'A dozen of them,' replied the reporter promptly. 'I think I see the idea, but - '
'You haven't the faintest inkling of the idea,' declared The Thinking Machine positively. 'If you can arrange with a fast rider who can go a distance - it might be thirty, forty, fifty miles - we may end this little affair without difficulty.'
Under these circumstances Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., M.D., etc., etc., scientist and logician, met the famous Jimmie Thalhauer, the world's champion long distance bicyclist. He held every record from five miles up to and including six hours, had twice won the six-day race and was, altogether, a master in his field. He came in chewing a toothpick. There were introductions.
'You ride the bicycle?' inquired the crusty little scientist.
'Well, some,' confessed the champion modestly with a wink at Hatch.
'Can you keep up with an automobile for a distance of, say, thirty or forty miles?'
'I can keep up with anything that ain't got wings,' was the response.
'Well, to tell you the truth,' volunteered The Thinking Machine, 'there is a growing belief that this particular automobile has wings. However, if you can keep up with it-'
'Ah, quit your kiddin',' said the champion, easily. 'I can ride rings around anything on wheels. I'll start behind it and beat it where it's going.'
The Thinking Machine examined the champion, Jimmie Thalhauer, as a curiosity. In the seclusion of his laboratory he had never had an opportunity of meeting just such another worldly young person.
'How fast can you ride, Mr Thalhauer?' he asked at last.
'I'm ashamed to tell you,' confided the champion in a hushed voice. 'I can ride so fast that I scare myself.' He paused a moment. 'But it seems to me,' he said, 'if there's thirty or forty miles to do I ought to do it on a motorcycle.'
'Now that's just the point,' explained The Thinking Machine. 'A motorcycle makes noise and if it could have been used we would have hired a fast automobile. This proposition briefly is: I want you to ride without lights behind an automobile which may also run without lights and find out where it goes. No occupant of the car must suspect that it is followed.'
'Without lights?' repeated the champion. 'Gee! Rubber shoe, eh?'
The Thinking Machine looked his bewilderment.
'Yes, that's it,' Hatch answered for him.
'I guess it's good for a four column head? Hunh?' inquired the champion. 'Special pictures posed by the champion? Hunh?'
'Yes,' Hatch replied.
'"Tracked on a Bicycle" sounds good to me. Hunh?'
Hatch nodded.
So arrangements were concluded and then and there The Thinking Machine gave definite and conclusive instructions to the champion. While these apparently bore broadly on the problem in hand they conveyed absolutely no inkling of his plan to the reporter. At the end the champion arose to go.
'You're a most extraordinary young man, Mr Thalhauer,' commented The Thinking Machine, not without admiration for the sturdy, powerful figure.
And as Hatch accompanied the champion out the door and down the steps Jimmie smiled with easy grace.
'Nutty old guy, ain't he? Hunh?'
Night! Utter blackness, relieved only by a white, ribbon-like road which winds away mistily under a starless sky. Shadowy hedges line either side and occasionally a tree thrusts itself upward out of the sombreness. The murmur of human voices in the shadows, then the crackling-chug of an engine and an automobile moves slowly, without lights, into the road. There is the sudden clatter of an engine at high speed and the car rushes away.
From the hedge comes the faint rustle of leaves as of wind stirring, then a figure moves impalpably. A moment and it becomes a separate entity; a quick movement and the creak of a leather bicycle saddle. Silently the single figure, bent low over the handlebars, moves after the car with ever increasing momentum.
Then a long, desperate race. For mile after mile, mile after mile the auto goes on. The silent cyclist has crept up almost to the rear axle and hangs there doggedly as a racer to his pace. On and on they rush together through the darkness, the chauffeur moving with a perfect knowledge of his road, the single rider behind clinging on grimly with set teeth. The powerful, piston-like legs move up and down to the beat of the engine.
At last, with dust-dry throat and stinging, aching eyes the cyclist feels the pace slacken and instantly he drops back out of sight. It is only by sound that he follows now. The car stops; the cyclist is lost in the shadows.
For two or three hours the auto stands deserted and silent. At last the voices are heard again, the car stirs, moves away and the cyclist drops in behind. Another race which leads off in another direction. Finally, from a knoll, the lights of a city are seen. Ten minutes elapse, the auto stops, the headlights flare up and more leisurely it proceeds on its way.
On the following evening The Thinking Machine and Hutchinson Hatch called upon Fielding Stanwood, President of the Fordyce National Bank. Mr Stanwood looked at them with interrogative eyes.
'We called to inform you, Mr Stanwood,' explained The Thinking Machine, 'that a box of securities, probably United States bonds, is missing from your bank.'
'What?' exclaimed Mr Stanwood, and his face paled. 'Robbery?'
'I only know the bonds were taken out of the vault tonight by Joseph
Marsh, your assistant cashier,' said the scientist, 'and that he, together with three other men, left the bank with the box and are now at- a place I can name.'
Mr Stanwood was staring at him in amazement.
'You know where they are?' he demanded.
'I said I did,' replied the scientist, shortly.
'Then we must inform the police at once, and-'
'I don't know that there has been an actual crime,' interrupted the scientist. 'I do know that every night for a week these bonds have been taken out through the connivance of your watchman and in each instance have been returned, intact, before morning. They will be returned tonight. Therefore I would advise, if you act, not to do so until the four men return with the bonds.'
It was a singular party which met in the private office of President Stanwood at the bank just after midnight. Marsh and three companions, formally under arrest, were present as were President Stanwood, The Thinking Machine and Hatch, besides detectives. Marsh had the bonds under his arms when he was taken. He talked freely when questioned.
'I will admit,' he said without hesitating, 'that I have acted beyond my rights in removing the bonds from the vault here, but there is no ground for prosecution. I am a responsible officer of this bank and have violated no trust. Nothing is missing, nothing is stolen. Every bond that went out of the bank is here.'
'But why - why did you take the bonds?' demanded Mr Stanwood.
Marsh shrugged his shoulders.
'It's what has been called a get-rich-quick scheme,' said The Thinking Machine. 'Mr Hatch and I made some investigations today. Mr Marsh and these other three are interested in a business venture which is ethically dishonest but which is within the law. They have sought backing for the scheme amounting to about a million dollars. Those four or five men of means with whom they have discussed the matter have called each night for a week at Marsh's country place. It was necessary to make them believe that there was already a million or so in the scheme, so these bonds were borrowed and represented to be owned by themselves. They were taken to and fro between the bank and his home in a kind of an automobile. This is really what happened, based on knowledge which Mr Hatch has gathered and what I myself developed by the use of a little logic.'
And his statement of the affair proved to be correct. Marsh and the others admitted the statement to be true. It was while The Thinking Machine was homeward bound that he explained the phantom auto affair to Hatch.
'The phantom auto, as you call it,' he said, 'is the vehicle in which the bonds were moved about. The phantom idea came merely by chance. On the night the vehicle was first noticed it was rushing along- we'll say to reach Marsh's house in time for an appointment. A road map will show you that the most direct line from the bank to Marsh's was through The Trap. If an automobile should go half way through there, then out across the Stocker estate to the other road, distance would be lessened by a good five miles. This saving at first was of course valuable, so the car in which they rushed into The Trap was merely taken across the Stocker estate to the road in front.'
'But how?' demanded Hatch. 'There's no road there.'
'I learned by phone from Mr Stocker that there is a narrow walk from a very narrow foot-gate in Stocker's wall on The Trap leading through the grounds to the other road. The phantom auto wasn't really an auto at all - it was merely two motor cycles arranged with seats and a steering apparatus. The French Army has been experimenting with them. The motor cycles are, of course, separate machines and as such it was easy to trundle them through a narrow gate and across to the other road. The seats are light; they can be carried under the arm.' ls
'Oh!' exclaimed Hatch suddenly, then after a minute: 'But what did Jimmie Thalhauer do for you?'
He waited in the road at the other end of the foot-path from The Trap,' the scientist explained. 'When the auto was brought through and put together he followed it to Marsh's home and from there to the bank. The rest of it you and I worked out today. It's merely logic, Mr Hatch, logic.'