Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 3, No. 4, September 1942

The Unreckonable Factor by Samuel Hopkins Adams

In the judgment of your Editors, this tale by the creator of Average Jones and author of “It Happened One Night” is one of the very best short short crime stories to appear during the entire year 1938.

The plan lay before Bassil, outlined in his fine, precise writing. It was part of his scientific training to diagram as an aid to the elimination of possible error. This is what would confront the authorities:

Positive Data — Professor Adrian Gohl, the chemist, found dead in his private laboratory at 9 A.M. Sunday. Cause of death, chloroform. Time of attack, 6.49, as established by victim’s watch, broken in his fall. Small cabinet containing papers showed evidence of tampering. One of two cars kept in garage beneath laboratory, gone.

Negative Data — No papers nor equipment missing. No fingerprints other than those of the dead man. No tire marks except those of missing coupe.

Place and Circumstances — Owner’s laboratory at the Gohl house, five miles from the Gohl Chemical Works at Nutley, New Jersey. On Saturdays, Gohl worked all night there, interruptions being strictly prohibited until he was called for breakfast. The body was found by the servant who went to call him.

Probable Sequel — The missing car might later be found, empty, at the bottom of the Hudson River, off an abandoned junk yard near Yonkers.

The erosion of the water would have removed all marks identifying the driver.

Bassil sealed his plan in an envelope and locked it in his safe. It would be an intellectual satisfaction afterward to check it off, step by step, against the developments. Grant that there was one chance in a million against him. He could meet it. It was his sincere conviction that he was one man in a million. His supereminent talents he had forged into a weapon for fighting his way to merited but inexplicably delayed rewards.

And now to be put to the door by old Gohl after years of faithful, valuable, and meagerly compensated service! What if a copy of some of his chief’s precious formulas had been found among his papers? They couldn’t prove anything against him. Not legally.

In those “borrowed” records the assistant had struck pay ore. Dovetailed with certain subsidiary formulas to which he had been assigned and upon which he had done invaluable work, this information for which he had risked so much gave him almost all that he needed. Almost; not quite all. The missing link could be nowhere but in the old man’s private laboratory. For the completed formula and working process any rubber company in the world would pay a fortune. Bassil meant to have that fortune.

Five o’clock. Time to make the first strategic move.

In the office of Dr. Dorman, beneath his apartment, he described a sudden attack of vertigo, shortness of breath. Making note of his gaunt and sallow face, his bony, twitching fingers, the physician diagnosed nervous indigestion, wrote a prescription.

“Thank you, doctor. I feared it was my heart.” (Perfect!)

He was able to get a front seat on the bus. At the New Jersey end of the great river bridge workmen were stringing colored bulbs.

“Tonight?” Bassil heard the driver ask.

“Surest thing you know,” replied the ticket taker.

Bassil got off at Newark. He took a late train for Passaic. It was almost two o’clock when he reached the Gohl place on foot. The laboratory was lighted up. The sliding door to the garage was open on the side where stood the coupe. This was luck! He could push the car noiselessly out, coast down the slope to the road, and turn on the engine only when out of earshot.

He mounted the stairs and knocked.

“It’s Bassil, professor.”

The old man opened. “What brings you here?”

“I have no job. Isn’t there a chance for me?”

Professor Gohl said sternly: “This is not the time. I bid you good night.”

He turned away. Bassil struck.

Putting on his gloves, he soaked the cloth and bound it over the limp figure’s mouth and nostrils. After anxious search he located the formula and copied it in a concentrated fury of toil. When it was finished he took out the dead man’s watch, set it forward to 6.49, and crushed in the crystal.

One final inspection, and he closed the door upon his carefully fabricated mystery. Now the car slid out under his impulsion. He turned into the highway.

When he had crossed the bridge, he would turn north on the New York side to the deserted junk yard, which he had thoroughly explored, and let the empty coup£ glide into the river. Then home. At seven o’clock call up the physician.

“My heart again... It’s very bad. Please come at once.”

Seven o’clock; eleven minutes after and twenty-six miles from the murder as the police would reconstitute it. A perfect alibi.

The glare of the bridge confronted him. There were colored lights giving a weird effect to a group of people at the entrance: bridge policemen, a state trooper, several civilians. Braking down, he held out the exact toll. His hand was seized and shaken. There were shouts and handclapping. A flashlight exploded, almost blinding him. Another. A third. Men crowded about him.

“Name and address, please.” A smiling official, having taken down the car number, made the request. What did it all mean? What could it mean? Was that his voice, that dry clack, asking?

Friendly replies came from all sides, confusing his tortured mind. The millionth? The millionth? What had a million to do with him? The official explained. His was the millionth toll ticket issued on the bridge. Tomorrow there would be a presentation, a memorial gold watch.

Yes; and tomorrow there would be the newspaper flashlights of him, the murderer, in the murdered man’s car. The millionth car. The one chance in a million!

In Bassil’s safe the investigating police came upon his schedule. It had been faithfully followed.

Professor Gohl’s coupé was found embedded in Hudson River mud, as the outline had specified. There was but one deviation from the original plan:

Bassil was in it.