Curtis and Reid, after their first statements, remained in seclusion at the Teutonic. They were not arrested because this did not seem necessary. Both had offered to do anything in their power to solve the riddle, had even employed Pinkerton men who were now on the case; but they would say nothing nor see anyone except the police. The police encouraged them in this attitude, and hinted darkly and mysteriously at clews which "would lead to an arrest within twenty-four hours."
Hatch read these intimations and smiled grimly. Then he went out to try what a little patience and perseverance and human intelligence would do. He learned something of Reid's little romance in Boston. Yet not all of it. It was a fact, however, that Reid had called at the home of Miss Elizabeth Dow on Beacon Hill just after noon and inquired for her.
"She is not in," the maid had replied.
"I'll leave my card for her," said Reid.
"I don't think she'll be back," the girl answered.
"Not be back?" Reid repeated. "Why?"
"Haven't you seen the afternoon papers?" asked the girl. "They will explain. Mrs. Dow, her mother, told me not to talk to anyone."
Reid left the house with a wrinkle in his brow and walked on toward the Common. There he halted a newsboy and bought an afternoon paper--many afternoon papers. The first pages were loaded with details of the murder of Miss Melrose, theories, conjectures, a thousand little things, with long dispatches of her history and her stage career from San Francisco.
Reid passed these over impatiently with a slight shiver and looked inside the paper. There he found the thing to which the maid had referred.
"By George!" he exclaimed.
It was a story of the elopement of Elizabeth Dow with Morgan Mason, Reid's rival. It seemed that Miss Dow and Mason met by appointment at the Monarch Inn and went from there in an automobile. The bride had written to her parents before she started, saying she preferred Mason despite his poverty. The family refused to talk of the matter. But there in facsimile was the marriage license.
Reid's face was a study as he walked back to the hotel. In a private room off the café he found Curtis, who had been drinking heavily, yet who, with the strange mood of some men, was not visibly intoxicated. Reid threw the paper down, open at the elopement announcement.
"See that," he said shortly.
Curtis read it--or glanced at it--but did not make a remark until he came to the name, the Monarch Inn. Then he looked up.
"That's where the other thing happened, isn't it?" he asked, rather thickly.
"Yes."
Curtis rambled off into something else; studiously he avoided any reference to the tragedy, yet that was the one thing which was in his mind. It was in a futile effort to forget it that he was drinking now. He talked on as a drunken man will for a time, then turned suddenly to Reid.
"I loved her," he declared suddenly, passionately. "My God!"
"Try not to think of it," Reid advised.
"You'll never say anything about that other thing--the knife--will you?" pleaded Curtis.
"Of course not," said Reid, impatiently. "They couldn't drag it out of me. But you're drinking too much--you want to quit it. First thing you know you'll be saying more than--get up and go out and take a walk."
Curtis stared at Reid vacantly for a moment, as if not understanding, then arose. He had regained possession of himself to a certain extent. but his face was pale.
"I think I will go out," he said.
After a time he passed through the café door into a side street and, refreshed a little by the cool air, started to walk along Tremont Street toward the shopping district. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and the streets were thronged.
Half a dozen reporters were idling in the lobby of the hotel, waiting vainly for either Reid or Curtis. The newspapers were shouting for another story from the only two men who could know a great deal of the circumstances attending the tragedy. Reid, on his return, had marched boldly through the crowd of reporters, paying no attention to their questions. They had not seen Curtis.
As Curtis, now free of the reporters, crossed a side street off Tremont on his way toward the shopping district he met Hutchinson Hatch, who was bound for the hotel to see his man there. Hatch instantly recognized him and fell in behind, curious to see where he would go. At a favorable opportunity, safe beyond reach of the other men, he intended to ask a few questions.
Curtis turned into Winter Street and strolled along through the crowd of women. Half way down Winter Street Hatch followed, and then for a moment he lost sight of him. He had gone into a store, he imagined. As he stood at a door waiting, Curtis came out, rushed through the crowd of women, slinging his arms like a madman, with frenzy in his face. He ran twenty steps, then stumbled and fell.
Hatch immediately ran to his assistance, lifted him up and gazed into the staring, terror-stricken eyes and an ashen face.
"What is it?" asked Hatch, quickly.
"I--I'm very ill. I--I think I need a doctor," gasped Curtis. "Take me somewhere, please."
He fell back limply, half fainting, into Hatch's arms. A cab came worming through the crowd; Hatch climbed into it, assisting Curtis, and gave some directions to the cabby.
"And hurry," he added. "This gentleman is ill."
The cabby applied the whip and drove out into Tremont, then over toward Park Street. Curtis aroused a little.
"Where're we going?" he demanded.
"To a doctor," replied Hatch.
Curtis sank back with eyes closed and his face white--so white that Hatch felt of the pulse to assure himself that the heart was still beating. After a few minutes the cab stopped and, still assisting Curtis, Hatch went to the door. An aged woman answered the bell.
"Professor Van Dusen here?" asked the reporter. "Yes."
"Please tell him that Mr. Hatch is here with a gentleman who needs immediate attention," Hatch directed, hurriedly.
He knew his way here and, still supporting Curtis, walked in. The woman disappeared. Curtis sank down on a couch in the little reception room, looked at Hatch glassily for a moment, then without a sound dropped back on the couch unconscious.
After a moment the door opened and there came in Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, The Thinking Machine. He squinted inquiringly at Hatch, and Hatch waved his head toward Curtis.
"Dear me, dear me," exclaimed The Thinking Machine.
He leaned over the prostrate figure a moment, then disappeared into another room, returning with a hypodermic. After a few anxious minutes Curtis sat up straight. He stared at the two men with unseeing eyes, and in them was unutterable terror.
"_I saw her! I saw her!_" he screamed. "_There was a dagger in her heart. Marguerite!_"
Again he fell back unconscious. The Thinking Machine squinted at Hatch.
"The man's got delirium tremens," he snapped impatiently.
III.
For fifteen minutes Hatch silently looked on as The Thinking Machine worked over the unconscious man. Once or twice Curtis moved uneasily and moaned slightly. Hatch had started to explain the situation to The Thinking Machine, but the irascible scientist glared at him and the reporter became silent. After ten or fifteen minutes The Thinking Machine turned to Hatch more genially.
"He'll be all right in a little while now," he said. "What is it?"
"Well, it's a murder," Hatch began. "Marguerite Melrose, an actress, was stabbed through the heart last night, and----"
"Murder?" interrupted The Thinking Machine. "Might it not have been suicide?"
"Might have been; yes," said the reporter, after a moment's pause. "But it appears to be murder."
"When you say it is murder," said The Thinking Machine, "you immediately give the impression that you were there and saw it. Go on."
From the beginning, then, Hatch told the story as he knew it; of the stopping of The Green Dragon at the Monarch Inn, of the events there, of the whereabouts of Curtis and Reid at the time the girl received the knife thrust and of the confirmation of Reid's story. Then he detailed those incidents of the arrival of the men with the girl at Dr. Leonard's house, of what had transpired there, of the effort Curtis had made to get possession of the knife.
With finger tips pressed together and squinting steadily upward, The Thinking Machine listened. At its end, which bore on the actions of Curtis just preceding his appearance in the room with them, The Thinking Machine arose and walked over to the couch where Curtis lay. He ran his slender fingers idly through the unconscious man's thick hair several times.
"Doesn't it strike you as perfectly possible, Mr. Hatch," he asked finally, "that Miss Melrose _did_ kill herself?"
"It may be perfectly possible, but it doesn't appear so," said Hatch. "There was no motive."
"And certainly you've shown no motive for anything else," said the other, crustily. "Still," he mused, "I really can't say anything until I talk to him."
He again turned to his patient, and as he looked saw the red blood surge back into the face.
"Ah, now we're all right," he announced.
Thus it happened, for after another ten minutes the patient sat up suddenly on the couch and looked at the two men before him, bewildered.