Jacques Futrelle Short Stories Volume 5 (1 of 83)

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Jacques Futrelle Short Stories Volume 5


Mystery of the Scarlet Thread


I

The Thinking Machine—Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D, LL. D., F. R. S., M. D., etc., scientist and logician—listened intently and without comment to a weird, seemingly inexplicable story. Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, was telling it. The bowed figure of the savant lay at ease in a large chair. The enormous head with its bushy yellow hair was thrown back, the thin, white fingers were pressed tip to tip and the blue eyes, narrowed to mere slits, squinted aggressively upward. The scientist was in a receptive mood. “From the beginning, every fact you know,” he had requested.

“ItÂ's all out in the Back Bay,” the reporter explained. “There is a big apartment house there, a fashionable establishment, in a side street, just off Commonwealth Avenue. It is five stories in all, and is cut up into small suites, of two and three rooms with a bath. These suites are handsomely, even luxuriously furnished, and are occupied by people who can afford to pay big rents. Generally these are young unmarried men, although in several cases they are husband and wife. It is a house of every modern improvement, elevator service, hall boys, liveried door men, spacious corridors and all that. It has both the gas and electric systems of lighting. Tenants are at liberty to use either or both.

“A young broker, Weldon Henley, occupies one of the handsomest of these suites, being on the second floor, in front. He has met with considerable success in the Street. He is a bachelor and lives there alone. There is no personal servant. He dabbles in photography as a hobby, and is said to be remarkably expert.

“Recently there was a report that he was to be married this Winter to a beautiful Virginia girl who has been visiting Boston from time to time, a Miss Lipscomb—Charlotte Lipscomb, of Richmond. Henley has never denied or affirmed this rumor, although he has been asked about it often. Miss Lipscomb is impossible of access even when she visits Boston. Now she is in Virginia, I understand, but will return to Boston later in the season.”

The reporter paused, lighted a cigarette and leaned forward in his chair, gazing steadily into the inscrutable eyes of the scientist.

“When Henley took the suite he requested that all the electric lighting apparatus be removed from his apartments,” he went on. “He had taken a long lease of the place, and this was done. Therefore he uses only gas for lighting purposes, and he usually keeps one of his gas jets burning low all night.”

“Bad, bad for his health,” commented the scientist.

“Now comes the mystery of the affair,” the reporter went on. “It was five weeks or so ago Henley retired as usual—about midnight. He locked his door on the inside—he is positive of that—and awoke about four oÂ'clock in the morning nearly asphyxiated by gas. He was barely able to get up and open the window to let in the fresh air. The gas jet he had left burning was out, and the suite was full of gas.”

“Accident, possibly,” said The Thinking Machine. “A draught through the apartments; a slight diminution of gas pressure; a hundred possibilities.”

“So it was presumed,” said the reporter. “Of course it would have been impossible for——”

“Nothing is impossible,” said the other, tartly. “DonÂ't say that. It annoys me exceedingly.”

“Well, then, it seems highly improbable that the door had been opened or that anyone came into the room and did this deliberately,” the newspaper man went on, with a slight smile. “So Henley said nothing about this; attributed it to accident. The next night he lighted his gas as usual, but he left it burning a little brighter. The same thing happened again.”

“Ah,” and The Thinking Machine changed his position a little. “The second time.”

“And again he awoke just in time to save himself,” said Hatch. “Still he attributed the affair to accident, and determined to avoid a recurrence of the affair by doing away with the gas at night. Then he got a small night lamp and used this for a week or more.”

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