The Haunted Bell | Page 9

which cast so strange a mystery about the death by violence of Johann Wagner, junk-dealer, in the home of Franklin Phillips, millionaire. But his information was only from the time the police came into the affair. Mr. Phillips, Doctor Perdue and Mr. Matsumi alone knew of the ringing of the bell.
"The blood-spot on one of the bells," Hatch told the scientist in conclusion, "may be the mark of a hand, but its significance doesn't appear. Just now the police are working on two queer points which they developed. First, Detective Mallory recognized the dead man as 'Old Dutch' Wagner, long suspected of conducting a 'fence'--that is, receiving and disposing of stolen goods; and second, one of the servants in the Phillips' household, Giles Francis, has disappeared. He hasn't been seen since eleven o'clock on the night before the body was found, and then he was in bed sound asleep. Every article of his clothing, except a pair of shoes, trousers, and pajamas, was left behind."
The Thinking Machine turned away from the laboratory table and sank into a chair. For a long time he sat with his enormous yellow head thrown back and his slender, white fingers pressed tip to tip.
"If Wagner was shot through the heart," he said at last, "we know that death was instantaneous; therefore he could not have made the blood-mark on the bell." It seemed to be a statement of fact. "But why should there be such a mark on the bell?"
"Detective Mallory thinks that--" began the reporter.
"Oh, never mind what he thinks!" interrupted the other testily. "What time was the body found?"
"About half-past nine yesterday morning."
"Anything stolen?"
"Nothing. The body was simply there, the window open and the door locked, and there was the blood-mark on the bell."
There was a pause. Cobwebby lines appeared on the broad forehead of the scientist and the squint eyes narrowed down to mere slits. Hatch was watching him curiously.
"What does Mr. Phillips say about it?" asked The Thinking Machine. He was still staring upward and his thin lips were drawn into a straight line.
"He is ill, just how ill we don't know," responded the newspaper man. "Doctor Perdue has, so far, not permitted the police to question him."
The scientist lowered his eyes quickly.
"What's the matter with him?" he demanded.
"I don't know. Doctor Perdue has declined to make any statement."
Half an hour later The Thinking Machine and Hatch called at the Phillips' house. They met Doctor Perdue coming out. His face was grave and preoccupied; his professional air of jocundity was wholly absent. He shook hands with The Thinking Machine, whom he had met years before beside an operating-table, and re?ntered the house with him. Together the three went to the little room--the scene of the tragedy.
The Japanese gong still swung over the desk. The crabbed little scientist went straight to it, and for five minutes devoted his undivided attention to a study of the splotch on the fifth bell. From the expression of his face Hatch could gather nothing. What the scientist saw might or might not have been illuminating. Was the splotch the mark of a hand? If it were, Hatch argued, it offered no clew, as the intricate lines of the flesh were smeared together, obliterated.
Next The Thinking Machine critically glanced about him, and finally threw open the window facing east. For a long time he stood silently squinting out; and, save for the minute lines in his forehead, there was no indication whatever of his mental workings. The little room was on the second floor and jutted out at right angles across a narrow alley which ran beneath them to the kitchen in the back. The dead-wall of the next building was only four feet from the Phillips' wall, and was without windows, so it was easily seen how a man, unobserved, might climb up from below despite an arc-light above the wide front door of an apartment-house across the street, visible in the vista of the alley.
"Do you happen to know, Perdue," asked The Thinking Machine at last, "if this west window was ever opened?"
"Never," replied the physician. "Detective Mallory questioned the servants about it. It seems that the kitchen is beneath, somewhat to the back, and the odors of cooking came up."
"How many outside doors has this house?"
"Only two," was the reply: "the one you entered, and one opening into the alley below us."
"Both were found locked yesterday morning?"
"Yes. Both doors have spring-locks, therefore each locks itself when closed."
"Oh!" exclaimed the scientist suddenly.
He turned away from the window, and, for a second time, examined the still and silent gong. Somewhere in his mind seemed to be an inkling that the gong might be more closely associated than appeared with the mystery of death, and yet, watching him curiously, Doctor Perdue knew he could have no