Chapter IX: Book II: The Man (3)

"You are frightened at the impatience of the public. You need not be, Miss Meredith; there are always certain hot-headed people who advocate rash methods and demand any bone to gnaw rather than not gnaw at all. The police are more circumspect; they are not going to arrest any one of your cousins without evidence strong enough to warrant such extreme measures. Do not worry about Alfred Gillespie; to-morrow it will not be his name, but----"

With a leap she was on her feet.

"Whose?" she cried, meeting my astonished gaze with such an agony of appeal in her great tear-dry eyes, that I drew back appalled.

It was not Alfred, then, she loved. Was it the handsome George, after all, or could it be--no, it could not be--that all this youth, all this beauty, nay, this embodiment of truest passion and self-forgetting devotion, had fixed itself upon the unhappy man whom I had just decided to be unworthy of any woman's regard.

Aghast at the prospect, I plunged on wildly, desperately, but with a certain restraint merciful to her, if no relief to me.

"George, too, seems innocent. Leighton only--" Yes, it was he. I saw it as the name passed my lips, saw it even before she gave utterance to the low cry with which she fell at my feet in an attitude of entreaty.

"Oh!" she murmured, "don't say it! I cannot bear it yet. No schooling has made me ready. It is unheard of--impossible! He is so good, so kind, so full of lofty thoughts and generous impulses. I would sooner suspect myself, and yet--oh, Mr. Outhwaite, pity me! Every support is gone; everything in which I trusted or held to. If he is the base, the despicable wretch they say, where shall I seek for goodness, trustworthiness, and truth?"

I had no heart to answer. So it was upon the plainest, least accomplished, and, to all appearance, least responsive as well as least responsible, of Mr. Gillespie's three sons she had fixed her affections and lavished the warm emotions of her passionate young life. Why had I not guessed it? Why had I let George's handsome figure and Alfred's lazy graces blind me to the fact that woman chooses through her imagination; and that if out of a half-dozen suitors she encounters one she does not thoroughly understand, he is sure to be the one to strike her untutored fancy. Alas! for her when, as in this case, this lack of mutual understanding is founded on the impossibility of a pure mind comprehending the hidden life of one who puts no restriction upon the worst side of his nature.

These thoughts were instantaneous, but they made a dividing line in my life. Henceforth this woman, in all her alluring beauty, was in a way sacred to me, like a child we find astray. Raising her from the appealing posture into which she had sunk, I assured her with as much gentleness as my own inner rebellion would allow:

"You have not trusted him yourself, or you would let no newspaper report drive you here for solace."

She cringed; the blow had told. But she struggled on, with a feverish desire to convince herself, if not me, of the worth of him she loved so passionately.

"I know--it was my weakness--or his misfortune. He had given me no cause--no real cause--his eccentricities--my uncle's impatience with them--my own difficulty in understanding them--little things, Mr. Outhwaite, nothing deep, nothing convincing--I cannot explain--shadows--memories so slight they vanish while I seek them--I would have given worlds not to have been shaken in my faith, not to have included him for a minute in the accusation of that phrase, 'one of my sons'; but I am over-conscientious, and because the one I trusted--lived by, had not been exonerated by his father, I did not dare to separate him from the rest, in the doubts his father's accusation had raised. It would have been unjust to them, to the two who cared most for me--the two--" Here her voice trailed off into silence, only to rise in the sudden demand: "What has occasioned this change in public opinion? What have the police discovered, what have you discovered, that he should now be singled out--he against whom nothing was found at the inquest--who has a child----"

"Yet who allows himself to lead a double life."

I said this with a purpose. I knew what its effect must be upon so pure a soul, and I was not surprised at the emotion she displayed. Yet there was something in her manner as she pressed her two hands together which suggested the presence of a different feeling from the one I had expected to rouse in launching this poisoned arrow; and, hesitating with new doubt, I went falteringly on:

"Some men show a very different face in their homes and before their friends than in haunts where your pure imagination cannot follow them. The life lived under your eye is not the one really led by the melancholy being you have watched with such sympathetic interest."

She did not seem to follow me.

"What do you mean?" Her indignation was so strong that she leaped to her feet and eyed me with a manifest sense of outrage. "You speak as if you meant something I should not hear. _He!_ Claire's father----"

It was a difficult task. Surely my lines had fallen in untoward places. But there was no doubt about my duty. If her fresh, unspoiled heart had made its home in a nest of serpents, it was well she should know her mistake before the shame of the discovery should overwhelm her.

Turning aside, so that I should not seem to spy upon her agitation, I answered her as such questions should be answered, with the truth.

"Miss Meredith," said I, "when I undertook to sift this matter, and if possible bring to light some fact capable of settling the doubt that is wearing away your life, I hoped to relieve your heart and restore your faith in the one cousin most congenial to you. That I have failed in this and find myself called upon to inflict suffering rather than to bring peace to your agitated heart is a source of regret to myself which you can never measure. But it cannot be helped. I dare not keep back the truth. Leighton Gillespie is unworthy your regard, Miss Meredith, not only because he lies under suspicion of having committed the worst sin in the calendar, but because he has deceived you as to the state of his own affections. He----"

"Wait!" Her voice was peremptory; her manner noble. "I wish to say right here, Mr. Outhwaite, that Leighton Gillespie has never deceived me in this regard. I have cared for him because--because I could not help it. But he has never led me into doing so by any show of peculiar interest in myself. George has courted me and Alfred nearly has, but not Leighton; yet to him my whole heart went out, and if it is a shame to own it I must endure that shame rather than injure his cause by leaving you under the influence of a prejudice which has no foundation in fact."

Before the generosity of this self-betrayal I bowed my head. Her beauty, warm and glowing as it was at this moment of self-abandonment, did not impress me so much as the mingled candour and pride with which she exonerated this man from the one fault of which she knew him to be innocent. It gave me a new respect for her and a shade more of forbearance for him, so that my voice softened as I replied:

"Well, well, we will not charge him with deliberate falsehood towards you, only with the madness which leads a man to sacrifice honour and reputation to the fancied charms of an irresponsible woman. He is under a spell, Miss Meredith, which I will not attempt to name. The object of it I have myself seen, and it was from her hand (possibly without her understanding the purpose for which he wanted it, as she has no appearance of being a really wicked woman) that he obtained the poison which did such deadly work in your uncle's house."

The worst was said; and the silence that followed was one never to be forgotten by her or by me. When it was broken, it was by Hope, and in words which came in such starts and with such pauses, I could only guess their meaning through my own identification with her shame and grief.

"Calumny!--it cannot be!--so good--so thoughtful in his bringing up of Claire--that day he pulled her aside lest she should stumble against the little boy with the broken arm. It is a dream! a horrible dream! He depraved? he a buyer of poison?--no, no, no, not _he_, but the evil spirit that sometimes possesses him. Leighton Gillespie in his true hours is a man to confide in, to regard with honour, to--to--to----"

I no longer made an effort at listening. She was not addressing me, but her own soul, with which for the moment she stood apart in the great loneliness which an overwhelming catastrophe creates. She did not even remember my presence, and I did not dare recall it to her. I simply let her lose herself in her own grief, while I fought my own battle, and, as I hope, won my own victory. But this could not last; she suddenly awoke to the nearness of listening ears, and, flushing deeply, ceased the broken flow of words which had so worn upon my heart, and, regaining some of her lost composure, forcibly declared:

"You are an honest man, Mr. Outhwaite, and, I am told, a reliable lawyer. You have too much feeling and judgment to malign a man already labouring under the accusation which unites this whole family in one cloud of suspicion. Tell me, then, do you positively know Leighton to have done what you say?"

"Alas!" was my short but suggestive reply.

Instantly she ceased to struggle, and with a calmness hardly to be expected from her after such a display of feeling, she surveyed me earnestly for a moment, then said:

"Tell me the whole story. I have a reason for hearing it, a reason which you would approve. Let me hear what you learned, what you saw. It is not to be found in the papers. I have only found there a general allusion to him calculated to prepare the mind for some great disclosure to-morrow--" And her hand tightened upon the sheet which I now discovered to be the one morning journal I had failed to see. "You will pay no attention to my feelings--I have none--we are sitting in court--let me hear."

Respecting her emotion, respecting the attitude in which she had placed me, I did as she requested. With all the succinctness possible, I told her how I had been led to go to Mother Merry's and what I had discovered there. Then I related what we had learned from Rosenthal. The narrative was long, and gave me ample opportunity for studying its effect upon her.

But she made no betrayal of her feelings; perhaps, as she had said, she had none at this moment. With her hand clenched on her knee, she sat listening so intently that all her other faculties seemed to have been suspended for this purpose; only, as I approached the end, I noticed that the grey shadow which had hung over her from the first had deepened to a pall beneath which the last vestige of her abounding youth had vanished.

My own heart grew heavy as the gladness left hers, and I was nearly as desolate as she when I made this final remark:

"That is all, Miss Meredith. I as truly believe that Leighton Gillespie bought the bottle of poison from the girl he called Mille-fleurs as if I had seen him laying the money down before her. But Rosenthal's admissions you must take at your own valuation. He says he saw your uncle, with backward looks and signs of secret fear and disturbance, pour out something from a glass on to the grass-plot underneath his open window. Was it the wine which had been given him by Leighton, and did he do this because of the drug he had detected in it?--a drug, alas! so fatal, it was not necessary for him to drink the full glass in order to succumb to it? That is a question you must answer in your mind from the knowledge you have of your uncle and his family."

There was a hope held out in this last phrase which I expected to see her embrace. But she did not; on the contrary, her depression remained unchanged and she said:

"I knew my uncle well. He was a just man, and, in times of great danger, a cool one. He would never have written for my eyes those four words--'one of my sons'--unless some new fact had added certainty to his former conviction. The drug was in the wine handed him by Leighton; we must accept that fact whatever it may cost us."

Her calmness amazed me. For the last few minutes she seemed upborne by some secret thought I could neither fathom nor understand.

But suddenly her old horror returned with the recurrence of some old memory. "Then it was his hand that stole towards my uncle's glass in the dark!" she cried; "that murderous, creeping hand, the vision of which has haunted me night and day since I heard of it. Oh, horrible! horrible! What a curse to fall upon a man! It is the work of the arch-fiend. Poor Leighton! poor Leighton!" she cried in her agony.

Bowing her head, she sobbed bitterly, while I surveyed her in amazement. I did not understand her. She seemed to be weeping for Leighton, not for herself; at all events she did not show the repulsion I expected from her in face of such monstrous depravity. Was the fascination he exerted over her so great that she could not weigh at their proper value characteristics so entirely evil? It did not seem possible. Yet there she sat mourning for him, instead of crushing the very thought of him out of her heart.

"I think I comprehend it all now," she finally whispered, half to herself and half to me. "I have had the thought before; it has come when that bewildering look of mad uneasiness has crossed his face and he has left us to be gone days, sometimes weeks, without notice or explanation. It is a strange idea, a secret, almost an uncanny, one; but it is the only one that can explain a crime for which one and all of my cousins seem to lack the inherent baseness. Dare I breathe it to you? It may be the saving of Leighton, if true; God knows it is my only excuse for clinging to him still."

"And you do cling to him still?" I asked, knowing what her answer would be, but hoping against hope.

The look she gave recalled all her old beauty. Would that I might have been the cause of it! or that a woman would love where she was loved and not where her heart must encounter disgrace and bitter suffering.

"I cannot help doing so," she murmured. "He will soon need my aid, if not my comfort; for I know what these horrible contradictions mean. I understand them, understand him, and even the revolting crime of which he may have been guilty. Hypocrisy does not explain it; depravity does not explain it; his good acts are too real, the nobility of his nature too unmistakable. Disease alone can account for it. He is the victim of double consciousness, and he leads two lives--your own expression--because the two hemispheres of his brain do not act in unison. Wickedness is not his normal condition. His normal condition is a noble one. By nature he is a God-fearing man, devoted to good works and high thoughts. When he goes astray it is because the balance of his faculties has been disturbed. This is no new thing to the psychologist. You yourself have heard of men so afflicted. Leighton Gillespie is one."

Was her own brain turned by her terror, anxiety, and wonder? Surely she was either mad or playing with my common sense. But the calm dignity of her manner proved that she had advanced this astonishing, this fantastic explanation of Leighton Gillespie's contradictory actions in good faith. Despair seized me at this proof of his tenacious hold upon her, and I could not quite restrain a touch of irony.

"You would make him out a sort of Jekyll and Hyde," I ventured. "Alas! I fear the courts do not take into account the theories of the romancer in their judgment of criminals."

The sarcasm passed unheeded. Growing more and more beautiful as her earnestness increased, she said with simple confidence:

"Talk to Dr. Bennett; he has known my cousin almost from his birth. Ask what these sudden changes mean in a man whose primal instincts have always been good. Ask why this devoted father, this kind son, suddenly loses himself, it may be at table, it may be while sitting with his own child by the fire, and, deaf to all remonstrance, blind to the most touching appeals of those about him, goes suddenly out and does not come back till he can be himself again in the presence of his family and under the eye of his friends. Previous to that awful morning when my uncle unsealed to my eyes the horrible secret that rested like a cloud over the household, I used to give another explanation to these varying moods, and see in them a promise of more personal hopes and an augury of my own future happiness; so easy is it for a woman to deceive herself when she worships a man without fully comprehending him. I thought--" Here her calm candour grew almost heroic in the effort she made to impress me with the reasons she cherished for her belief, "I thought he was jealous of George or angry with Alfred, and was driven away by his fears of self-betrayal or his dread of being led into making unworthy reprisals. But now I see that it was his abnormal nature which had come into play, a nature of which he may be ignorant when in full health, and for the manifestations of which he may be no more responsible than we are for the vagaries we commit in dreams."

"You have not read the latest discoveries in hypnotism," I rejoined. "A man can be driven into no act for which he lacks the natural instinct. But I do not want to be cruel, Miss Meredith. I am too sincere in my desire to save you unnecessary pain and heartache. Since you wish it, I will see Dr. Bennett, but----"

My smile seemed to unnerve her.

"But you do not think he will agree with me in my interpretation of this crime and Leighton's connection with it?"

"I do not, Miss Meredith."

"Then," she cried, with a high look and a gleam of quiet resolve that made me realise how small was my influence in face of her overpowering love for this man, "God's will be done! I shall believe in what I have said till he whom I have trusted is proved the heinous malefactor you consider him. When that hour comes, I perish, killed by the greatest shame that can overwhelm a woman. To love one who has never sought your affection may cause the cheek to burn and the heart to recoil upon itself; but to have given all one's youth and the most cherished impulses of the heart to a man who is no more than a whited sepulchre of deceit and revolting crime--that would be to sap life at its spring and tear up the heart by its roots. Oh, Mr. Outhwaite, forgetting all womanly delicacy, forgetting everything but your forbearance and the confidence with which you inspire me, I have poured out my soul before you. Prove to me that this man is good--moral in his instincts, I mean, except when the evil spirit has a grip upon him--and I will bless you as the saviour of my self-respect. But if you cannot,--" here she turned pale and tottered,--"then do not expect me to survive. I--I--could not."

The alternative was a bitter one. I did not see at that moment how she could expect, still less how I could perform, such a miracle. But I could not see her depart without some gleam of encouragement, and so I told her that if the tide turned so as to free Alfred from suspicion and land Leighton in the courts, I would embrace the opportunity thus offered to do all that lay in my power to prove her theory a true one.

And with this understanding between us she went away, leaving me to take up, with what courage I could, my own broken and disjointed life.

XXIV

AN OLD CATASTROPHE IS RECALLED

This idea as advanced by Hope was fantastical to a degree; yet it made its impression upon me and was still in my mind when I opened the evening paper for the latest news concerning the Gillespie murder. The first paragraph I encountered proved that I had not warned her an hour too soon of Leighton Gillespie's position.

"Fresh disclosures in the Gillespie Poisoning Case. Leighton
Gillespie, long regarded as the most respectable and
hitherto best-esteemed son of the murdered man, discovered
to have been for years the owner, and at times the occupant,
of a little house in one of the Oranges, where, unknown to
the world at large----"

Here followed some open allusions to Mille-fleurs.

Other statements were added to this, among them a _resume_ of the facts advanced to me the evening before by Rosenthal. At the end were these lines:

"The District Attorney has the whole matter in charge, and
the public is promised some decided action to-morrow."

I folded the paper, put it in my pocket, and went directly to Dr. Bennett's office.

I had not seen the good physician since the inquest, and naturally the sight of his face recalled the strange and moving incidents which had first brought us together. But I made no allusion to these past experiences, and his first remark was wholly professional.

"I hope it is not as a patient I see you, Mr. Outhwaite?"

With a shake of the head I took out the newspaper I had been careful to bring with me, and pointed out the paragraph concerning Leighton and Mille-fleurs.

"Is this news to you?" I asked. "I make the inquiry solely in the interests of Miss Meredith, who has hitherto had unbounded confidence in this cousin."

He glanced at the lines, frowned, and then with a pained look, replied:

"I do not believe this of Leighton. He of all Mr. Gillespie's sons is the furthest removed from the suspicion connecting them with the crime which has wrecked their good name. He is incapable of any serious wrong-doing; incapable even of what these lines suggest. I have known him from his birth."

I would gladly have left this kind-hearted physician in undisturbed possession of this confidence, but the situation was too serious to trifle with.

"He enjoys a good name," I allowed, "and has even been known to exert himself in many acts of benevolence towards the unfortunate and the suffering. But some natures, and they are frequently those from which most is to be expected, have a reverse side, which will not bear the scrutiny either of their friends or the world at large. Leighton Gillespie has one of these natures. This story of the little house is true."

The doctor, who was evidently heart and soul with this family, showed a distress at this avowal which spoke well for the hold which this especial member of it had upon his affections.

Seeing that, while not ready to question my word, he was anxious to know the sources of my information, I was about to enter upon the necessary explanations, when he forestalled me by saying:

"There have always been unexplained traits in this man. He stands alone among the other members of the family. He has neither the social qualities of George nor the luxurious tastes of Alfred. Nor is he like his father. I, who knew his mother well, have no difficulty in attributing to their correct source the religious tendencies which form so distinct a part of his character. But the melancholy which pervades his life is not an inheritance, but the result of nervous shock incident upon an extreme grief in early life, and while I do not profess to understand him or the many peculiarities to which his father rightfully raised objection, I am positive that he will never be found guilty of a depraved act. I am ready to stake my reputation on it."

"You should talk with Miss Meredith," I suggested. "She believes, or endeavours to believe, in him also. But even she finds herself forced to accept the truth of this report. The facts favouring it are too unmistakable. I can myself supply evidence enough to make his guilt in this regard quite sure."

And, without preamble, I entered upon a detailed account of the discoveries made by me at Mother Merry's. They were, as you well know, convincing in their nature, and allowed but two conclusions to be drawn. Either Leighton Gillespie was a monster of hypocrisy or he was the victim of the mental derangement so fondly suggested by Hope.

This last explanation I left to the perspicacity of the trained physician. Would he seize upon it as she did? Or would he fail to see in these results any symptoms of the strange mental malady alluded to by Hope? I watched him anxiously. Evidently no such explanation was likely to suggest itself to him unaided. Indeed, his next words proved how far any such conclusion was from his mind.

"You overwhelm me," said he. "It was hard enough to look upon George or Alfred as capable of a crime so despicable, but Leighton!--I shall have to readjust all my memories and all my fancied relations with this family if _he_ is to be looked upon with suspicion. Then there is Claire!"

"Pardon me," I ventured, in vague apology for an interruption which seemed out of place from a stranger. "Have you looked upon Leighton as a well man? You speak of a great grief----"

"The loss of his wife."

"I supposed so. Now, could this grief have disturbed the even balance of his mind so as to make these abnormal developments possible? Did he show the inconsistencies you mention prior to the event you speak of? It might be well to inquire."

"Insanity?" he intimated. "Will that be the plea?"

"Do you think it can be advanced? He has not yet been arrested or even openly accused, but I am confident he will be, and soon, and it is well for his friends to be prepared."

"That is a question I cannot answer without serious thought," rejoined the doctor, restlessly pacing the room. "Intimately as I have been associated with him I have never for a moment felt myself called upon to doubt his perfect sanity. Does Miss Meredith regard his eccentricities in this light?"

"Miss Meredith's inherent belief in the goodness of this favourite cousin leads her to give him the benefit of her doubts. She regards him as a man cursed by recurrent aberrations of mind; in other words, a victim of double consciousness."

"Hope does? What does she know about the nice distinctions governing this peculiar condition? She must have brought all her imagination to bear on the subject, to find such an excuse for his contradictory actions. This argues a great partiality for him on her part. She must be in love with Leighton."

I was silent.

The doctor's amazement was very genuine.

"Well, I never suspected her of any such preference. I have had an idea at times that she favoured Alfred rather than George, but I never thought of her being caught by Leighton's melancholy countenance and eccentric ways. Well! women are an incomprehensible lot! The only widower amongst the three! The only one not likely to be affected by her partiality. But that's neither here nor there. It's her theory we are interested in. A strange one! A very strange one!"

Suddenly he grew thoughtful. "But not an impossible one," was his final comment. "The shock he sustained might account for almost anything. Such restrained natures have great depths and are subject to great reactions! I must study the case; I can give no offhand opinion upon it. The contradictions observable in his conduct are not normal and certainly show disease. What was the question you asked me?" he suddenly inquired. "Whether he showed his present peculiarities prior to the death of his wife? I don't think he did; really, I don't think he did. He was reserved in his ways, unhappy, out of tune with his father because that father failed to appreciate the daughter-in-law he had foisted upon him, but he showed these feelings naturally and not at all as he showed them later. Have you heard the current gossip concerning his marriage?"

"Not at all, save that it was an unfortunate one and created, as you say, a certain barrier between him and his father."

"Yes, it was an unfortunate one; the whole thing was unfortunate. So much so that his friends felt a decided relief when young Mrs. Gillespie died. But her husband regarded this loss as an irreparable one; he was wrapped up in her when she was alive, and, as you now call to mind, has never been the same man since her death. Perhaps it was because he had no outlet for his grief. His father would not hear her name mentioned, and little Claire was too young to even remember her mother. Fortunately, perhaps."

The last words were said in his throat, and opened up a wide abyss of possibilities into which I had not the curiosity to penetrate. I only felt impelled to ask:

"Was her death attended with any unusual circumstance that you speak of his sorrow as a shock?"

For reply he went to his desk, and after some fumbling brought out several slips of paper, from among which he chose one which he passed over to me.

"I have kept this account of a very tragic occurrence, for reasons you will appreciate on reading it."

I took the slip and perused it. With no apology for its length, I introduce it here. As you will see, it is an engineer's account of the extraordinary accident which took place on the B., F. and D. road some half-dozen years ago. It begins abruptly, the extract having been closely clipped from the columns of the paper containing it:

Big Hill is only twelve miles long and has a grade averaging
140 feet to the mile, and the principal part of the grade is
in spots. Six loaded cars made a train up this hill, and the
train of six cars was hauled and pushed up the grade by two
engines. My engine was stationed permanently on the hill,
and its duty was to couple to the back end of one of these
trains and help it up the grade.

At the top of the hill was a side-track called Acton, but no
telegraph operator was stationed there. At the foot of the
grade was Buckley, a telegraph office in the centre of a big
side-track system used for breaking up trains before sending
them up the grade in sections. Eight miles below Buckley was
an abandoned mining town named Campton. Here was a set of
side-tracks and switches and a dozen unoccupied miners'
shanties, while the disused telegraph office was occupied by
a one-legged pensioner of the company--a flagman--and his
nineteen-year-old daughter. Twelve miles further down the
line was Mountain Springs, now one of the foremost summer
resorts in the mountains, and even twenty years ago much
frequented by Eastern health-seekers. I explain this so that
you will readily understand what happened.

We had run No. 17 up the hill and were ordered on to the
side-track at Acton to get out of the way of No. 11, the
through train from the South that was coming North as a
double-header, and with a third big engine pushing her. No.
11 was a regular, but was making this trip as an excursion
train, and was made up of eight coaches, crowded with people
from Mountain Springs.

As the freight we were shoving came to a stand-still, my
fireman leaped to the ground and uncoupled the engine from
the last car, and I backed down over the switch and then ran
ahead on the side-track. While this was being done, a
brakeman had cut the train in front of the last two cars,
and the regular engine in front had started ahead with the
other cars towards the north switch to back the four cars in
on the spur.

As I shut off steam and centred the reverse lever I saw that
the two cars were moving slowly down the hill, and I watched
them only long enough to see the rear brakeman clamber up
the side-ladder and seize the brake-wheel. Then I tried the
water in the boiler, started the injector, and again glanced
at the cars. Evidently the brake on the first car was out of
order, as the cars were moving more rapidly, and the
brakeman was hastening towards the brake on the second car.
He grasped it and swung around, and nearly fell to the
ground. The brake-chain was broken, and there was nothing to
hold the cars.

In an instant the picture of an awful horror flashed before
my eyes. No. 11, crowded with passengers, was coming, and
those cars, running at terrific speed, would crash into the
train, carrying death and destruction to scores, if not
hundreds. The scene at the moment the realisation of the
impending disaster came over me is before me now as plainly
as on that day, nearly five years ago,--the moving cars, the
brakeman stumbling towards the side-ladder to descend, the
fireman, who was more than a little deaf, walking away
without seeing or hearing what had occurred, and, in his
place, a man (I had almost said a gentleman) standing by the
switch-staff and gazing towards the cars with eyes that
reflected the horror in my own; while thirty miles below, on
the line of the twisted, winding track, a faint blur of
smoke that told me No. 11 had left Mountain Springs.

Before the moving cars crossed the switch we all knew what
must be done. The man, who for all his good clothes, must
have been some fireman off duty, had thrown the switch, and
then, seeing that my own man was too far off to meet this
emergency, had swung himself on to the foot-board back of
the tank; and old 105 was in pursuit of the runaways.

The brakeman remained to close the switch and the stranger
was bracing himself to couple the engine to the swift-moving
cars when we should approach them.

No steam is ever used going down that hill; at the top of
the incline the throttle-valve is closed and the speed of
the train is controlled by the air-brake. But, as the
stranger who had boarded the engine took his stand on the
foot-board, I opened the throttle wide to give her a start,
then put on the air until I had her under control, and then
away we went. The runaway cars were fully one hundred yards
ahead as we crossed the switch, and were moving apparently
at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour with rapidly
increasing momentum. In sixty seconds old 105 was running
fifty miles an hour, and in thirty seconds more we were
close to the cars. I heard the voice of the man in front
shouting something, and knowing that it was to slow down in
order to approach the cars without a crash, I applied the
air. A slight jolt told me that the engine and car had come
together, and after waiting an instant to give my unknown
assistant time to drop the pin in place, I pulled the
air-valve to lessen the speed. As the engine slowed under
the pressure of the brake, I saw the cars glide away from
us. He had missed the coupling. Again engine and cars came
together and again I applied the air, with the same result.

We were running now at a speed of sixty or seventy miles an
hour, and when you consider that the track on the hill is
the crookedest ever surveyed by an engineer, cut up by deep
ravines and canyons, and leading along high precipices, you
can appreciate the danger of the run. Down the hill we
thundered, swinging through deep cuts and around sharp
curves, the engine swaying and swinging on her springs as if
struggling in an effort to dash herself into one of the
gorges lining the track. The engine was surrounded by
rolling clouds of dust, through which at times I caught
glimpses of the cars pitching and tossing like some
dismantled vessel in a storm at sea. I knew the cars might
jump the track at any moment and ditch the locomotive,
sending the fireman and myself to quick death; but we must
take the chances so long as there was a possibility of
stopping the runaways.

Again and again we tried to make the coupling, but failed
each time. I did not know, until all was over, the
difficulties which the stranger was experiencing. The
drawhead in the car was the old-fashioned single-link
bumper,--a man-killer we call it now,--and was so loose in
its socket that it had to be raised six or eight inches and
held in position while the link was being put in place. This
required two hands, and as he could not maintain his
position on the swaying foot-board without using one hand to
cling to the handrail, he could not get the link in place
and drop the pin through it.

By this time we were within three miles of Buckley. As the
locomotive and fleeting cars dashed across a trestle one
hundred feet high, I caught a glimpse of the little
telegraph shanty down in the valley, surrounded by a network
of rails. I opened the whistle and kept it shrieking until
we were within two hundred yards of Buckley, but no one
appeared on the station platform; and as we flashed past the
telegraph office the white face of the operator, his eyes
wide open with alarm and horror, appeared at the window for
the fraction of an instant.

As we dashed past the telegraph office the long arm of the
signal-board pointed down, and I thanked God that the next
block was still open, and that we had another chance for
life. We had eight miles of clear track and might yet
prevent a disaster. The only hope, however, was in catching
the runaway cars, as there was no telegraph office at
Campton and No. 11 had left Mountain Springs and was booming
towards us as fast as three big engines could send her, and
without a stop ahead.

We crossed the half-mile of side-tracks at Buckley so fast
that there was an unbroken rattle of clanking rails, and
swung around the point of the mountain and down the winding
track towards Campton. Over swaying bridges, through cuts,
old 105 jolted us along at the rate of seventy or eighty
miles an hour. In two minutes after crossing the yards at
Buckley we were within sight of Campton, nestling below us
in the valley. The man on the foot-board had been silent
seemingly for hours, and whether he was still at his post or
had fallen on the rails and been ground to pieces, I did not
know. I realised now that there was no longer a possibility
of stopping the cars by coupling to them, and what my hope
was, if I had any at all, I do not know; there was only a
mad determination to follow those runaway cars to the end
and die with the rest.

As the roofs of Campton came into view the whistle began to
sound again. Three miles below lay the half-deserted mining
camp; now I could see the rough board station, the red and
white switch targets, and the dark spots on the
mountain-side that marked the abandoned test-shafts. Then I
distinguished a form on the station platform, a slender form
in dark calico and wearing a sun-bonnet. The woman's back
was towards me, but I knew her to be Nettie Bascom, the
daughter of the one-legged flagman. It was ten seconds,
perhaps, before the girl heard the whistle; then she turned
slowly, looking an instant towards us, and, with a quick
spring, was at a switch-stand and had thrown the lever, and
the white of the target turned to red and we were safe. But
not so the passenger train. The cars had passed over the
switch before it could be turned, and in another moment the
sound of its bounding wheels, our own cries, and all the
other noises of the dreadful moment, were drowned by an
explosion that lifted old 105 off the rails and laid
everyone within sight insensible on the road. Those cars
which we had chased unavailingly for thirty miles or more
were laden with dynamite, and when they crashed into that
train----

Do you ask about the man who shared my peril, and all to so
little purpose? I can tell you nothing about him. Whether my
former conclusion was correct and he had been shaken from
his narrow hold into some ditch or gully, or whether he was
hurled to destruction at the time of the explosion, I cannot
say. I only know that I never saw him again alive or dead.

Below was added a line by the editor:

This is an offhand relation of the catastrophe in which Mrs.
Leighton Gillespie lost her life. She will be remembered by
New York aristocracy as the brilliant, if eccentric,
daughter-in-law of Archibald Gillespie, the
multi-millionaire.

I returned the slip to Dr. Bennett. The excitement of that wild ride was upon me, and I seemed to have been present at the catastrophe it was intended to avert.

"Mountain Springs is in the West, I judge. How came the Gillespies there, and why was she the sole sufferer? Was he not on the train with her?"

"That is one of the peculiar features of the affair. He was not on the train, but he turned up at the wreck. Those who saw him there say that he worked like a giant, nay, like a Titan, amongst those ghastly ruins. Finally he found her. She was quite dead. After that he worked no more. It is a story of unmitigated horror, and the agonies of that awful finding might well leave an indelible impression on his brain."

"I am glad you recognise this possibility. The effect of such a scene, even where no personal interests are involved, often leaves a man's nerves in a shaken condition for years. Besides--forgive me if I press my theory beyond all reason--another possibility has been suggested to me by this engineer's tale. I will not broach it just yet, but inquire first how Leighton Gillespie was able to reach the scene of the wreck so quickly. Did he hasten down from the Springs, which seem to have been some miles away, or was he in the vicinity of the accident when it occurred?"

"That is a question I have never heard answered. But I long ago concluded that he was not far from the place where the collision occurred, for he was seen there as soon as the smoke lifted. Why, what now? You seem moved--excited. Has any new idea been suggested to you?"

I exerted myself to speak calmly, but did not succeed.

"Yes," I cried, "a strange, a thrilling idea. What if the man who shared this engineer's awful ride was Leighton Gillespie, and what if he knew through all that headlong rush, that the wife he so much loved was in the train he was risking his life to save from destruction?"

XXV

A SUMMONS

The doctor's emotion equalled mine.

"It may have been so," he admitted. "There was always some unexplained mystery in connection with his presence at the wreck and the reticence he maintained in regard to it. If what you suggest is true and he was the man who shared the engineer's ride down those precipitous slopes to the rescue of a train on which he knew his wife to be, it will be easy enough for us to start a plea of mental derangement. No one could go through such an adventure, with its overpowering excitement and unspeakable suspense, without some injury to his mental or physical health. But it is hard to conceive how Leighton Gillespie should have been wandering on the mountain-side that day instead of taking the excursion with his wife."

"I don't advance this explanation as a fact, only as a possibility," I replied. "The shock of his wife's sudden death would be enough in itself to change the man."

"Yes, and it did change him; to that I can swear."

"How long a time elapsed after this catastrophe before you saw him?"

"Just two days. He telegraphed for me, and I went West to assist him in bringing home the remains of his young wife. I remember finding him in a strained, nervous condition; this was natural enough; but his worst symptoms disappeared after the funeral."

"Do you mind telling me where this funeral took place?"

"In a small place up the Hudson River, where the Gillespies have a country home. Mr. Gillespie carried his feeling against his daughter-in-law so far as not to wish to have her buried from his New York house."

"I suppose so; another reason, perhaps, why Leighton has never recovered from this blow. And little Claire? You have not mentioned her. Was she with her parents when this disastrous event occurred?"

"She was but an infant, and from her very birth was given into the charge of her grandfather. She never knew her mother."

It would have been a satisfaction to me to have learned the cause of the determined hostility on the part of a man seemingly so just as Mr. Gillespie; but the doctor gave me no encouragement in this direction, and I merely said:

"We have made a start in case the necessity arises for proving him to be no longer responsible for his actions. But only a start. The direction taken by his mania is perilously like the excesses of a discouraged and reckless man."

"I am not so sure of that. In his sane mind, Leighton Gillespie is a great respecter of the rights of other people. I shall look into this subject, Mr. Outhwaite; I shall look into it at once. A half-hour's talk with him will satisfy me whether he is a victim of disease or the prey of unbridled passions and murderous instincts."

The good doctor rose with every appearance of starting forth then and there.

"But you have had no dinner," I suggested.

"I want none."

I accompanied the doctor out, but parted with him at the corner. I would have given much for the privilege of going with him to the Gillespie house, but as this was not to be thought of, I resolutely turned towards my apartments, which were in quite a different direction.

How was it, then, that by the time the lights began to be lit in the streets I found myself circulating restlessly in the vicinity of the very house I had determined to avoid? Had the exciting incidents of the day been too much for me? It certainly looked so. Surely I had not wandered hither through any act of my own volition or for any definite purpose I could name. Yet now that I had been so led; now that I was within sight of the house where so important an interview was going on, I surely might be pardoned for taking advantage of this proximity to note the doctor when he came out and see, if possible, from his manner and bearing the result of a visit upon which such serious issues hung.

It had threatened storm all day, and during the last few minutes the atmosphere had become permeated with a drizzle which made further tramping over wet pavements undesirable. I therefore looked about for refuge, and perceiving a building in process of construction on the opposite side of the way, I glided amid its shadows, happy both at the protection it offered and the full view it gave me of the Gillespie front door.

That this was the act of one bent on espionage I am ready to acknowledge, but it was espionage undertaken in a good cause and for justifiable reasons. At all events I was engaged in inwardly persuading myself to this effect, when an event occurred which drew my attention from myself and fixed it with renewed interest on the door I was watching.

A boy of whose proximity I had had some previous intimation suddenly darted out from the space behind me, and went flying across the street to the Gillespie house. He had a missive in his hand, and seemed anxious lest he should be caught and stopped.

This roused my curiosity, so that no detail of what followed escaped me. I noted the furtive way in which he thrust the letter into the unwilling hand of the old butler, who answered his frightened ring at the bell. Also the misgiving shake of the head with which the latter received it, and the doubtful looks they both cast at someone back in the hall. Who was this someone, and what lay behind old Hewson's agitated demeanour? The door closed on my curiosity, and I was left to ponder this new event. But not for long; scarcely had my eyes returned from following the escaping figure of the boy, when the door on the opposite side of the street unclosed again and Dr. Bennett came out.

Now, as I have taken pains to say, I had posted myself there in order to note how this gentleman looked on leaving Leighton Gillespie. But now that this opportunity had come, I not only failed to avail myself of it, but found my whole attention caught and my interest fully absorbed by a glimpse I had received of the latter gentleman standing back in the hall reading the letter I had just seen delivered in such a surreptitious manner.

His attitude, the gestures he unconsciously made, argued sudden and overwhelming emotion, an emotion so sudden and overwhelming that he could not conceal it, though he evidently would have been glad to do so, judging from the haste with which he thrust the letter in his pocket and turned--But here the door closed, as frequently happens at critical moments, and I found my eyes resting upon nothing more exciting than the figure of the doctor feeling his way with due care down the damp steps.

Had I not been witness both to the peculiar actions of the urchin who brought this letter, and to the strange manner in which Leighton received it, I might not have considered it decorous to make my presence known to the doctor at a moment and in a place so suggestive of a watch upon his movements. But as everything affecting Leighton was as interesting to this, his best friend, as it was to me, I crossed the street, and, with scant apology for the seeming intrusion, told the good doctor what had just come under my observation.

He seemed surprised, if not affected, by what I had to say. He had seen no letter and no evidences of disorder on the part of Leighton. To be sure, he had left before any letter had been received.

"Indeed, you astonish me," he declared. "Seldom have I seen my young friend in a more equable frame of mind. He talked evenly and with discretion about the most exciting subjects; and, though I could wish him to have been more open, he showed a self-control hardly to be expected from a man placed in such a disturbing situation. The detective, who appeared to have full range of the house, hardly looked our way once. The letter which you say he received just as I left him must have contained very agitating news. I wonder if we will ever know what."

"Were you able to settle in your own mind the question just now raised between us at your office?" I asked, after a momentary silence. "It may not be in order for me to ask, and you may not feel at all ready to answer me. If so, do not hesitate to rebuke my importunity, which springs entirely from my excessive interest in the matter."