The Millionth Chance/Chapter 16

OR the dozenth time I reread her letter. It was dated from Washington, early in May.

And so it ended. I folded it up and placed it in my pocket. I left my rooms and wandered out in the bright May afternoon. It was over. I had tried; I had brought every bit of my own brain to the solution of the mystery, and I had failed. Weatherbee Jones, my own creation, could not solve this mystery. Nor could any of the real detectives whom I had sent to Folly Cove.

It was ended. The only girl whom I would ever love, whom I would ever wish to make my wife, was too brave and devoted a spirit to let the shadow over her cloud me. Not that I would have refused to walk beneath the shadow, with her.

I had written her. I had reasoned with her and argued with her. I had tried to make her see that nothing mattered if we loved. I had offered to go away with her, anywhere, far from the United States, with only my agent knowing my address. But she would not do it. It was not lack of love that made her refuse; it was the abundance of it. She could bear her undeserved fate herself, but she would not let me share it. It was the end.

A moving-picture theater’s flaring bills caught my eye. Hardly knowing that I did so, I bought a ticket and entered.

It was dark inside, save for the light that played upon the screen. There, in the dark ness, I could gather my wits, try to plan some method of overcoming her resistance. And yet, at the end of an hour, I had thought of no way of doing it. I had known as much when I entered the place.

Restless, I rose. As I did so, I noticed that a war picture was being shown. German soldiers were advancing along a country road. They came to a bridge. As they crossed the slight wooden structure they broke ranks, and instead of marching in order straggled across in apparent confusion. As I passed the couple next me in the row I heard one of them say:

“If they kept in step they might shake the bridge down, you know. Vibration.”

Then I wedged by them and gained the aisle. Outside I decided to drop in on Billy Odlin. Since my return from Maine with Major Penrose’s body I had resumed the old intimacy with him, and his Madison Avenue house saw me quite frequently. He greeted me warmly.

“Well, how’s the claustrophobia, Sid?” he demanded.

“Just been to a movie,” I told him wearily, “and the crowd didn’t phase me at all.”

“Then I did right in sending you to Maine, eh?” He laughed. Then he sobered. “Still fretted about that affair? The lady won’t yield her position?”

I told him—he knew all about the Folly Cove Inn mystery, and my regard for Ruth Gilman—of her last letter.

He frowned sympathetically.

“At that, Sid, though, she’s right,” he said when I’d finished. “It wouldn’t do. Not that I’d not stick by you, old man, but—well, it wouldn’t do, for either of you. She’d eat her heart thinking of the false position she’d put you in, and you’d worry about her. Sid, the best thing you can do is forget her. No, not yet a while!”

“Forget her? Never,” I said.

“That’s right; don’t—for a while, anyway.”

“That’s twice you’ve said that. What do you mean?”

“Remember what I told you last January? That a great crisis might cure you of your claustrophobia?”

“Well?”

“Hasn’t this affair been enough to take your mind off your own petty worries? Oh, of course, you’ve worried because you couldn’t have the young lady, but you’ve worried mostly—you’re a white man, you know, Sid—about her. Eh? Meanwhile, you’ve forgotten your own nervousness. You went to a movie show today, didn’t you? No nervousness? Well, that’s what I mean. If you continue this way a little longer the trouble will never come back. Don’t forget her yet.”

“I won’t,” I said shortly.

Yet he had told the truth. My love for Ruth Gilman and my thought on her behalf had rid me of my nervousness. But I wished to talk of her no more. My heart was too sore. Billy picked up an instrument from a table and placed it on the mantel-piece.

“What’s that?” I asked idly. “Doesn’t look like a surgical tool.”

“It isn’t,” laughed Billy. “Man was here tuning the piano up-stairs today. Left his tuning-fork behind him. I brought it down-stairs to have it ready for him if he calls. Why, Sid, what’s the matter? What’s wrong, old chap? You’re white as a”

“Shut up,” I cried, “Let me think!”

For a gleam of light had come to me. I heard again the words of the youth in the movie theater, explaining to his girl companion why the German infantry broke ranks when crossing a bridge. Vibration!

I almost staggered as I gained my feet.

“Billy,” I gasped, “let me use your ’phone—long distance—I’ve got it! I think I’ve got it! I want to tell her.”

It took me only twenty mintues [sic] to get Ruth Gilman, in Washington, on the telephone. I spoke to her only one minute.

“This is Sidney,” I said. “Ruth, I think there’s a chance—a bare chance—that I know how your uncle was killed. Can you catch the next afternoon train for here? You can? Bring some one along with you. Nelly still with you? Bring her. We’re going right through to Boston on the midnight train and from there to Portland. Don’t build too much, dear, but I think—I hope—you must hurry and pack for the train? Then good-by.”

I hung up and turned to Billy Odlin. He eyed me curiously.

“Sid, I’ve not pestered you while you waited for the connection. But now—you haven’t gone crazy, I’m sure—but what on earth has possessed you? Do you really think”

“Listen,” I said to him.

He listened while I talked for five minutes. As I ended, he shook his head.

“Only one chance in a million, Sid, I’m afraid.”

“But isn’t that better than no chance at all?” I cried. “And if God is good, and lets the millionth chance occur, Sid, it clears her—forever! For there was no motive for her to do it. All I’ve got to show, to convince the whole world, is that it could have happened without her doing it. Just that! And that, if God wills it, I’ll show tomorrow afternoon!

“Now, then, let me have pen and ink. I want to write a telegram to Dr. Reese.”

EESE had complied with the request in my telegram to him. In the office of the Folly Cove Inn, next afternoon, were gathered all the witnesses of the tragedy, the twelve jurymen who had brought in the verdict of accidental death four months ago, Sheriff Carney, the coroner, and of course, Ruth Gilman and myself.

Ruth leaned upon the arm of Nelly, the ex-cook at the Inn, now a sort of personal attendant of the girl I loved. I cleared my throat and the little assemblage became silent.

“I’m not going to make a speech,” I began. “I’m merely going to tell you that I think I can solve the mystery of Major Penrose’s death. You all know that I’ve had detectives down here and that they have failed. What you don’t know, but possibly have guessed, is that I’ve thought of practically nothing else save this mystery since it occurred. I have racked my brain trying to reach a solution. I have thought of every possible explanation and at last I think I have hit upon the true one.

“Major Penrose, despite Dr. Reese’s evidence, was not murdered. Only one person, unless we believe in the possibility of the murderer having been invisible, which we don’t, could have killed him, if he was murdered. That person is his niece, and we all know that she is innocent. But we must believe that it was not suicide. Dr. Reese’s evidence is proof enough of that, and that evidence we can not doubt. So then, of the three methods by which the major may have died, murder, suicide and accident, we eliminate the first two. There remains only accident.

“The testimony at the inquest was conclusive, it appeared, that there had been no jar of the building sufficient to overturn the glass which held the major’s revolver. Therefore, we all dismissed the idea of accident at once. Yes, even you jurymen, who brought in a verdict of accidental death! You did not believe that accident was the cause of death. But because you would not, could not, believe that Miss Gilman had committed murder, you called it accident. And it was.

“You see, we all failed to consider that the revolver could have been discharged in any fashion save by a jar of the building that overturned the glass, and as no such jar had occurred, we privately, no matter what our public convictions, dismissed the idea of accident, and believed that some one, somehow, other than those known to be in the hotel, had committed the murder.

“For none of us stopped to think that the revolver might have been discharged without there having been any jar sufficient to dislodge the glass from its socket. Only a jar that would have overturned the glass could have discharged the revolver, we reasoned. The bottom of the tumbler still remained in the socket; therefore the glass had not been overturned. Therefore, there was no accident. So we believed.

“But we forgot this: we forgot that it was not necessary for the glass to be overturned to discharge that cocked and loaded weapon! If the glass broke, if its sides were shattered, the revolver would naturally fall over upon the wash-stand, wouldn’t it? And the fall would discharge it just as surely as a jar that overturned the tumbler would have discharged it! Isn’t that so?

“And that tumbler was shattered! Yet, because there had been no jar of the building, we permitted ourselves to lose sight of that all-important fact—the glass was shattered! We paid no attention to it; we didn’t even investigate it. There had been no jar, the tumbler was not overturned, merely shattered. Therefore it was unimportant. We didn’t even bother to speculate on why and how that glass came to be shattered. We assumed—at least I did—that the murderer must have broken it when he snatched up the revolver. And we were so busy trying to figure out how the murderer made his escape that we didn’t bother about the glass.

“Yet that shattered tumbler was all-important. For if we could prove that an accident had shattered it—but there could have been none, you say? Only a jar of the building, and there was no jar. So, gentlemen, we all figured. All of us, including myself, until yesterday. But yesterday-

“There seems little connection between a moving picture of German infantry crossing a little wooden bridge in France and an ordinary piano repairer’s tuning-fork, and the death of Major Penrose. But there is, and I will show you the connection.

“Early yesterday afternoon I saw, in the moving pictures, German soldiers breaking ranks to cross a bridge. I heard a young man tell his girl companion that they did so lest vibration shake down the bridge. Half an hour after that I saw, in the office of a medical friend of mine, a tuning-fork. I did not recognize it for what it was at first glance, but, on being told, the words of the young man in the moving-picture theater came instantly back to me—‘Vibration!’

“And then flashed into my mind the one and only solution of the mystery of Major Penrose’s death. Why I had not thought of it before I can not tell you. Why I thought of it at that moment I can not tell you. But I suppose that somewhere in the back of my brain lurked a dissatisfaction at our too easy assumption that the murderer had broken the glass in his grab at the revolver, an assumption that was so plain that none of us voiced it. We took it for granted—at least, I did, and I think I am right in saying that the rest of you did. That is, if you thought of it at all, if you had not lost sight of it entirely in the presence of the greater problem—Who did it? How?

“But I have thought of nothing else save this mystery for four months. I have weighed it again and again; I have looked at it from every angle, and I suppose that, having rejected every other happening as having no bearing on the situation, my brain unconsciously seized upon this incident of the broken glass at a moment when vibration had been mentioned and had been suggested by the tuning-fork. But we don’t care how or why I happened to think of it. It is enough that I did.”

I paused for breath and to wipe away the perspiration that was streaming down my face.

“But if vibration broke the glass, what caused the vibration?” demanded Reese. “There was no jar.”

“Have you forgotten,” I demanded, “that Tony Larue played the violin that afternoon? That he was playing it at the moment the shot was heard?”

Reese stared.

“And you’ve banked everything on that? On a chance that may never happen again, if it did happen four months ago?”

“On what else could I bank?” I demanded. “There is no other solution.”

“But even if it were possible—if it did happen—only by its happening again can we convince the world that it happened then. And that—why, Wrenham, from your telegram I thought you had some evidence! But this—there isn’t a chance in a million that”

“So my friend Dr. Odlin assured me,” I cried. “But when there is nothing else to do but take a chance in a million, what can one do? Doesn’t a drowning man snatch at a straw? You’ve brought the major’s revolver? You’ve loaded it with blank cartridges? Then we’ll try it. And if we fail—doctor, the name and happiness of a woman depends on success.

“If Major Penrose died as I think he did, it was God’s will, for He rules all. But I can not think that it is His will that an innocent woman should suffer shame. And remember this, doctor; what has happened once can happen again. It may not happen, but it can. The chances may be a million to one against its happening twice, but—it’s possible! And the possibility is what we’re going to try and achieve. Shall we go up-stairs?”

“But I don’t get this at all,” complained the voice of Carney. “It’s Chinese to me, and to most of us here, I guess.”

“Listen,” I said. “I’m not much on science. I’ve forgotten about all the physics I ever learned at school. But I remember this much—all matter vibrates. Everything vibrates, even sound. And in the text-books at school they tell you that a sound will shatter glass. It is that knowledge that was brought back to me by the word of the youth at the picture theater, and by the sight of a tuning-fork while the recollection of his word was fresh in my memory.

“The tumbler that held the major’s revolver was shattered. There was no jar to shatter it. He could not have shattered it himself because he was sitting at his desk, writing, in the very middle of a word when he was killed. No one could Have thrown anything into the room to shatter the glass because the door was shut and wedged tightly, and his windows were closed, and there were no traces on the balcony of any one having been there save Minot and myself, who were accounted for. Unless then, the major’s niece had lied, there was no one in the room to have fired the shot and broken the glass. But we—we knew that she had not lied! We know it still, no matter how this experiment comes out. But if it comes out well the fact that the major could have died by accident is enough! It will clear her, forever! It is only because the world at large thinks that she and she alone could have caused his death that it deems her guilty. Prove that there was another way

“Everything vibrates! And this is what came back to me from my study years ago at school. Sound will shatter glass if the vibration of the sound is equal to the vibration of the glass. Huge buildings could be destroyed by sound, if one could only create the properly vibrating sound. And here is the principle.

“Let us say—I do not pretend to be exact—that the mass of a glass vibrates four hundred times a second. Let a sound be made that vibrates four hundred times a second, near to the glass. Those vibrations of the sound—waves, so to speak—will accelerate the vibration of the glass. For instance, as the edges of the glass draw together, the sound vibrations will push them closer than their own vibration would do.

“Keep that up a moment. Each vibration of the sound adds to the pressure upon the glass of its own vibration. Instead of the edges drawing closer by the one-thousandth of an inch, let us say, the sound vibration causes the edges to draw closer by two-thousandths of an inch. And that strain, repeated, not normal, will sometimes shatter the glass. But the sound vibrations must be exactly as numerous as the glass vibrations. Otherwise, the sound vibrations, instead of accelerating the glass vibrations, will impede and stop them.

“For instance, let us say that the sound vibrations measure eight hundred to the second and that the glass vibrations measure four hundred. The edges of the glass draw together. They are struck by the first wave of the sound. They draw closer together. But as they react and draw apart, they are struck by the second wave of the sound. They are struck just as they are swinging back into the normal, prepared to spread outward instead of inward.

“But that second blow from the sound vibration checks the tendency to swing outward. It stops the vibratory movement for a fraction of a second. The next sound vibration combines with the natural vibration and causes the edges of the tumbler to draw closer again, but when they swing back—the same thing over again. The faster vibrations of the sound check the retreating, so to speak, vibrations of the glass.

“So, then, it is only when the sound waves and the vibratory waves of the glass are equal in number that anything can happen. For the two work in unison. The glass vibrates inward. The sound wave, striking upon the glass at the same moment that its own natural inward vibration occurs, drives it a little farther inward than natural. So, when, the pressure of the sound vibration is released, coincident with the cessation of its own inward vibration, the edges swing back and outward, unimpeded by a following blow of the second vibration.

“As a swing is accelerated by pushes that are all of equal strength, and yet flies higher each time, so does the glass act. With each continuing vibration of sound its edges go farther in, then farther out, than is normal. The strain becomes too great—the glass is shattered.

“Do I make myself clear?”

Reese nodded, but the others stared at me blankly.

“I guess it’s all right,” said Carney, “but—suppose you come up-stairs and show us.”

“But why didn’t the other tumbler break, too?” queried Reese.

“I can only account for that,” I answered, “by the supposition that the presence of the revolver in the broken tumbler, the pressure of it as it leaned against the side, made it more susceptible to the sound vibrations. Come!”

HE door of the major’s room was closed. In a tumbler upon the wash-stand reposed the revolver which had killed him—this time loaded with blank cartridges. At the end of the hall—I was no scientist, and I did not know whether or not the breathing of a score of persons would affect my experiment—were grouped all of us save Tony Larue. And from his room came the strains of that wildly passionate Portuguese love-song which he had played upon the day of the major’s death.

Slowly the music rose. It burst into wild crescendo. I felt the fingers of Ruth Gilman dig into my arm. I felt the sweat rolling, cascading almost, down my face. Yet I moved not a muscle to wipe it away. From the corners of my eyes I saw that the strain had affected the others.

White, grim, eyes staring, we waited. And as we waited, I prayed. Prayed God that He would suffer no harm to come to Ruth Gilman. I thought not at all of myself, of the happiness that would be mine if her name were cleared. I thought, thank God, only of her. Of what it meant to her. And as the music rose I felt an emptiness in the pit of my stomach. One chance in a million! A million to one that, even if it had happened once, it could not happen again. And I had summoned the girl from Washington, had, in the enthusiasm, of my own belief in my solution of the mystery, encouraged her. Fool!

The text-books had said it was possible—yes. But what is possible may be highly improbable. Was there a chance? And again I prayed, prayed the just God who will not suffer the innocent to come to harm to make my experiment come out well. Prayed? I vowed that Tony Larue should be taken to New York and examined by Billy Odlin as part payment of my debt of gratitude. If only his poor warped brain, with its love of music, could strike the right note—and hold it.

But he was not playing as he had played last Winter. He was playing better. Some wild discord must have shattered the glass, if my theory were right, and now there was no discord. He was playing the same tune, but playing it fairly well. If only he had not practised it in the meantime! If only—I love good music, but now I prayed for the hideous screeching that his violin had emitted last January. For, although I had slept while he played in his room the day of the murder, I judged that it was not smooth playing like this.

Again the music rose. It reached a high note; it held it; it retreated, advanced again—the violin screeched! It screeched again. This was more like what I remembered of Tony’s playing. I must have been exhausted to have slept through anything like this the day of the murder. For he attacked the same bar again, and again his bow brought forth a shrieking wail that

Sharp, staccato, above the wail of the violin, sounded a report. And I was first to reach the major’s old room. God had been good; He had let the improbable possible occur again; He had heard our prayers. There on the floor lay the revolver. It had been pitched there by its own discharge. And it had been discharged because the glass that held it had given way. The millionth chance had won.

For, partly on the wash-stand, partly on the floor, partly in the socket, lay the tumbler that had been shattered by the vibrating sounds from the violin of Tony Larue!

Y wife tiptoed into my study.

“Do I disturb you?” she asked.

“You couldn’t,” I told her.

She rewarded me as I hope I deserved. When I released her she pointed to the blank sheet in my typewriter.

“Haven’t you written anything in these two hours?”

“Can’t seem to get an idea,” I answered. “The plot won’t come. I don’t believe, anyway, that I can write a Weatherbee Jones novel. I’ve only put him in short stories, you know. He doesn’t seem to fit a long yarn. But the magazine that’s been running him wants a novel—a detective story—and of course that means Weatherbee Jones. And I can’t do it.”

“Wouldn’t another detective do as well?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” I said glumly. “But I don’t seem able to think of any plot for a detective story that would run as long as that.”

“Does this item suggest a plot?”

From behind her back she produced a newspaper. She indicated a column article. It told of the flight from his creditors of Kearney Blake. And Kearney Blake had been the man who had financed the Greenhams in their efforts to obtain the submarine plans from my wife and her uncle.

“Somehow,” I said, “he doesn’t inspire me as a hero.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that. He’s the villain, and you—why, you’re the hero.”

“Eh?” I stared at her.

“Well, I’m sure Weatherbee Jones never did anything as clever as what you did when you reasoned out how uncle was killed.”

“You think so,” I said. “But how about the editors who want Weatherbee Jones? How about the public that wants him? And, here—because we could never bring the murder of that Englishman who disappeared home to Kearney Blake, no one is punished. That won’t do.”

“No? A few years ago Kearney Blake was an honored man. Now he is a fugitive from justice, in eternal dread of arrest. Isn’t that punishment? Sid, try it. All about us, and Folly Cove.”

I stared at the blank sheet in the typewriter. From there I stared at the autographed, framed letter that a man high in Britain’s military councils had sent to me, a letter of thanks. It brought back again, from the very beginnings, my acquaintance with my wife.

“It doesn’t sound so badly,” I said slowly.

I wonder, Reader, if it does.