LITMIR.BIZ

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been a-standing right there, sir,” Martha denied, in righteous indignation, “ever since Sunday afternoon at four o’clock.”

      “What time is it now?”

      “It’s ten o’clock Tuesday morning, sir.”

      “Dear me, dear me!”

      “You haven’t slept a wink, sir,” Martha complained, “and you haven’t eat enough—”

      “Martha, you annoy me,” the little man interrupted peevishly. “Run along and attend to your duties.”

      “But, sir, you can’t keep a-going like—”

      “Very well, then,” and there was a childish tone of resignation in the master’s voice. “It’s Tuesday, you say? Tell me when it’s noon Wednesday.”

      Martha went out with a helpless shrug of her shoulders, leaving him alone.

      Hours passed. The coffee, untasted, grew cold. Motionless, the little man continued at his labors with tense eagerness in his narrow eyes, oblivious alike of the things about him, and of exhausted nature. The will beneath the straw-colored thatch knew not weariness.

      And this was “The Thinking Machine”—Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D., F. R. S., M. D., LL. D., et cetera, et cetera—logician, analyst, worker of miracles in the exact sciences, intellectual wizard of his time; this the master mind, exalted by the cumulative genius of generations gone before, which had isolated itself on a pinnacle of achievement through sheer force of applied reason. Once he had been the controversial center of his profession, riding down pet theories and tentative surmises and cherished opinions, and setting up instead precise facts, a few rescued from the chaos he had himself created, more of his own uncovering. Now he was the court of last appeal in the sciences.

      The Thinking Machine! No one of the honorary degrees thrust upon him willy-nilly by the universities of the world described him half so accurately as did this title—a chance paradox applied by a newspaper man. Seemingly tireless, calm, unemotional—unless one counted as an emotion the constant note of irritation in his voice—terse of speech, crabbed of manner, and possessed of an uncanny faculty of separating all things into their primal units, he lived in a circumscribed sphere which he had stripped of all illusion. The mental precision which distinguished his laboratory work characterized all else he did. If any man ever reduced human frailties, human virtues, and human motives to mathematics that man was The Thinking Machine.

      It has been my pleasure to set down at another time and place some results of The Thinking Machine’s investigations along lines disassociated with abstruse problems of his profession, these being chiefly instances in which he had turned the light of cold logic upon perplexing criminal mysteries with well-nigh mathematical precision.

      Also, it has been my pleasure to relate at length some of those curious adventures which led to The Thinking Machine’s incongruous friendship for Hutchinson Hatch.

      Hatch was a newspaper reporter, a young man of vitality and enthusiasm and keen wordliness; he was a breath of the outside to this odd little man, who never read papers, who rarely came into contact with things as they are, who had not even the small vices which bring individuals together. It had been Hatch who first applied the title of The Thinking Machine to the eminent scientist, and the phrase had stuck.

      Perhaps not the least interesting of the adventures of these two together was that which culminated in the bestowal upon The Thinking Machine of the Order of the Iron Eagle, second class, by Emperor Gustavus, of Germania–Austria. It so happened in that case that the fate of an empire and the future of its royal house lay for a time in The Thinking Machine’s slender hands. Failure on his part certainly would have changed the history of Europe, and probably the map. This problem was purely intellectual, and came to his attention at a time when physical vitality was at its lowest, after forty-eight hours’ unceasing work in his laboratory.

      The door opened, and Martha entered.

      “Martha,” the eminent scientist stormed, “if you’ve brought me more coffee I shall discharge you!”

      “It isn’t coffee, sir,” she replied. “It’s a—”

      “And don’t tell me it’s already twelve o’clock Wednesday.”

      “It’s a card, sir. Two gentlemen who—”

      “Can’t see them.”

      Not for an instant had the squinting eyes been raised from the work which engrossed The Thinking Machine. Martha laid the card on the table; he glanced at it impatiently. Herr Von Hartzfeldt!

      “He says, sir, it’s a matter of the utmost importance,” Martha explained.

      “Ask him who he is and what he wants.”

      The unexpectedness of the answer Martha brought back straightened The Thinking Machine where he stood.

      “He says, sir,” she reported, “that he’s the ambassador to the United States from Germania–Austria.”

      “Show him in at once.”

      Two gentlemen entered, one Baron Von Hartzfeldt, polished, courtly, distinguished in appearance, a famous figure in the diplomatic world; the other of a more rugged type, shorter, heavier, with bristly hair and beard, and deeply bronzed face. For an instant they stared into the wizened countenance of the little scientist with something like astonishment.

      “We have come to you, Mr. Van Dusen, in an extremity the gravity of which cannot be exaggerated,” Baron Von Hartzfeldt began suavely. “We know, as all the world knows, your splendid achievements in science. We know, too, that you have occasionally consented to investigate more material problems—that is, mysteries of crimes, and—”

      “Please come to the point,” The Thinking Machine interrupted tartly. “If you hadn’t known who I was, and hadn’t needed me, you wouldn’t have come. Now, what is it? This gentleman—”

      “Pardon me,” the ambassador begged, in polite confusion at the curt directness of his host. “Admiral Hausen–Aubier, of the royal navy, commanding the Mediterranean Fleet, now visiting your city on his flagship, the Friedrich der Grosse, which lies in the outer harbor.”

      The admiral bowed ceremoniously, and, accepting a slight movement of The Thinking Machine’s hand as an invitation to seats, the two gentlemen sat down. Not until that moment had the scientist realized his own weariness. The big chair offered grateful relaxation to tired limbs, and, with his enormous head tilted back, narrowed eyes turned upward, and slender fingers precisely tip to tip, he waited.

      “One of my officers has disappeared from the flagship—rather, has utterly vanished,” said Admiral Hausen–Aubier. He spoke excellent English, but there was a guttural undercurrent of excitement in his tone. “He went to his stateroom at midnight; next morning at seven o’clock he was gone. The guard at his door had been drugged with chloroform, and can tell nothing.”

      “Guard at the door?” questioned The Thinking Machine. “Why?”

      Admiral Hausen–Aubier seemed oddly disturbed by the question. He shot a hasty glance at Baron Von Hartzfeldt.

      “Ship discipline,” explained the diplomat vaguely.

      “Was he under arrest?”

      “Oh, no!” This from the admiral.

      “Do you sleep with a guard at your door?”

      “No.”

      “Any of the other officers?”

      “No.”

      “Go on, please.”

      “There isn’t much to tell.” There was bewilderment, deep concern, grief even, in the bronzed face. “The officer’s bed had been occupied, but there was no sign of a struggle. It was as if he had arisen, dressed, and gone out. There was

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