LITMIR.BIZ

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and Detective Mallory chewed his cigar uncomfortably. He was there to find out something about crime; this thing was over his head.

      “This is merely preliminary,” The Thinking Machine went on after a moment. “Now as to this crystal gazing affair—a little reason, a little logic. When Mr. Varick came to me I saw he was an intelligent man who had devoted years to a study of the so-called occult. Being intelligent he was not easily hoodwinked, yet he had been hoodwinked for years, therefore I could see that the man who did it must be far beyond the blundering fool usually found in these affairs.

      “Now Mr. Varick, personally, had never seen anything in any crystal—remember that—until this ‘vision’ of death. When I knew this I knew that ‘vision’ was stamped as quackery; the mere fact of him seeing it proved that, but the quackery was so circumstantial that he was convinced. Thus we have quackery. Why? For a fee? I can imagine successful guesses on the stock market bringing fees to Adhem Singh, but the ‘vision’ of a man’s death is not the way to his pocketbook. If not for a fee—then what?

      “A deeper motive was instantly apparent. Mr. Varick was wealthy, he had known Singh and had been friendly with him for years, had supplied him with funds to go through Oxford, and he had no family or dependents. Therefore it seemed probable that a will, or perhaps in another way, Singh would benefit by Mr. Varick’s death. There was a motive for the ‘vision,’ which might have been at first an effort to scare him to death, because he had a bad heart. I saw all these things when Mr. Varick talked to me first, several days after he saw the ‘vision’ but did not suggest them to him. Had I done so he would not have believed so sordid a thing, for he believed in Singh, and would probably have gone his way to be murdered or to die of fright as Singh intended.

      “Knowing these things there was only the labour of trapping a clever man. Now the Hindu mind works in strange channels. It loves the mystic, the theatric, and I imagined that having gone so far Singh would attempt to bring the ‘vision’ to a reality. He presumed, of course, that Mr. Varick would keep the matter to himself.

      “The question of saving Varick’s life was trifling. If he was to die at a given time in a given room the thing to do was to place him beyond possible reach of that room at that time. I ‘phoned to you, Mr. Hatch, and asked you to bring me a private detective who would obey orders, and you brought Mr. Byrne. You heard my instructions to him. It was necessary to hide Mr. Varick’s identity and my elaborate directions were to prevent anyone getting the slightest clue as to him having gone, or as to where he was. I don’t know where he is now.

      “Immediately Mr. Varick was off my hands, I had Martha, my housekeeper, write a note to Singh explaining that Mr. Varick was ill, and confined to his room, and for the present was unable to see anyone. In this note a date was specified when he would call on Singh. Martha wrote, of course, as a trained nurse who was in attendance merely in day time. All these points were made perfectly clear to Singh.

      “That done, it was only a matter of patience. Mr. Hatch and I went to Mr. Varick’s apartments each night—I had Martha there in day time to answer questions—and waited, in hiding. Mr. Hatch is about Varick’s size and a wig helped us along. What happened then you know. I may add that when Mr. Varick told me the story I commented on it as being almost unbelievable. He understood, as I meant he should, that I referred to the ‘vision.’ I really meant that the elaborate scheme which Singh had evolved was unbelievable. He might have killed him just as well with a drop of poison or something equally pleasant.”

      The Thinking Machine stopped as if that were all.

      “But the crystal?” asked Hatch. “How did that work? How was it I saw you?”

      “That was a little ingenious and rather expensive,” said The Thinking Machine, “so expensive that Singh must have expected to get a large sum from success. I can best describe the manufacture of the ‘vision’ as a variation of the principle of the camera obscura. It was done with lenses of various sorts and a multitude of mirrors, and required the assistance of two other men—those who were taken from Singh’s house with Jadeh.

      “First, the room in Mr. Varick’s apartments was duplicated in the basement of Singh’s house, even to rugs, books and wall decorations. There two men rehearsed the murder scene that Mr. Varick saw. They were disguised of course. You have looked through the wrong end of a telescope of course? Well, the original reduction of the murder scene to a size where all of it would appear in a small mirror was accomplished that way. From this small mirror there ran pipes with a series of mirrors and lenses, through the house, carrying the reflection of what was happening below, so vaguely though that features were barely distinguishable. This pipe ran up inside one of the legs of the table on which the crystal rested, and then, by reflection to the pedestal.

      “You, Mr. Hatch, saw me lift that crystal several times and each time you might have noticed the click. I was trying to find then, how the reflection reached it. When you lifted it slowly and I put my fingers under it I knew. There was a small trap in the pedestal, covered with velvet. This closed automatically and presented a solid surface when the crystal was lifted, and opened when the crystal was replaced. Thus the reflection reached the crystal which reversed it the last time and made it appear right side up to the watcher. The apparent growth of the light in the crystal was caused below. Some one simply removed several sheets of gauze, one at a time, from in front of the first lens.”

      “Well!” exclaimed Detective Mallory. “That’s the most elaborate affair I ever heard of.”

      “Quite right,” commented the scientist, “but we don’t know how many victims Singh had. Of course any ‘vision’ was possible with a change of scene in the basement. I imagine it was a profitable investment because there are many fools in this world.”

      “What did the girl have to do with it?” asked Hatch.

      “That I don’t know,” replied the scientist. “She was pretty. Perhaps she was used as a sort of bait to attract a certain class of men. She was really Singh’s wife I imagine, not his sister. She was a prominent figure in the mummery with Varick of course. With her aid Singh was able to lend great effectiveness to the general scheme.”

      A couple of days later Howard Varick returned to the city in tow of Philip Byrne. The Thinking Machine asked Mr. Varick only one question of consequence.

      “How much money did you intend to leave Singh?”

      “About two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” was the reply. “It was to be used under his direction in furthering an investigation into the psychic. He and I had planned just how it was to be spent.”

      Personally Mr. Varick is no longer interested in the occult.

      Five Millions by Wireless

      Table of Contents

      Within the great room, dim, shadowy, mysterious as the laboratory of some alchemist of old, and foul with the pungent odors of strange chemical messes, there blazed a single light, a powerful electrical contrivance fitted with reflector, and so shaded that its concentrated rays beat down fiercely upon a table littered with scientific apparatus; and bending over the table was a man, an odd, almost pathetic little figure, slight to childishness, small of stature, attenuated. His hair was a straw-colored thatch thrown back impatiently from a domelike brow, increasing in effect the abnormal size of his head. His eyes were narrow slits of pale blue, squinting petulantly through thick spectacles; his wizened, clean-shaven face was white with the pallor of the student; his mouth was a straight, bloodless line. His hands, busy now at some microscopic labor, were slender and almost transparent under the blinding glare from above; his fingers long, sensitive, delicate.

      The door opened, and an elderly woman appeared with a tray.

      “Some coffee and rolls, sir,” she explained. “Really you ought to have something, sir.”

      “Put them down.” The little man didn’t lift his eyes from his work; he spoke curtly.

      “And if you should ask me, sir,”

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