The six did as requested, and they had company. Not only did most of the homicide subordinates leave their chairs and come forward for a view, but Cramer himself got up and took a glance — maybe just curiosity, but I wouldn’t put it past him to suspect Wolfe of a shenanigan. However, the pencils and eraser were properly placed, as I ascertained by arising and stretching to peer over shoulders.
When they were all seated again Wolfe resumed. “Mr. Cramer had a notion about the message which I rejected and will not bother to expound. My own notion of it, conceived almost immediately, came not as a coup d’éclat, but merely a stirring of memory. It reminded me vaguely of something I had seen somewhere; and the vagueness disappeared when I reflected that Heller had been a mathematician, academically qualified and trained. The memory was old, and I checked it by going to my shelves for a book I had read some ten years ago. Its title is Mathematics for the Million, by Hogben. After verifying my recollection, I locked the book in a drawer because I thought it would be a pity for Mr. Cramer to waste time leafing through it.”
“Let’s get on,” Cramer growled.
Wolfe did so. “As told in Mr. Hogben’s book, more than two thousand years ago what he calls a matchstick number script was being used in India. Three horizontal lines stood for three, two horizontal lines stood for two, and so on. That was indeed primitive, but it had greater possibilities than the clumsy devices of the Hebrews and Greeks and Romans. Around the time of the birth of Christ some brilliant Hindu improved upon it by connecting the horizontal lines with diagonals, making the units unmistakable.” He pointed to the arrangement on his desk. “These five pencils on your left form a three exactly as the Hindus formed a three, and the three pencils on your right form a two. These Hindu symbols are one of the great landmarks in the history of number language. You will note, by the way, that our own forms of the figure three and of the figure two are taken directly from these Hindu symbols.”
A couple of them got up to look, and Wolfe politely waited until they were seated again. “So, since Heller had been a mathematician, and since those were famous patterns in the history of mathematics, I assumed that the message was a three and a two. But evidence indicated that the eraser was also a part of the message and must be included. That was simple. It is the custom of an academic mathematician, if he wants to scribble ‘four times six,’ or ‘seven times nine,’ to use for the ‘times’ not an X, as we laymen do, but a dot. It is so well-known a custom that Mr. Hogben uses it in his book without thinking it necessary to explain it, and therefore I confidently assumed that the eraser was meant for a dot, and that the message was three times two, or six.”
Wolfe compressed his lips and shook his head. “That was an impetuous imbecility. During the whole seven hours that I sat here poking at you people, I was trying to find some connection with the figure six that would either set one of you clearly apart, or relate you to the commission of some crime, or both. Preferably both, of course, but either would serve. In the interviews the figure six did turn up with persistent monotony, but with no promising application, and I could only ascribe it to the mischief of coincidence.
“So at three o’clock in the morning I was precisely where I had been when I started. Without a fortuitous nudge, I can’t say how long it would have taken me to become aware of my egregious blunder; but I got the nudge, and I can at least say that I responded promptly and effectively. The nudge came from Mr. Busch when he mentioned the name of a horse, Zero.”
He upturned a palm. “Of course. Zero! I had been a witless ass. The use of the dot as a symbol for ‘times’ is a strictly modern device. Since the rest of the message, the figures three and two, were in Hindu number script, surely the dot was too — provided that the Hindus had made any use of the dot. And what made my blunder so unforgivable was that the Hindus had indeed used a dot; they had used it, as is explained in Hogben’s book, for the most brilliant and imaginative invention in the whole history of the language of numbers. For when you have once decided how to write three and how to write two, how are you going to distinguish among thirty-two and three hundred and two and three thousand and two and thirty thousand and two? That was the crucial problem in number language, and the Greeks and Romans, for all their intellectual eminence, never succeeded in solving it. Some Hindu genius did, twenty centuries ago. He saw that the secret was position. Today we use our zero exactly as he did, to show position, but instead of a zero he used a dot. That’s what the dot was in the early Hindu number language; it was used like our zero. So Heller’s message was not three times two, or six; it was three zero two, or three hundred and two.”
Susan Maturo started, jerking her head up, and made a noise. Wolfe rested his eyes on her. “Yes, Miss Maturo. Three hundred and two people died in the explosion and fire at the Montrose Hospital a month ago. You mentioned that figure when you were talking with me, but even if you hadn’t, it is so imbedded in the consciousness of everyone who reads newspapers or listens to radio, it wouldn’t have escaped me. The moment I realized that Heller’s message was the figure three hundred and two, I would certainly have connected it with that disaster, whether you had mentioned it or not.”
“But it’s—” She was staring. “You mean it is connected?”
“I’m proceeding on that obvious assumption. I am assuming that through the information one of you six people furnished Leo Heller as factors for a formula, he formed a suspicion that one of you had commited a serious crime, and that his message, the figure three hundred and two, indicates that the crime was planting in the Montrose Hospital that bomb that caused the deaths of three hundred and two people — or at least involvement in that crime.”
It seemed as if I could see or feel muscles tightening all over the room. Most of those dicks, maybe all of them, had of course been working on the Montrose thing. Cramer pulled his feet back and his hands were fists. Purley Stebbins took his gun from his holster and rested it on his knee and leaned forward, the better to have his eyes on all six of them.
“So,” Wolfe continued, “Heller’s message identified not the person who was about to kill him, not the criminal, but the crime. That was superbly ingenious, and, considering the situation he was in, he deserves our deepest admiration. He has mine, and I retract any derogation of him. It would seem natural to concentrate on Miss Maturo, since she was certainly connected with that disaster, but first let’s clarify the matter. I’m going to ask the rest of you if you have at any time visited the Montrose Hospital, or been connected with it in any way, or had dealings with any of its personnel. Take the question just as I have stated it.” His eyes went to the end of the row, at the left. “Mrs. Tillotson? Answer, please. Have you?”
“No.” It was barely audible.
“Louder, please.”
“No!”
His eyes moved. “Mr. Ennis?”
“I have not. Never.”
“We’ll skip you, Miss Maturo. Mr. Busch?”
“I’ve never been in a hospital.”
“That answers only a third of the question. Answer all of it.”
“The answer is no, mister.”
“Miss Abbey?”
“I went there once about two years ago, to visit a patient, a friend. That was all.” The tip of her tongue came out and went in. “Except for that one visit I have never been connected with it in any way or dealt with any of its personnel.”