddenly the thinking machine turned and ran out to the cab with Hatch, his shadow, close behind. Drive, drive as fast as you know how to the nearest long-distance telephone, the scientist instructed the cabbie. A woman's life is at stake. Half an hour later, Professor Von Dusen and Hutchinson Hatch were on a train rushing back to Boston. The thinking machine had been in the telephone booth for 15 minutes. When he came out, Hatch had asked several questions to which the scientist vouchsafed no answer. They were perhaps 30 minutes out of Springfield before the scientist showed any disposition to talk. Then he began, without preliminary, much as he was resuming a former conversation. Of course, if Ms. Wallach didn't leave the stage of the theater, she was there, he said. We will admit that she did not become invisible. The problem, therefore, was to find her on the stage. The fact that no violence was used against her was conclusively proved by half a dozen instances. No one heard her scream. There was no struggle, no trace of blood. Ergo, we assume in the beginning that she must have consented to the first steps which led to her disappearance. Remember, her attire was wholly unsuited to the street. Now, let us shape a hypothesis which will fit all the circumstances. Ms. Wallach had a severe headache. Hypnotic influence will cure headaches. Was there a hypnotist to whom Ms. Wallach would have submitted herself? Assume there was. Then would that hypnotist take advantage of his control to place her in a cataleptic condition? Assume a motive, and he would. Then how would he dispose of her? From this point questions radiate in all directions. We will confine ourselves to the probable, granting for the moment that this hypothesis, the only one which fits all the circumstances, is correct. Obviously, a hypnotist would not have attempted to get her out of the dressing room. What remains? One of the two trunks in her room. Hatch gasped. You mean you think it possible that she was hypnotized and placed in that second trunk? The one that was strapped and locked? He asked. It's the only thing that could have happened, said the thinking machine emphatically. Therefore, that was just what did happen. Why, it's horrible, exclaimed Hatch. A live woman in a trunk for 48 hours? Even if she was alive then, she must be dead now. The reporter shuttered a little and gazed curiously at the inscrutable face of his companion. He saw no pity, no horror there. There was merely the reflection of the workings of a brain. It does not necessarily follow that she is dead, explained the thinking machine. If she ate that third piece of candy before she was hypnotized, she is probably dead. If it was placed in her mouth after she was in a cataleptic condition, the chances are that she is not dead. The candy would not melt and her system could not absorb the poison. But she would be suffocated. Her bones would be broken by the rough handling of the trunk. There are a hundred possibilities, the reporter suggested. A person in a cataleptic condition is singularly impervious to injury, replied the scientist. There is, of course, 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 poison 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 Ms. Wallach in 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 Ms. Wallach, 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 Ms. Wallach free to play. She might have known this from previous experience. Is Ms. Wallach 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 Wallet 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 Von Duesen 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 Ms. Wallock 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 study and passive 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 Whiteman, the melancholy Jacques 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 Whiteman 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. Ms. Wallock was aroused and told a story almost identical with that of the thinking machine. Stanley Whiteman, who's brooding over a hopeless love for her, made a maniac of him, raves and shrieks the lines of Jacques in the seclusion of a padded cell. End of The First Problem by Jacques Foutrelle