Douglas Blake, millionaire, sat flat on the floor and gazed with delighted eyes at the unutterable beauties of a highly colored picture book. He was only fourteen months old, and the picture book was quite the most beautiful thing he had ever beheld. Evelyn Barton, a lovely girl of twenty-two or three years, sat on the floor opposite and listened with a slightly amused smile as Baby Blake in his infinite wisdom discoursed learnedly on the astonishing things he found in the book.

The floor whereon Baby Blake sat was that of the library of the Blake home, in the outskirts of Lynn. This home, handsomely but modestly furnished, had been built by Baby Blake’s father, Langdon Blake, who had died four months previously, leaving Baby Blake’s beautiful mother, Elizabeth Blake, heartbroken and crushed by the blow, and removing her from the social world of which she had been leader.

Here, quietly, with but three servants and Miss Barton, the nurse, who could hardly be classed as a servant — rather a companion — Mrs. Blake had lived on for the present.

The great house was gloomy, but it had been the scene of all her happiness, and she had clung to it. The building occupied relatively a central position in a plot of land facing the street for 200 feet or so, and stretching back about 300 feet. A stone wall inclosed it.

In Summer this plot was a great velvety lawn; now the first snow of the Winter had left an inch deep blanket over all, unbroken save the cement-paved walk which extended windingly from the gate in the street wall to the main entrance of the home. This path had been cleaned of snow and was now a black streak through the whiteness.

Near the front stoop this path branched off and led on around the building toward the back. This, too, had been cleared of snow, but beyond the back door entrance the white blanket covered everything back to the rear wall of the property. There against the rear wall, to the right as one stood behind the house, was a roomy barn and stable; in the extreme left hand corner of the property was a cluster of tall trees, with limbs outstretched fantastically.

The driveway from the front was covered with snow. It had been several weeks since Mrs. Blake had had occasion to use either of her vehicles or horses, so she had closed the barn and stabled the horses outside. Now the barn was wholly deserted. From one of the great trees a swing, which had been placed there for the delight of Baby Blake, swung idly.

In the Summer Baby Blake had been wont to toddle the hundred or more feet from the house to the swing; but now that pleasure was forbidden. He was confined to the house by the extreme cold.

When the snow began to fall that day about two o’clock Baby Blake had shown enthusiasm. It was the first snow he remembered. He stood at a window of the warm library and, pointing out with a chubby finger, told Miss Barton:

“Me want doe.”

Miss Barton interpreted this as a request to be taken out or permitted to go out in the snow.

“No, no,” she said, firmly. “Cold. Baby must not go. Cold. Cold.”

Baby Blake raised his voice in lusty protestation at this unkindness of his nurse, and finally Mrs. Blake had to pacify him. Since then a hundred things had been used to divert Baby Blake’s mind from the outside.

This snow had fallen for an hour, then stopped, and the clouds passed. Now, at fifteen minutes of six o’clock in the evening, the moon glittered coldly and clearly over the unbroken surface of the snow. Star points spangled the sky; the wind had gone, and extreme quiet lay over the place. Even the sound from the street, where an occasional vehicle passed, was muffled by the snow. Baby Blake heard a jingling sleigh bell somewhere in the distance and raised his head inquiringly.

“Pretty horse,” said Miss Balton, quickly indicating a splash of color in the open book.

“Pitty horsie,” said Baby Blake.

“Horse,” said Miss Barton. “Four legs. One, two, three, four,” she counted.

“Pitty horsie,” said Baby Blake again.

He turned another page with a ruthless disregard of what might happen to it.

“Pitty kitty,” he went on, wisely.

“Yes, pretty kitty,” the nurse agreed.

“Pitty doggie, ‘n’ pitty ev’fing, ooo-o-oh,” Baby Blake was gravely enthusiastic. “Ef’nit,” he added, as his eye caught a full page picture.

“Elephant, yes,” said Miss Barton. “Almost bedtime,” she added.

“No, no,” insisted Baby Blake, vigorously. “Pity ef’nit.”

Then Baby Blake arose from his seat on the floor and toddled over to where Miss Barton sat, plumping down heavily, directly in front of her. Here, with the picture book in his hands he lay back with his head resting against her knee. Mrs. Blake appeared at the door.

“Miss Barton, a moment please,” she said. Her face was white and there was a strange note in her voice.

A little anxiously, the girl arose and went into the adjoining room with Mrs. Blake, leaving Baby Blake with the picture book outspread on the floor. Mrs. Blake handed her an open letter, written on a piece of wrapping paper in a scrawly, almost indecipherable hand.

“This came in the late afternoon mail,” said the mother. “Read it.”

“‘We hav maid plans to kiddnap your baby,’” Miss Barton read slowly. “‘Nothig cann bee dun to keep us from it so it wont do no good to tel the polece. If you will git me ten thousan dolers we will not, and will go away. Advertis YES or NOA ann sin your name in a Boston Amurikan. Then we will tell you wat to do. (sined) Three. (3)’”

Miss Barton was silent a moment as she realized what she had read and there was a quick-caught breath.

“A threat to kidnap,” said the mother. “Evelyn, Evelyn, can you believe it?”

“Oh, Mrs. Blake,” and tears leaped to the girl’s eyes quickly. “Oh, the monsters.”

“I don’t know what to do,” said the mother, uncertainly.

“The police, I would suggest,” replied the girl, quickly. “I should turn it over to the police immediately.”

“Then the newspaper notoriety,” said the mother, “and after all it may mean nothing. I think perhaps it would be better for us to leave here tomorrow, and go into Boston for the Winter. I could never live here with this horrible fear hanging over me — if I should lose my baby, too, it would kill me.”

“As you say, but I would suggest the police, nevertheless,” the girl insisted gently.

“Of course the money is nothing,” she went on. “I would give every penny for the boy if I had to, but there’s the fear and uncertainty of it. I think perhaps it would be better for you to pack up Douglas’s little clothes tonight and tomorrow we will go to Boston to a hotel until we can make other arrangements for the Winter. You need not mention the matter to the others in the house.”

“I think perhaps that would be best,” said Miss Barton, “but I still think the police should be notified.”

The two women left the room together and returned to the library after about ten minutes, where Baby Blake had been looking at the picture book. The baby was not there, and Miss Barton turned and glanced quickly at Mrs. Blake. The mother apparently paid no attention, and the nurse passed into another room, thinking Douglas had gone there.

Within ten minutes the household was in an uproar — Baby Blake had disappeared. Miss Barton, the servants and the distracted mother raced through the roomy building, searching every nook and corner, calling for Douglas. No answer. At last Miss Barton and Mrs. Blake met face to face in the library over the picture book the baby had been admiring.

“I’m afraid it’s happened,” said the nurse.

“Kidnapped!” exclaimed the mother. “Oh,” and with waxen white face she sank back on a couch in a dead faint.

Regardless of the mother, Evelyn ran to the telephone and notified the police. They responded promptly, three detectives and two uniformed officers. The threatening letter was placed in their hands, and one of them laid its contents before his chief by ‘phone, a general alarm was sent out.

While the uniformed men searched the house again from attic to cellar the two other plain clothes men searched outside. Together they went over the ground, but the surface of the snow was unbroken save for their own footprints and the paved path. From the front wall, which faced the street, the detectives walked slowly back, one on each side of the house, searching in the snow for some trace of a footprint.

There was nothing to reward this vigilance, and they met behind the house. Each shook his head. Then one stopped suddenly and pointed to the snow which lay at their feet and spreading away over the immense back yard. The other detective looked intently then stopped and stared.

What he saw was the footprint of a child — a baby. The tracks led straight away through the snow toward the back wall, and without a word the two men followed them, one by one; the regular toddling steps of a baby who is only fairly certain of his feet. Ten, twenty, thirty feet they went on in a straight line and already the detectives saw a possible solution. It was that Baby Blake had wandered away of his own free will.

Then, as they were following the tracks, they stopped suddenly astounded. Each dropped on his knees in the snow and sought vainly for something sought over a space of many feet, then turned back to the tracks again.

“Well, if that —” one began.

The footprints, going steadily forward across the yard, had stopped. There was the last, made as if Baby Blake had intended to go forward, but there were no more tracks — no more traces of tracks — nothing. Baby Blake had walked to this point, and then —

“Why he must have gone straight up in the air,” gasped one of the detectives. He sank down on a small wooden box three or four feet from where the tracks ended, and wiped the perspiration from his face.
2

“All problems may be reduced to an arithmetical basis by a simple mental process,” declared Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, emphatically. “Once a problem is so reduced, no matter what it is, it may be solved. If you play chess, Mr. Hatch, you will readily grasp what I mean. Our great chess masters are really our greatest logicians and mathematicians, yet their efforts are directed in a way which can be of no use save to demonstrate, theatrically, I may say, the unlimited possibilities of the human mind.”

Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, leaned back in his chair and watched the great scientist and logician as he pottered around the long workbench beside the big window of his tiny laboratory. It was here that Professor Van Dusen had achieved some of those marvels which had attracted the attention of the world at large and had won for him a long list of honorary initials.

Hatch doubted if the Professor himself could recall these — that is beyond the more common ones of Ph. D., LL. D., M. D., and M. A. There were strange combinations of letters bestowed by French, Italian, German and English educational and scientific institutions, which were delighted to honor so eminent a scientist as Professor Van Dusen, so-called The Thinking Machine.

The slender body of the scientist, bowed from close study and minute microscopic observation, gave the impression of physical weakness — an impression which was wholly correct — and made the enormous head which topped the figure seem abnormal. Added to this was the long yellow hair of the scientist, which sometimes as he worked fell over his face and almost obscured the keen blue eyes perpetually squinting through unusually thick glasses.

“By the reduction of a problem to an arithmetical basis,” The Thinking Machine went on, “I mean the finding of the cause of an effect. For instance, a man is dead. We know only that. Reason tells us that he died naturally or was killed.

“If killed, it may have been an accident, design or suicide. There are no alternatives. The average mind grasps those possibilities instantly as facts because the average mind has to do with death and understands. We may call this primary reasoning instinct.

“In the higher reasoning which can only come from long study and experiment, imagination is necessary to supply temporarily gaps caused by absence of facts. Imagination is the backbone of the scientific mind. Marconi had to imagine wireless telegraphy before he accomplished it. It is the same with the telephone, the telegraph, the steam engine and those scores of commonplace marvels which are a part of our everyday life.

“The higher scientific mind is, perforce, the mind of a logician. It must possess imagination to a remarkable extent. For instance, science proved that all matter is composed of atoms — the molecular theory. Having proven this, scientific imagination saw that it was possible that atoms were themselves composed of more minute atoms, and sought to prove this. It did so.

“Therefore we know atoms make atoms, and that more minute atoms make those atoms, and so on down to the point of absolute indivisibility. This is logic.

“Applied in the other direction this imagination — really logic — leads to amazing possibilities. It would grade upward something like this: Man is made of atoms; man and his works as other atoms make cities; cities and nature as atoms make countries; countries and oceans as atoms make worlds.

“Then comes the supreme imaginative leap which would make worlds merely atoms, pin point parts of a vast solar system; the vast solar system itself merely an atom in some greater scheme of creation which the imagination refuses to grasp, which staggers the mind. It is all logic, logic, logic.”

The irritated voice stopped as the scientist lifted a graded measuring glass to the light and squinted for an instant at its contents, which, under the amazed eyes of Hutchinson Hatch, swiftly changed from a brilliant scarlet to a pure white.

“You have heard me say frequently, Mr. Hatch,” The Thinking Machine resumed, “that two and two make four, not sometimes, but all the time — atoms make atoms, therefore atoms make creations.” He paused. “That change of color in this chemical is merely a change of atoms; it has in no way affected the consistency or weight of the liquid. Yet the red atoms have disappeared, eliminated by the white.”

“The logic being that the white atoms are the stronger?” asked Hatch, almost timidly.

“Precisely,” said The Thinking Machine, “and also constant and victorious enemies of the red atoms. In other words that was a war between red and white atoms you just witnessed. Who shall say that a war on this earth is not as puny to the observer of this earth as an atom in the greater creation, as was that little war to us?”

Hatch blinked a little at the question. It opened up something bigger than his mind had ever struggled with before, and he was a newspaper reporter, too. Professor Van Dusen turned away and stirred up more chemicals in another glass, then poured the contents of one glass into another.

Hatch heard the telephone bell ring in the next room, and after a moment Martha, the aged woman who was the household staff of the scientist’s modest home, appeared at the door.

“Some one to speak to Mr. Hatch at the ‘phone,” she said.

Hatch went to the ‘phone. At the other end was his city editor bursting with impatience.

“A big kidnapping story,” the city editor said. “A wonder. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Happened tonight about 6 o’clock — It’s now 8:30. Jump up to Lynn quick and get it.”

Then the city editor went on to detail the known points of the mystery, as the police of Lynn had learned them; the child left alone for only two or three minutes, the letter threatening kidnapping, the demand for $10,000 and the footsteps in the snow which led to — nothing.

Thoroughly alive with the instinct of the reporter Hatch returned to the laboratory where The Thinking Machine was at work.

“Another mystery,” he said, persuasively.

“What is it?” asked The Thinking Machine, without turning.

Hatch repeated what information he had and The Thinking Machine listened without comment, down to the discovery of the tracks in the snow, and the abrupt ending of these.

“Babies don’t have wings, Mr. Hatch,” said The Thinking Machine, severely.

“I know,” said Hatch. “Would — would you like to go out with me and look it over?”

“It’s silly to say the tracks end there,” declared The Thinking Machine aggressively. “They must go somewhere. If they don’t, they are not the boy’s tracks.”

“If you’d like to go,” said Hatch, coaxingly, “we could get there by halfpast nine. It’s halfpast eight now.”

“I’ll go,” said the other suddenly.

An hour later, they were at the front gate of the Blake home in Lynn. The Thinking Machine saw the kidnappers’ letter. He looked at it closely and dismissed it apparently with a wave of his hand. He talked for a long time to the mother, to the nurse, Evelyn Barton, to the servants, then went out into the back yard where the tiny tracks were found.

Here, seeing perfectly by the brilliant light of the moon, The Thinking Machine remained for in hour. He saw the last of the tiny footprints which led nowhere, and he sat on the box where the detective had sat. Then he arose suddenly and examined the box. It was, he found, of wood, approximately two feet square, raised only four or five inches above the ground. It was built to cover and protect the main water connection with the house. The Thinking Machine satisfied himself on this point by looking inside.

From this box he sought in every direction for footprints — tracks which were not obviously those of the detectives or his own or Hatch’s. No one else had been permitted to go over the ground, the detectives objecting to this until they had completed their investigations.

No other tracks or footprints appeared; there was nothing to indicate that there had been tracks which had been skillfully covered up by whoever made them.

Again The Thinking Machine sat down on the box and studied his surroundings. Hatch watched him curiously. First he looked away toward the stone wall, nearly a hundred feet in front of him. There was positively no indentation in the snow of any kind so far as Hatch could see. Then the scientist looked back toward the house — one of the detectives had told him it was just forty-eight feet from the box — but there were no tracks there save those the detectives and Hatch and himself had made.

Then The Thinking Machine looked toward the back of the lot. Here in the bright moonlight he could see the barn and the clump of trees, several inside the enclosure made by the stone wall and others outside, extending away indefinitely, snow laden and grotesque in the moonlight. From the view in this direction The Thinking Machine turned to the other stone wall, a hundred feet or so. Here, too, he vainly sought footprints in the snow.

Finally he arose and walked in this direction with an expression of as near bewilderment on his face as Hatch had ever seen. A small dark spot in the snow had attracted his attention. It was eight or ten feet from the box. He stopped and looked at it; it was a stone of flat surface, perhaps a foot square and devoid of snow.

“Why hasn’t this any snow on it?” he asked Hatch.

Hatch started and shook his head. The Thinking Machine, bowed almost to the ground, continued to stare at the stone for a moment, then straightened up and continued walking toward the wall. A few feet further on a rope, evidently a clothes line, barred his way. Without stopping, he ducked his head beneath it and walked on toward the wall, still staring at the ground.

From the wall he retraced his steps to the clothes line, then walked along under that, still staring at the snow, to its end, sixty or seventy feet toward the back of the enclosure. Two or three supports placed at regular intervals beneath the line were closely examined.

“Find anything?” asked Hatch, finally.

The Thinking Machine shook his head impatiently.

“It’s amazing,” he exclaimed petulantly, like a disappointed child.

“It is,” Hatch agreed, cheerfully.

The Thinking Machine turned and walked back toward the house as he had come, Hatch following.

“I think we’d better go back to Boston,” he said tartly.

Hatch silently acquiesced. Neither spoke until they were in the train, and The Thinking Machine turned suddenly to the wondering reporter.

“Did it seem possible to you that those are not the footprints of Baby Blake at all, only the prints of his shoes?” he demanded suddenly.

“How did they get there?” asked Hatch, in turn.

The Thinking Machine shook his head.

On the afternoon of the next day, when the newspapers were full of the mystery, Mrs. Blake received this letter, signed “Three” as before:

“We hav the baby and will bring him bak for twenny fiv thousan dolers. Will you give it. Advertis as befour dereckted, YES or NOA.”
3

When Hutchinson Hatch went to inform The Thinking Machine of the appearance of this second letter late in the afternoon, he found the scientist sitting in his little laboratory, finger tips pressed together, squinting steadily at the ceiling. There was a little puzzled line on the high brow, a line Hatch never saw there before, and frank perplexity was in the blue eyes.

The Thinking Machine listened without changing his position as Hatch told him of the letter and its contents.

“What do you make of it all, professor?” asked the reporter.

“I don’t know,” was the reply — one which was a little startling to Hatch. “It’s most perplexing.”

“The only known facts seem to be that Baby Blake was kidnapped, and is now in the possession of the kidnappers,” said Hatch.

“Those tracks — the footprints in the snow, I mean — furnish the real problem in this case,” said the other after a moment. “Presumably they were made by the baby — yet they might not have been. They might have been put there merely to mislead anyone who began a search. If the baby made them — how and why do they stop as they do? If they were made merely with the baby’s shoes, to mislead investigation, the same question remains — how?

“Let’s see a moment. We will dismiss the seeming fact that the baby walked on off into the air and disappeared, granting that those tracks were made by the baby. We will also dismiss the possibility that the baby was with anyone when it made the tracks, if it did make them. There were certainly no other footprints but those. There were no footprints leading from or to that point where the baby tracks stopped.

“What are the possibilities? What remains? A balloon? If we accept the balloon as a possibility we must at the same time relinquish the theory of a preconceived plan of abduction. Why? Because no successful plan could have been arranged so that that baby, of its own will, would have been in that particular spot at that particular moment. Therefore a balloon might have been floated over the place a thousand times without success, and balloons are large — they attract attention, therefore are to be avoided.

“There is a possibility — a bare one — that a balloon with a trailing anchor or hook did pass over the place, and that this hook caught up the baby by its clothing, lifting it clear of the ground. But in that event it was not kidnapping — it was accident. But here against the theory of accident we have the kidnappers’ letters.

“If not a balloon, then an eagle? Hardly possible. It would take a bird of exceptional strength to have lifted a fourteenmonth child, and besides there are a thousand things against such a possibility. Certainly the winged man is not known to science, yet there is every evidence of his handiwork here. Briefly, the problem is — granting that the baby itself made the tracks — how was a baby lifted out of the relative centre of a large yard?

“Consider for a moment that the baby did not make the tracks — that they were placed there by some one else. Then we are confronted by the same question — how? A person might have fastened shoes to a long pole and rigged up some arrangement of the sort, and made the tracks for a distance say of twenty feet out into the snow, but remember the tracks run out forty-eight feet to the box you say.

“If it would have been possible for a person to stand on that box without leaving a track to it or from it, he might have finished the tracks with the shoes on a pole, but nobody went to that box.”

The Thinking Machine was silent for several minutes. Hatch had nothing to say. The Thinking Machine seemed to have covered the possibilities thoroughly.

“Of course, it might have been possible for a person in a balloon to have put the tracks there, but it would have been a senseless proceeding,” the scientist went on. “Certainly there could have been no motive for it strong enough to make a person invite discovery by sailing about the house in a balloon even at night. We face a stone wall, Mr. Hatch — a stone wall. It is possible for the mind to follow it only to a certain point as it now stands.”

He arose and disappeared into an adjoining room, returning in a few minutes with his hat and overcoat.

“Of course,” he said to Hatch, “if the baby is alive and in the possession of the kidnappers, it is possible to recover it, and we’ll do that, but the real problem remains.”

“If it is alive?” Hatch repeated.

“Yes, if,” said the other shortly. “There are in my mind grave doubts on that point.”

“But the kidnappers’ letters?” said Hatch

“Let’s go find out who wrote them,” said the other, enigmatically.

Together the two men went to Lynn, and there for half an hour The Thinking Machine talked to Mrs. Blake. He came out finally with a package in his hand.

Miss Barton, with eyes red, apparently from weeping, and evident sorrow imprinted on her pretty face, entered the room almost at the same moment.

“Miss Barton,” the scientist asked, “could you tell me how much the baby Douglas weighed — relatively, I mean?”

The girl gazed at him a moment as if startled. “About thirty pounds, I should say,” she answered.

“Thanks,” said The Thinking Machine, and turned to Hatch. “I have twenty-five thousand dollars in this package,” he said.

Miss Barton turned and glanced quickly toward him, then passed out of the room.

“What are you going to do with it?” asked Hatch.

“It’s for the kidnappers,” was the reply. “The police advised Mrs. Blake not to try to make terms — I advised her the other way and she gave me this.”

“What’s the next step?” Hatch asked.

“To put the advertisement ‘Yes’ signed by Mrs. Blake in the newspaper,” said The Thinking Machine. “That’s in accordance with the stipulations of the letters.”

An hour later the two men were in Boston. The advertisement was inserted in the Boston American as directed. The next day Mrs. Blake received a third letter.

“Rapp the munny in a ole nuspaipr ann thow it onn the trash heape at the addge of the vakant lott one blok down the street frum wear you liv,” it directed. “Putt it on topp. We wil gett it ann yore baby wil be in yore armms two ours latter. Three (3).”

This letter was immediately placed in the hands of The Thinking Machine. Mrs. Blake’s face flushed with hope, and believing that the child would be restored to her, she waited in a fever of impatience.

“Now, Mr. Hatch,” instructed The Thinking Machine. “Do with this package as directed. A man will come for it some time. I shall leave the task of finding out who he is, where he goes and all about him to you. He is probably a man of low mentality, though not so low as the misspelled words of his letter would have you believe. He should be easily trapped. Don’t interfere with him — merely report to me when you find out these things.”

Alone The Thinking Machine returned to Boston. Thirty-six hours later, in the early morning, a telegram came for him. It was as follows:

“Have man located in Lynn and trace of baby. Come quick, if possible, to — Hotel. HATCH.”
4

The Thinking Machine answered the telegraphic summons immediately, but instead of elation on his face there was another expression — possibly surprise. On the train he read and reread the telegram.

“Have trace of baby,” he mused. “Why, it’s perfectly astonishing.”

White-faced from exhaustion, and with eyes drooping from lack of sleep, Hutchinson Hatch met The Thinking Machine in the hotel lobby and they immediately went to a room, which the reporter had engaged on the third floor.

The Thinking Machine listened without comment as Hatch told the story of what he had done. He had placed the bundle, then hired a room overlooking the vacant lot and had remained there at the window for hours. At last night came, but there were clouds which effectively hid the moon. Then Hatch had gone out and secreted himself near the trash pile.

Here from six o’clock in the evening until four in the morning he had remained, numbed with cold and not daring to move. At last his long vigil was rewarded. A man suddenly appeared near the trash heap, glanced around furtively, and then picked up the newspaper package, felt of it to assure himself that it contained something, and then started away quickly.

The work of following him Hatch had not found difficult. He had gone straight to a tenement in the eastern end of Lynn and disappeared inside. Later in the morning, after the occupants of the house were about, Hatch made inquiries which established the identity of the man without question.

His name was Charles Gates and he lived with his wife on the fourth floor of the tenement. His reputation was not wholly savory, and he drank a great deal. He was a man of some education, but not of such ignorance as the letters he had written would indicate.

“After learning all these facts,” Hatch went on, “my idea was to see the man and talk to him or to his wife. I went there this morning about nine o’clock, as a book agent.” The reporter smiled a little. “His wife, Mrs. Gates, didn’t want any books, but I nearly sold her a sewing machine.

“Anyway, I got into the apartments and remained there for fifteen or twenty minutes. There was only one room which I didn’t enter, of the four there. In that room, the woman explained, her husband was asleep. He had been out late the night before, she said. Of course I knew that.

“I asked if she had any babies and received a negative. From other people in the house I learned that this was true so far as they knew. There was not and has not been a baby in the apartments so far as anyone could tell me. And in spite of that fact I found this.”

Hatch drew something from his pocket and spread it on his open hand. It was a baby stocking of fine texture. The Thinking Machine took it and looked at it closely.

“Baby Blake’s?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the reporter. “Both Mrs. Blake and the nurse, Miss Barton, identify it.”

“Dear me! Dear me!” exclaimed the scientist, thoughtfully. Again the puzzled expression came into his face.

“Of course, the baby hasn’t been returned?” went ............