VII
THE MAN WHO SHOT AT NOTHING
Max Schimmel had intended to ask Baraka if it was true that there was a flaw in the Surakarta; but he had forgotten this in the interest he had taken in the examination of the room. He recollected, as the elevator was dropping them to the first floor, but he at once forgot it a second time in his rapt contemplation of the dining rooms of the Hotel Tonty which were visible in all directions from the lobby.
These dining rooms reminded Max of the boastful tribal feasts he had seen among the most savage peoples. At this hour nearly every table was filled. Max observed that the most gorgeously dressed luncheon parties had chosen, or had been placed, at the most prominent tables, as he had seen in the Polynesian islands the best places appropriated by those who wore the greatest number of beads and pieces of punched tin. It appeared to him, too, that, exactly as he had sometimes seen a savage gain fame and at the same time ruin himself in setting out a single meal, so these persons gained social distinction directly in the ratio of the amount they spent upon food. Immersed in the contemplation of these social facts—which he regarded with the same dispassionate interest he formerly had shown in observing the customs of the head-hunters of Borneo—Max seemed wholly oblivious that just now by his statement to Baraka he probably had done great injury to his friend Hereford.
"I shall lunch here. Do you two care to join me?" Hereford invited.
He led the way to one of the smaller tables, as yet unoccupied because it stood in a secluded corner, and as soon as they were seated McAdams turned to Max.
"It would have been better, Schimmel," the detective exclaimed belligerently, "if we had not taken you to that room—if you are a friend of Mr. Hereford's."
Max started to speak, glanced suddenly at Hereford and halted.
"We're waiting for your explanation," McAdams announced.
"But at bresent—no; I cannot gif you any exblanation," Max replied guardedly.
"Because none is possible," said McAdams, decidedly.
From the direction of his gaze he seemed to be meditating upon the unexplained circumstance of Hereford's wound and upon the complicated mechanism of the box whose intricate manipulation he had just declared offered proof that Hereford could not have done it. Hereford, who had been studying the bill of fare while he gave their orders, now laid it down and looked at McAdams, slightly smiling. Suddenly the detective brought his hand heavily down upon the table.
"No explanation is possible," he repeated, "because this case as it has been stated to us contains perfectly irreconcilable elements which no explanation possibly could cover. To reach any explanation at all, therefore, it is necessary to eliminate some of those elements."
"Which would you eliminate?" Max demanded.
"The shots," McAdams returned somewhat pompously, seeing that he had Hereford's attention. "It is perfectly plain that if there had been anybody in the room at the time Baraka fired his shots that person could not have got out afterward. Nevertheless, there had been at some time somebody in the room, for the emerald was stolen."
"There iss also the blood," Max offered.
"Not more blood," said McAdams, "than might have been shed by someone who had accidentally hurt himself in the dark against one of the sharp corners of the box."
"What do you think of that, Max?" Hereford inquired smiling.
"It abbears to me," Max Schimmel replied, staring at McAdams in amazement, "that Mr. McAdams, hafing no ideas at all of his own upon the subject, iss breparing now to discard efen those few ideas which others haf been able to gif him."
McAdams scrutinized Max intently for several moments, then turned to Hereford.
"So," the detective went on more pompously still, "we will agree to eliminate these shots, as they could not possibly have been fired in the way Baraka has told it. We will say that Baraka was asleep when the emerald was stolen and that he continued to sleep while the thief made his escape. But Baraka was undoubtedly greatly disturbed and continually uneasy over the safety of the emerald. It is allowable to imagine, therefore, that later he awoke and not knowing it was already gone, and imagining that someone was even then making an attempt upon it, he discharged his revolver in the dark. Of course, when he found that the emerald really had been taken, it would be impossible to convince him afterward that he had not actually heard the thief. We have now, merely by interpolating a certain amount of time between the theft and the firing of the shots, made an explanation of the affair seem more possible, and we ought to begin our examination by inquiring who could possibly have known how to open the box."
"But," Max urged in astonishment, "it seems to me that to awake in the night and fire a revolver at nothings—that iss a strange thing for anybody to do!"
"No," McAdams defended. "For a precisely similar affair had occurred only the night before, and recollection of that, perhaps, is what put me on the right track in this matter. A foreigner—a Jap—rooming in a North Side boarding house, fired four shots from a revolver in the night. The police were summoned and found he had fired at nothing at all—only excited because he was in a strange country and imagined that some one was trying to get into his room."
McAdams now plainly appeared to have roused Max Schimmel's admiration. The little German threw himself back in his chair and raised his hands.
"Ach!" he exclaimed. "What a wonderful thing iss the mindt of a great detective! He remembers efen the least thing—efen so small a thing as this foreigner that fires at nothings! And why? Because sometime be that fact will prove to him useful. But no! I mistake! A great detective would haf remembered also the address of this foreigner. But Mr. McAdams says only 'a North Side boarding house'; so I would bet efen a dollar he does not know that address."
"You lose," said McAdams with a smile of gratified vanity; and gave the address.
Max pressed a silver dollar hard down upon the table cloth in front of McAdams with his thumb.
"You think, Max—" Hereford inquired curiously.
"The Javanese hass told the truth," Max Schimmel asserted with a contemptuous look at McAdams—"the emerald hass been stolen—Mr. McAdams, with his exblanations, iss a great dunderhead—and I haf bought something with my dollar that iss worth hafing!"
To their surprise he got up almost immediately and left them.