LITMIR.BIZ

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answer. They were perhaps thirty 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 Miss Wallack 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. Miss Wallack had a severe headache. Hypnotic influence will cure headaches. Was there a hypnotist to whom Miss Wallack 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 forty-eight hours? Even if she was alive then, she must be dead now.”

      The reporter shuddered 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 poisoned candy is not the candy he bought. Is Mr. Mason a hypnotist? No. He hasn’t the eyes. His picture tells me that. We know that Mr. Mason did buy candy for Miss Wallack on several occasions. We know that sometimes he left it with the stage doorkeeper. We know that members of the company stopped there for mail. We instantly see that it is possible for one to take away that box and substitute poisoned candy. All the boxes are alike.

      “Madness and the cunning of madness lie back of all this. It was a deliberate attempt to murder Miss Wallack, long pondered and due, perhaps, to unrequited or hopeless infatuation. It began with the poisoned candy, and that failing, went to a point immediately following the moment when the stage manager last spoke to the actress. The hypnotist was probably in her room then. You must remember that it would have been possible for him to ease the headache, and at the same time leave Miss Wallack free to play. She might have known this from previous experience.”

      “Is Miss Wallack still in the trunk?” asked Hatch after a silence.

      “No,” replied the Thinking Machine. “She is out now, dead or alive—I am inclined to believe alive.”

      “And the man?”

      “I will turn him over to the police in half an hour after we reach Boston.”

      From South Station the scientist and Hatch were driven immediately to Police Headquarters. Detective Mallory, whom Hatch knew well, received them.

      “We got your ‘phone from Springfield—” he began.

      “Was she dead?” interrupted the scientist.

      “No,” Mallory replied. “She was unconscious when we took her out of the trunk, but no bones are broken. She is badly bruised. The doctor says she’s hypnotized.”

      “Was the piece of candy taken from her mouth?”

      “Sure, a chocolate cream. It hadn’t melted.”

      “I’ll come back here in a few minutes and awake her,” said The Thinking Machine. “Come with us now, and get the man.”

      Wonderingly the detective entered the cab and the three were driven to a big hotel a dozen blocks away. Before they entered the lobby The Thinking Machine handed a photograph to Mallory, who studied it under an electric light.

      “That man is upstairs with several others,” explained the scientist. “Pick him out and get behind him when we enter the room. He may attempt to shoot. Don’t touch him until I say so.”

      In a large room on the fifth floor Manager Stanfeld of the Irene Wallack Company had assembled the men of her support. This was done at the ‘phoned request of The Thinking Machine. There were no preliminaries when Professor Van Dusen entered. He squinted comprehensively about him, then went straight to Langdon Mason.

      “Were you on the stage in the third act of your play before Miss Wallack was to appear—I mean the play last Saturday night?” he asked.

      “I was,” Mason replied, “for at least three minutes.”

      “Mr. Stanfeld, is that correct?”

      “Yes,” replied the manager.

      There was a long tense silence broken only by the heavy footsteps of Mallory as he walked toward a distant corner of the room. A faint flush crept into Mason’s face as he realized that the questions were almost an accusation. He started to speak, but the steady, impassive voice of The Thinking Machine stopped him.

      “Mr. Mallory, take your prisoner,” it said.

      Instantly there was a fierce, frantic struggle, and those present turned to see the detective with his great arms locked about Stanley Wightman, the melancholy Jaques of “As You Like It.” The actor’s face was distorted, madness blazed in the eyes, and he snarled like a beast at bay. By a sudden movement Mallory threw Wightman and manacled him, then looked up to find The Thinking Machine peering over his shoulder at the prostrate man.

      “Yes, he’s a hypnotist,” the scientist remarked in self-satisfied conclusion. “It always tells in the pupils of the eyes.”

      This, then, was the beginning and end of the first problem. Miss Wallack was aroused, and told a story almost identical with that of The Thinking Machine. Stanley Wightman, whose brooding over a hopeless love for her made a maniac of him, raves and shrieks the lines of Jaques in the seclusion of a padded cell.

      The Problem of the Crystal Gazer

      Table of Contents

      With hideous, goggling eyes the great god Budd sat cross-legged on a pedestal and stared stolidly into the semi-darkness. He saw, by the wavering light of a peacock lamp which swooped down from the ceiling with wings outstretched, what might have been a nook in a palace of East India. Draperies hung here, there, everywhere; richly embroidered divans sprawled about; fierce tiger rugs glared up from the floor; grotesque idols grinned mirthlessly in unexpected corners; strange arms were grouped on the walls. Outside the trolley cars clanged blatantly.

      The

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