Detection by Gaslight (28 page)

JACQUES FUTRELLE was born in Georgia, but he spent most of his working life as a newspaperman in Boston. His relatively short life ended when he was returning from Europe on the Titanic. He pushed his wife and child onto a life raft and went down with the ship.

In 1905, he created the most important detective character in American literature between the time of Poe's C. Auguste Dupin (1841) and Melville Davisson Post's Uncle Abner (1918). Professor S. F. X. Van Dusen, known as “The Thinking Machine,” first appeared in “The Problem of Cell 13,” in which he escapes from a locked and guarded jail cell. His cases are filled with bizarre and seemingly impossible events: an automobile which disappears from a road watched at both ends, a crystal ball which correctly prophesies a death, the total disappearance of a house, and so on. Some of the Thinking Machine stories were collected in
The Thinking Machine
(1907) and
The Thinking Machine on the Case
(1908), and others appeared in two Dover anthologies, collected by E. F. Bleiler:
Best “Thinking Machine” Detective Stories
and
Great Cases of the Thinking Machine
(both out of print). “The Tragedy of the Life Raft,” however, has never appeared in a Futrelle collection. It is one of four Thinking Machine stories Futrelle left behind when he traveled to Europe. That it has to do with a shipwreck and even uses the word “titanic” must be put down to coincidence.

 

 

The Tragedy of the Life Raft

 

 

TWAS A SHABBY PICTURE altogether—old Peter Ordway in his office; the man shriveled, bent, cadaverous, aquiline of feature, with skin like parchment, and cunning, avaricious eyes; the room gaunt and curtainless, with smoke-grimed windows, dusty, cheerless walls, and threadbare carpet, worn through here and there to the rough flooring beneath. Peter Ordway sat in a swivel chair in front of an ancient roll-top desk. Opposite, at a typewriter upon a table of early vintage, was his secretary—one Walpole, almost a replica in middle age of his employer, seedy and servile, with lips curled sneeringly as a dog's.

Familiarly in the financial district, Peter Ordway was “The Usurer,” a title which was at once a compliment to his merciless business sagacity and an expression of contempt for his methods. He was the money lender of the Street, holding in cash millions which no one dared to estimate. In the last big panic the richest man in America, the great John Morton in person, had spent hours in the shabby office, begging for the loan of the few millions in currency necessary to check the market. Peter Ordway didn't fail to take full advantage of his pressing need. Mr. Morton got the millions on collateral worth five times the sum borrowed, but Peter Ordway fixed the rate of interest, a staggering load.

Now we have the old man at the beginning of a day's work. After glancing through two or three letters which lay open on his desk, he picked up at last a white card, across the face of which was scribbled in pencil three words only:

Ordinarily it was a phrase to bring a smile to his withered lips, a morsel to roll under his wicked old tongue; but now he stared at it without comprehension. Finally he turned to his secretary, Walpole.

“What is this?” he demanded querulously, in his thin, rasping voice.

“I don't know, sir,” was the reply, “I found it in the morning's mail, sir, addressed to you.”

Peter Ordway tore the card across, and dropped it into the battered waste-basket beside him, after which he settled down to the ever-congenial occupation of making money.

On the following morning the card appeared again, with only three words, as before:

Abruptly the aged millionaire wheeled around to face Walpole, who sat regarding him oddly.

“It came the same way, sir,” the seedy little secretary explained hastily, “in a blank envelope. I saved the envelope, sir, if you would like to see it.”

“Tear it up!” Peter Ordway directed sharply.

Reduced to fragments, the envelope found its way into the waste-basket. For many minutes Peter Ordway sat with dull, lusterless eyes, gazing through the window into the void of a leaden sky. Slowly, as he looked, the sky became a lashing, mist-covered sea, a titanic chaos of water; and upon its troubled bosom rode a life raft to which three persons were clinging. Now the frail craft was lifted up, up to the dizzy height of a giant wave; now it shot down sickeningly into the hissing trough beyond; again, for minutes it seemed altogether lost in the far-plunging spume. Peter Ordway shuddered and closed his eyes.

On the third morning the card, grown suddenly ominous, appeared again:

Peter Ordway came to his feet with an exclamation that was almost a snarl, turning, twisting the white slip nervously in his talonlike fingers. Astonished, Walpole half arose, his yellow teeth bared defensively, and his eyes fixed upon the millionaire.

“Telephone Blake's Agency,” the old man commanded, “and tell them to send a detective here at once.”

Came in answer to the summons a suave, smooth-faced, indolent-appearing young man, Fragson by name, who sat down after having regarded with grave suspicion the rickety chair to which he was invited. He waited inquiringly.

“Find the person—man or woman—who sent me that!”

Peter Ordway flung the card and the envelope in which it had come upon a leaf of his desk. Fragson picked them up and scrutinized them leisurely. Obviously the handwriting was that of a man, an uneducated man, he would have said. The postmark on the envelope was Back Bay; the time of mailing seven p. m. on the night before. Both envelope and card were of a texture which might be purchased in a thousand shops.

“‘One million dollars!
'” Fragson read. “What does it mean?”

“I don't know,” the millionaire answered.

“What do you think it means?”

“Nor do I know that, unless—unless it's some crank, or—or blackmailer. I've received three of them—one each morning for three days.”

Fragson placed the card inside the envelope with irritating deliberation, and thrust it into his pocket, after which he lifted his eyes quite casually to those of the secretary, Walpole. Walpole, who had been staring at the two men tensely, averted his shifty gaze, and busied himself at his desk.

“Any idea who sent them?” Fragson was addressing Peter Ordway, but his eyes lingered lazily upon Walpole.

“No.” The word came emphatically, after an almost imperceptible instant of hesitation.

“Why”—and the detective turned to the millionaire curiously—“why do you think it might be blackmail? Has any one any knowledge of any act of yours that——”

Some swift change crossed the parchmentlike face of the old man. For an instant he was silent; then his avaricious eyes leaped into flame; his fingers closed convulsively on the arms of his chair.

“Blackmail may be attempted without reason,” he stormed suddenly. “Those cards must have some meaning. Find the person who sent them.”

Fragson arose thoughtfully, and drew on his gloves.

“And then?” he queried.

“That's all!” curtly. “Find him, and let me know who he is.”

“Do I understand that you don't want me to go into his motives? You merely want to locate the man?”

“That understanding is correct—yes.”

 

... a lashing, mist-covered sea; a titanic chaos of water, and upon its troubled bosom rode a life raft to which three persons were clinging....

Walpole's crafty eyes followed his millionaire employer's every movement as he entered his office on the morning of the fourth day. There was nervous restlessness in Peter Ordway's manner; the parchment face seemed more withered; the pale lips were tightly shut. For an instant he hesitated, as if vaguely fearing to begin on the morning's mail. But no fourth card had come! Walpole heard and understood the long breath of relief which followed upon realization of this fact.

Just before ten o'clock a telegram was brought in. Peter Ordway opened it:

Three hours later at his favorite table in the modest restaurant where he always went for luncheon, Peter Ordway picked up his napkin, and a white card fluttered to the floor:

Shortly after two o'clock a messenger boy entered his office, whistling, and laid an evelope on the desk before him:

Instinctively he had known what was within.

At eight o'clock that night, in the shabby apartments where he lived with his one servant, he answered an insistent ringing of the telephone bell.

“What do you want?” he demanded abruptly.

“One million dollars!” The words came slowly, distinctly.

“Who are you?”

“One million dollars!” faintly, as an echo.

Again Fragson was summoned, and was ushered into the cheerless room where the old millionaire sat cringing with fear, his face reflecting some deadly terror which seemed to be consuming him. Incoherently he related the events of the day. Fragson listened without comment, and went out.

On the following morning—Sunday—he returned to report. He found his client propped upon a sofa, haggard and worn, with eyes feverishly aglitter.

“Nothing doing,” the detective began crisply. “It looked as if we had a clew which would at least give us a description of the man, but——” He shook his head.

“But that telegram—some one filed it?” Peter Ordway questioned huskily. “The message the boy brought—”

“The telegram was inclosed in an envelope with the money necessary to send it, and shoved through the mail slot of a telegraph office in Cambridge,” the detective informed him explicitly. “That was Friday night. It was telegraphed to you on Saturday morning. The card brought by the boy was handed in at a messenger agency by some street urchin, paid for, and delivered to you. The telephone call was from an automatic station in Brookline. A thousand persons use it every day.”

For the first time in many years, Peter Ordway failed to appear at his office Monday morning. Instead, he sent a note to his secretary:

 

Bring all important mail to my apartments to-night at eight o'clock. On your way uptown buy a good revolver with cartridges to fit.

 

Twice that day a physician—Doctor Anderson—was hurriedly summoned to Peter Ordway's side. First there had been merely a fainting spell; later in the afternoon came complete collapse. Doctor Anderson diagnosed the case tersely.

“Nerves,” he said. “Overwork, and no recreation.”

“But, doctor, I have no time for recreation!” the old millionaire whined. “My business——”

“Time!” Doctor Anderson growled indignantly. “You're seventy years old, and you're worth fifty million dollars. The thing you must have if you want to spend any of that money is an ocean trip—a good, long ocean trip—around the world, if you like.”

“No, no, no!” It was almost a shriek. Peter Ordway's evil countenance, already pallid, became ashen; abject terror was upon him.... a lashing, mist-covered sea; a titanic chaos of water, and upon its troubled bosom rode a life raft to which three persons were clinging....

“No, no, no!” he mumbled, his talon fingers clutching the physician's hand convulsively. “I'm afraid, afraid!”

The slender thread which held sordid soul to withered body was severed that night by a well-aimed bullet. Promptly at eight o'clock Walpole had arrived, and gone straight to the room where Peter Ordway sat propped up on a sofa. Nearly an hour later the old millionaire's one servant, Mrs. Robinson, answered the doorbell, admitting Mr. Franklin Pingree, a well-known financier. He had barely stepped into the hallway when there came a reverberating crash as of a revolver shot from the room where Peter Ordway and his secretary were.

Together Mr. Pingree and Mrs. Robinson ran to the door. Still propped upon the couch, Peter Ordway sat—dead. A bullet had penetrated his heart. His head was thrown back, his mouth was open, and his right hand dangled at his side. Leaning over the body was his secretary, Walpole. In one hand he held a revolver, still smoking. He didn't turn as they entered, but stood staring down upon the dead man blankly. Mr. Pingree disarmed him from behind.

Hereto I append a partial transcript of a statement made by Frederick Walpole immediately following his arrest on the charge of murdering his millionaire employer. This statement he repeated in substance at the trial:

 

I am forty-eight years old. I had been in Mr. Ordway's employ for twenty-two years. My salary was eight dollars a week.... I went to his apartments on the night of the murder in answer to a note. (Note produced.) I bought the revolver and gave it to him. He loaded it and thrust it under the covering beside him on the sofa.... He dictated four letters and was starting on another. I heard the door open behind me. I thought it was Mrs. Robinson, as I had not heard the front-door bell ring.

Mr. Ordway stopped dictating, and I looked at him. He was staring toward the door. He seemed to be frightened. I looked around. A man had come in. He seemed very old. He had a flowing white beard and long white hair. His face was ruddy, like a seaman's.

“Who are you?” Mr. Ordway asked.

“You know me all right,” said the man. “We were together long enough on that craft.” (Or “raft,” prisoner was not positive.)

“I never saw you before,” said Mr. Ordway. “I don't know what you mean.”

“I have come for the reward,” said the man.

“What reward?” Mr. Ordway asked.

“One million dollars!” said the man.

Nothing else was said. Mr. Ordway drew his revolver and fired. The other man must have fired at the same instant, for Mr. Ordway fell back dead. The man disappeared. I ran to Mr. Ordway and picked up the revolver. He had dropped it. Mr. Pingree and Mrs. Robinson came in....