Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The Read online

  'This is Chisholm Prison,' he said through the 'phone. 'Send three or four men down here quick, to fix an arc light.'

  The reply was evidently satisfactory, for the warden hung up the receiver and passed out into the yard. While Dr Ransome and Mr Fielding sat waiting the guard at the outer gate came in with a special delivery letter. Dr Ransome happened to notice the address, and, when the guard went out, looked at the letter more closely.

  'By George!' he exclaimed.

  'What is it?' asked Mr Fielding.

  Silently the doctor offered the letter. Mr Fielding examined it closely.

  'Coincidence,' he said. 'It must be.'

  It was nearly eight o'clock when the warden returned to his office. The electricians had arrived in a wagon, and were now at work. The warden pressed the buzz-button communicating with the man at the outer gate in the wall.

  'How many electricians came in?' he asked, over the short 'phone. 'Four? Three workmen in jumpers and overalls and the manager? Frock coat and silk hat? All right. Be certain that only four go out. That's all.'

  He turned to Dr Ransome and Mr Fielding. 'We have to be careful here – particularly,' and there was broad sarcasm in his tone, 'since we have scientists locked up.'

  The warden picked up the special delivery letter carelessly, and then began to open it.

  'When I read this I want to tell you gentlemen something about how – Great Caesar!' he ended, suddenly, as he glanced at the letter. He sat with mouth open, motionless, from astonishment.

  'What is it?' asked Mr Fielding.

  'A special delivery from Cell 13,' gasped the warden. 'An invitation to supper.'

  'What?' and the two others arose, unanimously.

  The warden sat dazed, staring at the letter for a moment, then called sharply to a guard outside in the corridor.

  'Run down to Cell 13 and see if that man's in there.'

  The guard went as directed, while Dr Ransome and Mr Fielding examined the letter.

  'It's Van Dusen's handwriting; there's no question of that,' said Dr Ransome. 'I've seen too much of it.'

  Just then the buzz on the telephone from the outer gate sounded, and the warden, in a semi-trance, picked up the receiver.

  'Hello! Two reporters, eh? Let 'em come in.' He turned suddenly to the doctor and Mr Fielding. 'Why, the man can't be out. He must be in his cell.'

  Just at that moment the guard returned.

  'He's still in his cell, sir,' he reported. 'I saw him. He's lying down.'

  'There, I told you so,' said the warden, and he breathed freely again. 'But how did he mail that letter?'

  There was a rap on the steel door which led from the jail yard into the warden's office.

  'It's the reporters,' said the warden. 'Let them in,' he instructed the guard; then to the two other gentlemen: 'Don't say anything about this before them, because I'd never hear the last of it.'

  The door opened, and the two men from the front gate entered.

  'Good-evening, gentlemen,' said one. That was Hutchinson Hatch; the warden knew him well.

  'Well?' demanded the other, irritably. 'I'm here.'

  That was The Thinking Machine.

  He squinted belligerently at the warden, who sat with mouth agape. For the moment that official had nothing to say. Dr Ransome and Mr Fielding were amazed, but they didn't know what the warden knew. They were only amazed; he was paralyzed. Hutchinson Hatch, the reporter, took in the scene with greedy eyes.

  'How – how – how did you do it?' gasped the warden, finally.

  'Come back to the cell,' said The Thinking Machine, in the irritated voice which his scientific associates knew so well.

  The warden, still in a condition bordering on trance, led the way.

  'Flash your light in there,' directed The Thinking Machine.

  The warden did so. There was nothing unusual in the appearance of the cell, and there – there on the bed lay the figure of The Thinking Machine. Certainly! There was the yellow hair! Again the warden looked at the man beside him and wondered at the strangeness of his own dreams.

  With trembling hands he unlocked the cell door and The Thinking Machine passed inside.

  'See here,' he said.

  He kicked at the steel bars in the bottom of the cell door and three of them were pushed out of place. A fourth broke off and rolled away in the corridor.

  'And here, too,' directed the erstwhile prisoner as he stood on the bed to reach the small window. He swept his hand across the opening and every bar came out.

  'What's this in the bed?' demanded the warden, who was slowly recovering.

  'A wig,' was the reply. 'Turn down the cover.'

  The warden did so. Beneath it lay a large coil of strong rope, thirty feet or more, a dagger, three files, ten feet of electric wire, a thin, powerful pair of steel pliers, a small tack hammer with its handle, and – and a Derringer pistol.

  'How did you do it?' demanded the warden.

  'You gentlemen have an engagement to supper with me at half past nine o'clock,' said The Thinking Machine. 'Come on, or we shall be late.'

  'But how did you do it?' insisted the warden.

  'Don't ever think you can hold any man who can use his brain,' said The Thinking Machine. 'Come on; we shall be late.'

  VI

  It was an impatient supper party in the rooms of Professor Van Dusen and a somewhat silent one. The guests were Dr Ransome, Albert Fielding, the warden, and Hutchinson Hatch, reporter. The meal was served to the minute, in accordance with Professor Van Dusen's instructions of one week before; Dr Ransome found the artichokes delicious. At last the supper was finished and The Thinking Machine turned full on Dr Ransome and squinted at him fiercely.

  'Do you believe it now?' he demanded.

  'I do,' replied Dr Ransome.

  'Do you admit that it was a fair test?'

  'I do.'

  With the others, particularly the warden, he was waiting anxiously for the explanation.

  'Suppose you tell us how – ' , began Mr Fielding.

  'Yes, tell us how,' said the warden.

  The Thinking Machine readjusted his glasses, took a couple of preparatory squints at his audience, and began the story. He told it from the beginning logically; and no man ever talked to more interested listeners.

  'My agreement was,' he began, 'to go into a cell, carrying nothing except what was necessary to wear, and to leave that cell within a week. I had never seen Chisholm Prison. When I went into the cell I asked for tooth powder, two ten and one five-dollar bills, and also to have my shoes blacked. Even if these requests had been refused it would not have mattered seriously. But you agreed to them.

  'I knew there would be nothing in the cell which you thought I might use to advantage. So when the warden locked the door on me I was apparently helpless, unless I could turn three seemingly innocent things to use. They were things which would have been permitted any prisoner under sentence of death, were they not, warden?'

  'Tooth powder and polished shoes, yes, but not money,' replied the warden.

  'Anything is dangerous in the hands of a man who knows how to use it,' went on The Thinking Machine. 'I did nothing that first night but sleep and chase rats.' He glared at the warden. 'When the matter was broached I knew I could do nothing that night, so suggested next day. You gentlemen thought I wanted time to arrange an escape with outside assistance, but this was not true. I knew I could communicate with whom I pleased, when I pleased.'

  The warden stared at him a moment, then went on smoking solemnly.

  'I was aroused next morning at six o'clock by the jailer with my breakfast,' continued the scientist. 'He told me dinner was at twelve and supper at six. Between these times, I gathered, I would be pretty much to myself. So immediately after breakfast I examined my outside surroundings from my cell window. One look told me it would be useless to try to scale the wall, even should I decide to leave my cell by the window, for my purpose was to leave not only the cell, but the prison. Of course
, I could have gone over the wall, but it would have taken me longer to lay my plans that way. Therefore, for the moment, I dismissed all idea of that.

  'From this first observation I knew the river was on that side of the prison, and that there was also a playground there. Subsequently these surmises were verified by a keeper. I knew then one important thing – that anyone might approach the prison wall from that side if necessary without attracting any particular attention. That was well to remember. I remembered it.

  'But the outside thing which most attracted my attention was the feed wire to the arc light which ran within a few feet – probably three or four – of my cell window. I knew that would be valuable in the event I found it necessary to cut off that arc light.'

  'Oh, you shut it off to-night, then?' asked the warden.

  'Having learned all I could from that window,' resumed The Thinking Machine, without heeding the interruption, 'I considered the idea of escaping through the prison proper. I recalled just how I had come into the cell, which I knew would be the only way. Seven doors lay between me and the outside. So, also for the time being I gave up the idea of escaping that way. And I couldn't go through the solid granite walls of the cell.'

  The Thinking Machine paused for a moment and Dr Ransome lighted a new cigar. For several minutes there was silence, then the scientific jail-breaker went on:

  'While I was thinking about these things a rat ran across my foot. It suggested a new line of thought. There were at least half a dozen rats in the cell – I could see their beady eyes. Yet I had noticed none come under the cell door. I frightened them purposely and watched the cell door to see if they went out that way. They did not, but they were gone. Obviously they went another way. Another way meant another opening.

  'I searched for this opening and found it. It was an old drain pipe, long unused and partly choked with dirt and dust. But this was the way the rats had come. They came from somewhere. Where? Drain pipes usually lead outside prison grounds. This one probably led to the river, or near it. The rats must therefore come from that direction. If they came a part of the way, I reasoned that they came all the way, because it was extremely unlikely that a solid iron or lead pipe would have any hole in it except at the exit.

  'When the jailer came with my luncheon he told me two important things, although he didn't know it. One was that a new system of plumbing had been put in the prison seven years before; another that the river was only three hundred feet away. Then I knew positively that the pipe was a part of an old system; I knew, too, that it slanted generally toward the river. But did the pipe end in the water or on land?

  'This was the next question to be decided. I decided it by catching several of the rats in the cell. My jailer was surprised to see me engaged in this work. I examined at least a dozen of them. They were perfectly dry; they had come through the pipe, and, most important of all, they were not house rats, but field rats. The other end of the pipe was on land, then, outside the prison walls. So far, so good.

  'Then, I knew that if I worked freely from this point I must attract the warden's attention in another direction. You see, by telling the warden that I had come there to escape you made the test more severe, because I had to trick him by false scents.'

  The warden looked up with a sad expression in his eyes.

  'The first thing was to make him think I was trying to communicate with you, Dr Ransome. So I wrote a note on a piece of linen I tore from my shirt, addressed it to Dr Ransome, tied a five-dollar bill around it and threw it out of the window. I knew the guard would take it to the warden, but I rather hoped the warden would send it as addressed. Have you that first linen note, warden?'

  The warden produced the cipher.

  'What the deuce does it mean, anyhow?' he asked.

  'Read it backward, beginning with the 'T' signature and disregard the division into words,' instructed The Thinking Machine.

  The warden did so.

  'T – h – i – s, this,' he spelled, studied it a moment, then read it off, grinning:

  'This is not the way I intend to escape.'

  'Well, now what do you think o' that?' he demanded, still grinning.

  'I knew that would attract your attention, just as it did,' said The Thinking Machine, 'and if you really found out what it was, it would be a sort of gentle rebuke.'

  'What did you write it with?' asked Dr Ransome, after he had examined the linen and passed it to Mr Fielding.

  'This,' said the erstwhile prisoner, and he extended his foot. On it was the shoe he had worn in prison, though the polish was gone – scraped off clean. 'The shoe blacking, moistened with water, was my ink; the metal tip of the shoe lace made a fairly good pen.'

  The warden looked up and suddenly burst into a laugh, half of relief, half of amusement.

  'You're a wonder,' he said, admiringly. 'Go on.'

  'That precipitated a search of my cell by the warden, as I had intended,' continued The Thinking Machine. 'I was anxious to get the warden into the habit of searching my cell, so that finally, constantly finding nothing, he would get disgusted and quit. This at last happened, practically.'

  The warden blushed.

  'He then took my white shirt away and gave me a prison shirt. He was satisfied that those two pieces of the shirt were all that was missing. But while he was searching my cell I had another piece of that same shirt, about nine inches square, rolled into a small ball in my mouth.'

  'Nine inches off that shirt?' demanded the warden. 'Where did it come from?'

  'The bosoms of all stiff white shirts are of triple thickness,' was the explanation. 'I tore out the inside thickness, leaving the bosom only two thicknesses. I knew you wouldn't see it. So much for that.'

  There was a little pause, and the warden looked from one to another of the men with a sheepish grin.

  'Having disposed of the warden for the time being by giving him something else to think about, I took my first serious step toward freedom,' said Professor Van Dusen. 'I knew, within reason, that the pipe led somewhere to the playground outside; I knew a great many boys played there; I knew that rats came into my cell from out there. Could I communicate with someone outside with these things at hand?

  'First was necessary, I saw, a long and fairly reliable thread, so – but here,' he pulled up his trousers legs and showed that the tops of both stockings, of fine, strong lisle, were gone. 'I unraveled those – after I got them started it wasn't difficult – and I had easily a quarter of a mile of thread that I could depend on.

  'Then on half of my remaining linen I wrote, laboriously enough I assure you, a letter explaining my situation to this gentleman here,' and he indicated Hutchinson Hatch. 'I knew he would assist me for the value of the newspaper story. I tied firmly to this linen letter a tendollar bill – there is no surer way of attracting the eye of anyone – and wrote on the linen: "Finder of this deliver to Hutchinson Hatch, Daily American, who will give another ten dollars for the information."

  'The next thing was to get this note outside on that playground where a boy might find it. There were two ways, but I chose the best. I took one of the rats – I became adept in catching them – tied the linen and money firmly to one leg, fastened my lisle thread to another, and turned him loose in the drain pipe. I reasoned that the natural fright of the rodent would make him run until he was outside the pipe and then out on earth he would probably stop to gnaw off the linen and money.

  'From the moment the rat disappeared into that dusty pipe I became anxious. I was taking so many chances. The rat might gnaw the string, of which I held one end; other rats might gnaw it; the rat might run out of the pipe and leave the linen and money where they would never be found; a thousand other things might have happened. So began some nervous hours, but the fact that the rat ran on until only a few feet of the string remained in my cell made me think he was outside the pipe. I had carefully instructed Mr Hatch what to do in case the note reached him. The question was: Would it reach him?

  'This done, I
could only wait and make other plans in case this one failed. I openly attempted to bribe my jailer, and learned from him that he held the keys to only two of seven doors between me and freedom. Then I did something else to make the warden nervous. I took the steel supports out of the heels of my shoes and made a pretense of sawing the bars of my cell window. The warden raised a pretty row about that. He developed, too, the habit of shaking the bars of my cell window to see if they were solid. They were – then.'

  Again the warden grinned. He had ceased being astonished.

  'With this one plan I had done all I could and could only wait to see what happened,' the scientist went on. 'I couldn't know whether my note had been delivered or even found, or whether the rat had gnawed it up. And I didn't dare to draw back through the pipe that one slender thread which connected me with the outside.