Initials Only

The paper dropped from the reader’s hand. It was several minutes before he took up another.

This one, as it happened, antedated the other, as will appear on reading it:

The creaking of a chair;—the man within had seated himself. There was no other sound; a soul in turmoil wakens no echoes. Sweetwater envied the walls surrounding the unsympathetic reader. They could see. He could only listen.

A little while; then that slight rustling again of the unfolding sheet. The following was read, and then the fourth and last:

XX. CONFUSION

In his interest in what was going on on the other side of the wall, Sweetwater had forgotten himself. Daylight had declined, but in the darkness of the closet this change had passed unheeded. Night itself might come, but that should not force him to leave his post so long as his neighbour remained behind his locked door, brooding over the words of love and devotion which had come to him, as it were from the other world.

But was he brooding? That sound of iron clattering upon iron! That smothered exclamation and the laugh which ended it! Anger and determination rang in that laugh. It had a hideous sound which prepared Sweetwater for the smell which now reached his nostrils. The letters were burning; this time the lid had been lifted from the stove with unrelenting purpose. Poor Edith Challoner’s touching words had met, a different fate from any which she, in her ignorance of this man’s nature,—a nature to which she had ascribed untold perfections—could possibly have conceived.

As Sweetwater thought of this, he stirred nervously in the darkness, and broke into silent invective against the man who could so insult the memory of one who had perished under the blight of his own coldness and misunderstanding. Then he suddenly started back surprised and apprehensive. Brotherson had unlocked his door, and was coming rapidly his way. Sweetwater heard his step in the hall and had hardly time to bound from his closet, when he saw his own door burst in and found himself face to face with his redoubtable neighbour, in a state of such rage as few men could meet without quailing, even were they of his own stature, physical vigour and prowess; and Sweetwater was a small man.

However, disappointment such as he had just experienced brings with it a desperation which often outdoes courage, and the detective, smiling with an air of gay surprise, shouted out:

“Well, what’s the matter now? Has the machine busted, or tumbled into the fire or sailed away to lands unknown out of your open window?”

“You were coming out of that closet,” was the fierce rejoinder. “What have you got there? Something which concerns me, or why should your face go pale at my presence and your forehead drip with sweat? Don’t think that you’ve deceived me for a moment as to your business here. I recognised you immediately. You’ve played the stranger well, but you’ve a nose and an eye nobody could forget. I have known all along that I had a police spy for a neighbour; but it didn’t faze me. I’ve nothing to conceal, and wouldn’t mind a regiment of you fellows if you’d only play a straight game. But when it comes to foisting upon me a parcel of letters to which I have no right, and then setting a fellow like you to count my groans or whatever else they expected to hear, I have a right to defend myself, and defend myself I will, by God! But first, let me be sure that my accusations will stand. Come into this closet with me. It abuts on the wall of my room and has its own secret, I know. What is it? I have you at an advantage now, and you shall tell.”

He did have Sweetwater at an advantage, and the detective knew it and disdained a struggle which would have only called up a crowd, friendly to the other but inimical to himself. Allowing Brotherson to drag him into the closet, he stood quiescent, while the determined man who held him with one hand, felt about with the other over the shelves and along the partitions till he came to the hole which had offered such a happy means of communication between the two rooms. Then, with a laugh almost as bitter in tone as that which rang from Brotherson’s lips, he acknowledged that business had its necessities and that apologies from him were in order; adding, as they both stepped out into the rapidly darkening room:

“We’ve played a bout, we two; and you’ve come out ahead. Allow me to congratulate you, Mr. Brotherson. You’ve cleared yourself so far as I am concerned. I leave this ranch to-night.”

The frown had come back to the forehead of the indignant man who confronted him.

“So you listened,” he cried; “listened when you weren’t sneaking under my eye! A fine occupation for a man who can dove-tail a corner like an adept. I wish I had let you join the brotherhood you were good enough to mention. They would know how to appreciate your double gifts and how to reward your excellence in the one, if not in the other. What did the police expect to learn about me that they should consider it necessary to call into exercise such extraordinary talents?”

“I’m not good at conundrums. I was given a task to perform, and I performed it,” was Sweetwater’s sturdy reply. Then slowly, with his eye fixed directly upon his antagonist, “I guess they thought you a man. And so did I until I heard you burn those letters. Fortunately we have copies.”

“Letters!” Fury thickened the speaker’s voice, and lent a savage gleam to his eye. “Forgeries! Make believes! Miss Challoner never wrote the drivel you dare to designate as letters. It was concocted at Police Headquarters. They made me tell my story and then they found some one who could wield the poetic pen. I’m obliged to them for the confidence they show in my credulity. I credit Miss Challoner with such words as have been given me to read here to-day? I knew the lady, and I know myself. Nothing that passed between us, not an event in which we were both concerned, has been forgotten by me, and no feature of our intercourse fits the language you have ascribed to her. On the contrary, there is a lamentable contradiction between facts as they were and the fancies you have made her indulge in. And this, as you must acknowledge, not only proves their falsity, but exonerates Miss Challoner from all possible charge of sentimentality.”

“Yet she certainly wrote those letters. We had them from Mr. Challoner. The woman who brought them was really her maid. We have not deceived you in this.”

“I do not believe you.”

It was not offensively said; but the conviction it expressed was absolute. Sweetwater recognised the tone, as one of truth, and inwardly laid down his arms. He could never like the man; there was too much iron in his fibre; but he had to acknowledge that as a foe he was invulnerable and therefore admirable to one who had the good sense to appreciate him.

“I do not want to believe you.” Thus did Brotherson supplement his former sentence. “For if I were to attribute those letters to her, I should have to acknowledge that they were written to another man than myself. And this would be anything but agreeable to me. Now I am going to my room and to my work. You may spend the rest of the evening or the whole night, if you will, listening at that hole. As heretofore, the labour will be all yours, and the indifference mine.”

With a satirical play of feature which could hardly be called a smile, he nodded and left the room.

XXI. A CHANGE

“It’s all up. I’m beaten on my own ground.” Thus confessed Sweetwater, in great dejection, to himself. “But I’m going to take advantage of the permission he’s just given me and continue the listening act. Just because he told me to and just because he thinks I won’t. I’m sure it’s no worse than to spend hours of restless tossing in bed, trying to sleep.”

But our young detective did neither.

As he was putting his supper dishes away, a messenger boy knocked at his door and handed him a note. It was from Mr. Gryce and ran thus:

“Steal off, if you can, and as soon as you can, and meet me in Twenty-ninth Street. A discovery has been made which alters the whole situation.”

XXII. O. B. AGAIN

“What’s happened? Something very important. I ought to hope so after this confounded failure.”

“Failure? Didn’t he read the letters?”

“Yes, he read them. Had to, but—”

“Didn’t weaken? Eh?”

“No, he didn’t weaken. You can’t get water out of a millstone. You may squeeze and squeeze; but it’s your fingers which suffer, not it. He thinks we manufactured those letters ourselves on purpose to draw him.”

“Humph! I knew we had a reputation for finesse, but I didn’t know that it ran that high.”

“He denies everything. Said she would never have written such letters to him; even goes so far to declare that if she did write them—(he must be strangely ignorant of her handwriting) they were meant for some other man than himself. All rot, but—” A hitch of the shoulder conveyed Sweetwater’s disgust. His uniform good nature was strangely disturbed.

But Mr. Gryce’s was not. The faint smile with which he smoothed with an easy, circling movement, the already polished top of his ever present cane conveyed a secret complacency which called up a flash of discomfiture to his greatly irritated companion.

“He says that, does he? You found him on the whole tolerably straightforward, eh? A hard nut; but hard nuts are usually sound ones. Come, now! prejudice aside, what’s your honest opinion of the man you’ve had under your eye and ear for three solid weeks? Hasn’t there been the best of reasons for your failure? Speak up, my boy. Squarely, now.”

“I can’t. I hate the fellow. I hate any one who makes me look ridiculous. He—well, well, if you’ll have it, sir, I will say this much. If it weren’t for that blasted coincidence of the two deaths equally mysterious, equally under his eye, I’d stake my life on his honesty. But that coincidence stumps me and—and a sort of feeling I have here.”

It is to be hoped that the slap he gave his breast, at this point, carried off some of his superfluous emotion. “You can’t account for a feeling, Mr. Gryce. The man has no heart. He’s as hard as rocks.”

“A not uncommon lack where the head plays so big a part. We can’t hang him on any such argument as that. You’ve found no evidence against him?”

“N—no.” The hesitating admission was only a proof of Sweetwater’s obstinacy.

“Then listen to this. The test with the letters failed, because what he said about them was true. They were not meant for him. Miss Challoner had another lover.”

“Only another? I thought there were a half-dozen, at least.”

“Another whom she favoured. The letters found in her possession—not the ones she wrote herself, but those which were written to her over the signature O. B. were not all from the same hand. Experts have been busy with them for a week, and their reports are unanimous. The O. B. who wrote the threatening lines acknowledged to by Orlando Brotherson, was not the O. B. who penned all of those love letters. The similarity in the writing misled us at first, but once the doubt was raised by Mr. Challoner’s discovery of an allusion in one of them which pointed to another writer than Mr. Brotherson, and experts had no difficulty in reaching the decision I have mentioned.”

“Two O. B.s! Isn’t that incredible, Mr. Gryce?”

“Yes, it is incredible; but the incredible is not the impossible. The man you’ve been shadowing denies that these expressive effusions of Miss Challoner were meant for him. Let us see, then, if we can find the man they were meant for.”

“The second O. B.?”

“Yes.”

Sweetwater’s face instantly lit up.

“Do you mean that I—after my egregious failure—am not to be kept on the dunce’s seat? That you will give me this new job?”

“Yes. We don’t know of a better man. It isn’t your fault, you said it yourself, that water couldn’t be squeezed out of a millstone.”

“The Superintendent—how does he feel about it?”

“He was the first one to mention you.”

“And the Inspector?”

“Is glad to see us on a new tack.”

A pause, during which the eager light in the young detective’s eye clouded over. Presently he remarked:

“How will the finding of another O. B. alter Mr. Brotherson’s position? He still will be the one person on the spot, known to have cherished a grievance against the victim of this mysterious killing. To my mind, this discovery of a more favoured rival, brings in an element of motive which may rob our self-reliant friend of some of his complacency. We may further, rather than destroy, our case against Brotherson by locating a second O.B.”

Mr. Gryce’s eyes twinkled.

“That won’t make your task any more irksome,” he smiled. “The loop we thus throw out is as likely to catch Brotherson as his rival. It all depends upon the sort of man we find in this second O. B.; and whether, in some way unknown to us, he gave her cause for the sudden and overwhelming rush of despair which alone supports this general theory of suicide.”

“The prospect grows pleasing. Where am I to look for my man?”

“Your ticket is bought to Derby, Pennsylvania. If he is not employed in the great factories there, we do not know where to find him. We have no other clew.”

“I see. It’s a short journey I have before me.”

“It’ll bring the colour to your cheeks.”

“Oh, I’m not kicking.”

“You will start to-morrow.”

“Wish it were to-day.”

“And you will first inquire, not for O. B., that’s too indefinite; but for a young girl by the name of Doris Scott. She holds the clew; or rather she is the clew to this second O. B.”

“Another woman!”

“No, a child;—well, I won’t say child exactly; she must be sixteen.”

“Doris Scott.”

“She lives in Derby. Derby is a small place. You will have no trouble in finding this child. It was to her Miss Challoner’s last letter was addressed. The one—”

“I begin to see.”

“No, you don’t, Sweetwater. The affair is as blind as your hat; nobody sees. We’re just feeling along a thread. O. B.‘s letters—the real O. B., I mean, are the manliest effusions possible. He’s no more of a milksop than this Brotherson; and unlike your indomitable friend he seems to have some heart. I only wish he’d given us some facts; they would have been serviceable. But the letters reveal nothing except that he knew Doris. He writes in one of them: ‘Doris is learning to embroider. It’s like a fairy weaving a cobweb!’ Doris isn’t a very common name. She must be the same little girl to whom Miss Challoner wrote from time to time.”

“Was this letter signed O. B.?”

“Yes; they all are. The only difference between his letters and Brotherson’s is this: Brotherson’s retain the date and address; the second O. B.‘s do not.”

“How not? Torn off, do you mean?”

“Yes, or rather, neatly cut away; and as none of the envelopes were kept, the only means by which we can locate the writer is through this girl Doris.”

“If I remember rightly Miss Challoner’s letter to this child was free from all mystery.”

“Quite so. It is as open as the day. That is why it has been mentioned as showing the freedom of Miss Challoner’s mind five minutes before that fatal thrust.”

Sweetwater took up the sheet Mr. Gryce pushed towards him and re-read these lines:

“That to a child of sixteen!”

“Just so.”

“D-o-r-i-s spells something besides Doris.”

“Yet there is a Doris. Remember that O. B. says in one of his letters, ‘Doris is learning to embroider.’”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“So you must first find Doris.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And as Miss Challoner’s letter was directed to Derby, Pennsylvania, you will go to Derby.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything more?”

“I’ve been reading this letter again.”

“It’s worth it.”

“The last sentence expresses a hope.”

“That has been noted.”

Sweetwater’s eyes slowly rose till they rested on Mr. Gryce’s face: “I’ll cling to the thread you’ve given me. I’ll work myself through the labyrinth before us till I reach HIM.”

Mr. Gryce smiled; but there was more age, wisdom and sympathy for youthful enthusiasm in that smile than there was confidence or hope.

BOOK III. THE HEART OF MAN

XXIII. DORIS

“A young girl named Doris Scott?”

The station-master looked somewhat sharply at the man he was addressing, and decided to give the direction asked.

“There is but one young girl in town of that name,” he declared, “and she lives in that little house you see just beyond the works. But let me tell you, stranger,” he went on with some precipitation—

But here he was called off, and Sweetwater lost the conclusion of his warning, if warning it was meant to be. This did not trouble the detective. He stood a moment, taking in the prospect; decided that the Works and the Works alone made the town, and started for the house which had been pointed out to him. His way lay through the chief business street, and greatly preoccupied by his errand, he gave but a passing glance to the rows on rows of workmen’s dwellings stretching away to the left in seemingly endless perspective. Yet in that glance he certainly took in the fact that the sidewalks were blocked with people and wondered if it were a holiday. If so, it must be an enforced one, for the faces showed little joy. Possibly a strike was on. The anxiety he everywhere saw pictured on young faces and old, argued some trouble; but if the trouble was that, why were all heads turned indifferently from the Works, and why were the Works themselves in full blast?

These questions he may have asked himself and he may not. His attention was entirely centred on the house he saw before him and on the possible developments awaiting him there. Nothing else mattered. Briskly he stepped out along the sandy road, and after a turn or two which led him quite away from the Works and its surrounding buildings, he came out upon the highway and this house.

It was a low and unpretentious one, and had but one distinguishing feature. The porch which hung well over the doorstep was unique in shape and gave an air of picturesqueness to an otherwise simple exterior; a picturesqueness which was much enhanced in its effect by the background of illimitable forest, which united the foreground of this pleasing picture with the great chain of hills which held the Works and town in its ample basin.

As he approached the doorstep, his mind involuntarily formed an anticipatory image of the child whose first stitches in embroidery were like a fairy’s weaving to the strong man who worked in ore and possibly figured out bridges. That she would prove to be of the anemic type, common among working girls gifted with an imagination they have but scant opportunity to exercise, he had little doubt.

He was therefore greatly taken aback, when at his first step upon the porch, the door before him flew open and he beheld in the dark recess beyond a young woman of such bright and blooming beauty that he hardly noticed her expression of extreme anxiety, till she lifted her hand and laid an admonitory finger softly on her lip:

“Hush!” she whispered, with an earnestness which roused him from his absorption and restored him to the full meaning of this encounter. “There is sickness in the house and we are very anxious. Is your errand an important one? If not—” The faltering break in the fresh, young voice, the look she cast behind her into the darkened interior, were eloquent with the hope that he would recognise her impatience and pass on.

And so he might have done,—so he would have done under all ordinary circumstances. But if this was Doris—and he did not doubt the fact after the first moment of startled surprise—how dare he forego this opportunity of settling the question which had brought him here.

With a slight stammer but otherwise giving no evidence of the effect made upon him by the passionate intensity with which she had urged this plea, he assured her that his errand was important, but one so quickly told that it would delay her but a moment. “But first,” said he, with very natural caution, “let me make sure that it is to Miss Doris Scott I am speaking. My errand is to her and her only.”

Without showing any surprise, perhaps too engrossed in her own thoughts to feel any, she answered with simple directness, “Yes, I am Doris Scott.” Whereupon he became his most persuasive self, and pulling out a folded paper from his pocket, opened it and held it before her, with these words:

“Then will you be so good as to glance at this letter and tell me if the person whose initials you will find at the bottom happens to be in town at the present moment?”

In some astonishment now, she glanced down at the sheet thus boldly thrust before her, and recognising the O and the B of a well-known signature, she flashed a look back at Sweetwater in which he read a confusion of emotions for which he was hardly prepared.

“Ah,” thought he, “it’s coming. In another moment I shall hear what will repay me for the trials and disappointments of all these months.”

But the moment passed and he had heard nothing. Instead, she dropped her hands from the door-jamb and gave such unmistakable evidences of intended flight, that but one alternative remained to him; he became abrupt.

Thrusting the paper still nearer, he said, with an emphasis which could not fail of making an impression, “Read it. Read the whole letter. You will find your name there. This communication was addressed to Miss Challoner, but—”

Oh, now she found words! With a low cry, she put out her hand in quick entreaty, begging him to desist and not speak that name on any pretext or for any purpose. “He may rouse and hear,” she explained, with another quick look behind her. “The doctor says that this is the critical day. He may become conscious any minute. If he should and were to hear that name, it might kill him.”

“He!” Sweetwater perked up his ears. “Who do you mean by he?”

“Mr. Brotherson, my patient, he whose letter—” But here her impatience rose above every other consideration. Without attempting to finish her sentence, or yielding in the least to her curiosity or interest in this man’s errand, she cried out with smothered intensity, “Go! go! I cannot stay another moment from his bedside.”

But a thunderbolt could not have moved Sweetwater after the hearing of that name. “Mr. Brotherson!” he echoed. “Brotherson! Not Orlando?”

“No, no; his name is Oswald. He’s the manager of these Works. He’s sick with typhoid. We are caring for him. If you belonged here you would know that much. There! that’s his voice you hear. Go, if you have any mercy.” And she began to push to the door.

But Sweetwater was impervious to all hint. With eager eyes straining into the shadowy depths just visible over her shoulder, he listened eagerly for the disjointed words now plainly to be heard in some near-by but unseen chamber.

“The second O. B.!” he inwardly declared. “And he’s a Brotherson also, and—sick! Miss Scott,” he whisperingly entreated as her hand fell in manifest despair from the door, “don’t send me away yet. I’ve a question of the greatest importance to put you, and one minute more cannot make any difference to him. Listen! those cries are the cries of delirium; he cannot miss you; he’s not even conscious.”

“He’s calling out in his sleep. He’s calling her, just as he has called for the last two weeks. But he will wake conscious—or he will not wake at all.”

The anguish trembling in that latter phrase would have attracted Sweetwater’s earnest, if not pitiful, attention at any other time, but now he had ears only for the cry which at that moment came ringing shrilly from within—

“Edith! Edith!”

The living shouting for the dead! A heart still warm sending forth its longing to the pierced and pulseless one, hidden in a far-off tomb! To Sweetwater, who had seen Miss Challoner buried, this summons of distracted love came with weird force.

Then the present regained its sway. He heard her name again, and this time it sounded less like a call and more like the welcoming cry of meeting spirits. Was death to end this separation? Had he found the true O. B., only to behold another and final seal fall upon this closely folded mystery? In his fear of this possibility, he caught at Doris’ hand as she was about to bound away, and eagerly asked:

“When was Mr. Brotherson taken ill? Tell me, I entreat you; the exact day and, if you can, the exact hour. More depends upon this than you can readily realise.”

She wrenched her hand from his, panting with impatience and a vague alarm. But she answered him distinctly:

“On the Twenty-fifth of last month, just an hour after he was made manager. He fell in a faint at the Works.”

The day—the very day of Miss Challoner’s death!

“Had he heard—did you tell him then or afterwards what happened in New York on that very date?”

“No, no, we have not told him. It would have killed him—and may yet.”

“Edith! Edith!” came again through the hush, a hush so deep that Sweetwater received the impression that the house was empty save for patient and nurse.

This discovery had its effects upon him. Why should he subject this young and loving girl to further pain? He had already learned more than he had expected to. The rest would come with time. But at the first intimation he gave of leaving, she lost her abstracted air and turned with absolute eagerness towards him.

“One moment,” said she. “You are a stranger and I do not know your name or your purpose here. But I cannot let you go without begging you not to mention to any one in this town that Mr. Brotherson has any interest in the lady whose name we must not speak. Do not repeat that delirious cry you have heard or betray in any way our intense and fearful interest in this young lady’s strange death. You have shown me a letter. Do not speak of that letter, I entreat you. Help us to retain our secret a little longer. Only the doctor and myself know what awaits Mr. Brotherson if he lives. I had to tell the doctor, but a doctor reveals nothing. Promise that you will not either, at least till this crisis is passed. It will help my father and it will help me; and we need all the help we can get.”

Sweetwater allowed himself one minute of thought, then he earnestly replied:

“I will keep your secret for to-day, and longer, if possible.”

“Thank you,” she cried; “thank you. I thought I saw kindness in your face.” And she again prepared to close the door.

But Sweetwater had one more question to ask. “Pardon me,” said he, as he stepped down on the walk, “you say that this is a critical day with your patient. Is that why every one whom I have seen so far wears such a look of anxiety?”

“Yes, yes,” she cried, giving him one other glimpse of her lovely, agitated face. “There’s but one feeling in town to-day, but one hope, and, as I believe, but one prayer. That the man whom every one loves and every one trusts may live to run these Works.”

“Edith! Edith!” rose in ceaseless reiteration from within.

But it rang but faintly now in the ears of our detective. The door had fallen to, and Sweetwater’s share in the anxieties of that household was over.

Slowly he moved away. He was in a confused yet elated condition of mind. Here was food for a thousand new thoughts and conjectures. An Orlando Brotherson and an Oswald Brotherson—relatives possibly, strangers possibly; but whether relatives or strangers, both given to signing their letters with their initials simply; and both the acknowledged admirers of the deceased Miss Challoner. But she had loved only one, and that one, Oswald. It not difficult to recognise the object of this high hearted woman’s affections in this man whose struggle with the master-destroyer had awakened the solicitude of a whole town.

XXIV. SUSPENSE

Ten minutes after Sweetwater’s arrival in the village streets, he was at home with the people he found there. His conversation with Doris in the doorway of her home had been observed by the curious and far-sighted, and the questions asked and answered had made him friends at once. Of course, he could tell them nothing, but that did not matter, he had seen and talked with Doris and their idolised young manager was no worse and might possibly soon be better.

Of his own affairs—of his business with Doris and the manager, they asked nothing. All ordinary interests were lost in the stress of their great suspense.

It was the same in the bar-room of the one hotel. Without resorting to more than a question or two, he readily learned all that was generally known of Oswald Brotherson. Every one was talking about him, and each had some story to tell illustrative of his kindness, his courage and his quick mind. The Works had never produced a man of such varied capabilities and all round sympathies. To have him for manager meant the greatest good which could befall this little community.

His rise had been rapid. He had come from the east three years before, new to the work. Now, he was the one man there. Of his relationships east, family or otherwise, nothing was said. For them his life began and ended in Derby, and Sweetwater could see, though no actual expression was given to the feeling, that there was but one expectation in regard to him and Doris, to whose uncommon beauty and sweetness they all seemed fully alive. And Sweetwater wondered, as many of us have wondered, at the gulf frequently existing between fancy and fact.

Later there came a small excitement. The doctor was seen riding by on his way to the sick man. From the window where he sat, Sweetwater watched him pass up the street and take the road he had himself so lately traversed. It was so straight a one and led so directly northward that he could follow with his eye the doctor’s whole course, and even get a glimpse of his figure as he stepped from the buggy and proceeded to tie up the horse. There was an energy about him pleasing to Sweetwater. He might have much to do with this doctor. If Oswald Brotherson died—but he was not willing to consider this possibility—yet. His personal sympathies, to say nothing of his professional interest in the mystery to which this man—and this man only—possibly held the key, alike forbade. He would hope, as these others were hoping, and if he did not count the minutes, he at least saw every move of the old horse waiting with drooping head and the resignation of long custom for the re-appearance of his master with his news of life or death.

And so an hour—two hours passed. Others were watching the old horse now. The street showed many an eager figure with head turned northward. From the open door-ways women stepped, looked in the direction of their anxiety and retreated to their work again. Suspense was everywhere; the moments dragged like hours; it became so keen at last that some impatient hearts could no longer stand it. A woman put her baby into another woman’s arms and hurried up the road; another followed, then another; then an old man, bowed with years and of tottering steps, began to go that way, halting a dozen times before he reached the group now collected in the dusty highway, near but not too near that house. As Sweetwater’s own enthusiasm swelled at this sight, he thought of the other Brotherson with his theories and active advocacy for reform, and wondered if men and women would forego their meals and stand for hours in the keen spring wind just to be the first to hear if he were to live or die. He knew that he himself would not. But he had suffered much both in his pride and his purse at the hands of the Brooklyn inventor; and such despoliation is not a reliable basis for sympathy. He was questioning his own judgment in this matter and losing himself in the mazes of past doubts and conjectures when a sudden change took place in the aspect of the street; he saw people running, and in another moment saw why. The doctor had shown himself on the porch which all were watching. Was he coming out? No, he stands quite still, runs his eye over the people waiting quietly in the road, and beckons to one of the smaller boys. The child, with upturned face, stands listening to what he has to say, then starts on a run for the village. He is stopped, pulled about, questioned, and allowed to run on. Many rush forth to meet him. He is panting, but gleeful. Mr. Brotherson has waked up conscious, and the doctor says, HE WILL LIVE.

XXV. THE OVAL HUT

That night Dr. Fenton had a visitor. We know that visitor and we almost know what his questions were, if not the answers of the good doctor. Nevertheless, it may be better to listen to a part at least of their conversation. Sweetwater, who knew when to be frank and open, as well as when to be reserved and ambiguous, made no effort to disguise the nature of his business or his chief cause of interest in Oswald Brotherson. The eye which met his was too penetrating not to detect the smallest attempt at subterfuge; besides, Sweetwater had no need to hide his errand; it was one of peace, and it threatened nobody—“the more’s the pity,” thought he in uneasy comment to himself, as he realised the hopelessness of the whole situation.

His first word, therefore, was a plain announcement.

“Dr. Fenton, my name is Sweetwater. I am from New York, and represent for the nonce, Mr. Challoner, whose name I have simply to mention, for you to understand that my business is with Mr. Brotherson whom I am sorry to find seriously, if not dangerously, ill. Will you tell me how long you think it will be before I can have a talk with him on a subject which I will not disguise from you may prove a very exciting one?”

“Weeks, weeks,” returned the doctor. “Mr. Brotherson has been a very sick man and the only hope I have of his recovery is the fact that he is ignorant of his trouble or that he has any cause for doubt or dread. Were this happy condition of things to be disturbed,—were the faintest rumour of sorrow or disaster to reach him in his present weakened state, I should fear a relapse, with all its attendant dangers. What then, if any intimation should be given him of the horrible tragedy suggested by the name you have mentioned? The man would die before your eyes. Mr. Challoner’s business will have to wait.”

“That I see; but if I knew when I might speak—”

“I can give you no date. Typhoid is a treacherous complaint; he has the best of nurses and the chances are in favour of a quick recovery; but we never can be sure. You had better return to New York. Later, you can write me if you wish, or Mr. Challoner can. You may have confidence in my reply; it will not mislead you.”

Sweetwater muttered his thanks and rose. Then he slowly sat down again.

“Dr. Fenton,” he began, “you are a man to be trusted. I’m in a devil of a fix, and there is just a possibility that you may be able to help me out. It is the general opinion in New York, as you may know, that Miss Challoner committed suicide. But the circumstances do not fully bear out this theory, nor can Mr. Challoner be made to accept it. Indeed, he is so convinced of its falsehood, that he stands ready to do anything, pay anything, suffer anything, to have this distressing blight removed from his daughter’s good name. Mr. Brotherson was her dearest friend, and as such may have the clew to this mystery, but Mr. Brotherson may not be in a condition to speak for several weeks. Meanwhile, Mr. Challoner must suffer from great suspense unless—” a pause during which he searched the doctor’s face with a perfectly frank and inquiring expression—“unless some one else can help us out. Dr. Fenton, can you?”

The doctor did not need to speak; his expression conveyed his answer.

“No more than another,” said he. “Except for what Doris felt compelled to tell me, I know as little as yourself. Mr. Brotherson’s delirium took the form of calling continually upon one name. I did not know this name, but Doris did, also the danger lurking in the fact that he had yet to hear of the tragedy which had robbed him of this woman to whom he was so deeply attached. So she told me just this much. That the Edith whose name rung so continuously in our ears was no other than the Miss Challoner of New York of whose death and its tragic circumstances the papers have been full; that their engagement was a secret one unshared so far as she knew by any one but herself. That she begged me to preserve this secret and to give her all the help I could when the time came for him to ask questions. Especially did she entreat me to be with her at the crisis. I was, but his waking was quite natural. He did not ask for Miss Challoner; he only inquired how long he had been ill and whether Doris had received a letter during that time. She had not received one, a fact which seemed to disappoint him; but she carried it off so gaily (she is a wonderful girl, Mr. Sweetwater—the darling of all our hearts), saying that he must not be so egotistical as to think that the news of his illness had gone beyond Derby, that he soon recovered his spirits and became a very promising convalescent. That is all I know about the matter; little more, I take it, than you know yourself.”

Sweetwater nodded; he had expected nothing from the doctor, and was not disappointed at his failure. There were two strings to his bow, and the one proving valueless, he proceeded to test the other.

“You have mentioned Miss Scott, as the confidante—and only confidante of this unhappy pair,” said he. “Would it be possible—can you make it possible for me to see her?”

It was a daring proposition; he understood this at once from the doctor’s expression; and, fearing a hasty rebuff, he proceeded to supplement his request with a few added arguments, urged with such unexpected address and show of reason that Dr. Fenton’s aspect visibly softened and in the end he found himself ready to promise that he would do what he could to secure his visitor the interview he desired if he would come to the house the next day at the time of his own morning visit.

This was as much as the young detective could expect, and having expressed his thanks, he took his leave in anything but a discontented frame of mind. With so powerful an advocate as the doctor, he felt confident that he should soon be able to conquer this young girl’s reticence and learn all that was to be learned from any one but Mr. Brotherson himself. In the time which must elapse between that happy hour and the present, he would circulate and learn what he could about the prospective manager. But he soon found that he could not enter the Works without a permit, and this he was hardly in a position to demand; so he strolled about the village instead, and later wandered away into the forest.

Struck by the inviting aspect of a narrow and little used road opening from the highway shortly above the house where his interests were just then centred, he strolled into the heart of the spring woods till he came to a depression where a surprise awaited him, in the shape of a peculiar structure rising from its midst where it just fitted, or so nearly fitted that one could hardly walk about it without brushing the surrounding tree trunks. Of an oval shape, with its door facing the approach, it nestled there, a wonder to the eye and the occasion of considerable speculation to his inquiring mind. It had not been long built, as was shown very plainly by the fresh appearance of the unpainted boards of which it was constructed; and while it boasted of a door, as I’ve already said, there were no evidences visible of any other break in the smooth, neatly finished walls. A wooden ellipse with a roof but no windows; such it appeared and such it proved to be. A mystery to Sweetwater’s eyes, and like all mysteries, interesting. For what purpose had it been built and why this isolation? It was too flimsy for a reservoir and too expensive for the wild freak of a crank.

A nearer view increased his curiosity. In the projection of the roof over the curving sides he found fresh food for inquiry. As he examined it in the walk he made around the whole structure, he came to a place where something like a hinge became visible and further on another. The roof was not simply a roof; it was also a lid capable of being raised for the air and light which the lack of windows necessitated. This was an odd discovery indeed, giving to the uncanny structure the appearance of a huge box, the cover of which could be raised or lowered at pleasure. And again he asked himself for what it could be intended? What enterprise, even of the great Works, could demand a secrecy so absolute that such pains as these should be taken to shut out all possibility of a prying eye. Nothing in his experience supplied him with an answer.

He was still looking up at these hinges, with a glance which took in at the same time the nearness and extreme height of the trees by which this sylvan mystery was surrounded, when a sound from the road on the opposite side of the hollow brought his conjectures to a standstill and sent him hurrying on to the nearest point from which that road became visible.

A team was approaching. He could hear the heavy tread of horses working their laborious way through trees whose obstructing branches swished before and behind them. They were bringing in a load for this shed, whose uses he would consequently soon understand. Grateful for his good luck—for his was a curiosity which could not stand defeat—he took a few steps into the wood, and from the vantage point of a concealing cluster of bushes, fixed his eyes upon the spot where the road opened into the hollow.

Something blue moved there, and in another moment, to his great amazement, there stepped into view the spirited form of Doris Scott, who if he had given the matter a thought he would have supposed to be sitting just then by the bedside of her patient, a half mile back on the road.

She was dressed for the woods in a blue skirt and jacket and moved like a leader in front of a heavily laden wagon now coming to a standstill before the closely shut shed—if such we may call it.

“I have a key,” so she called out to the driver who had paused for orders. “When I swing the doors wide, drive straight in.”

Sweetwater took a look at the wagon. It was piled high with large wooden boxes on more than one of which he could see scrawled the words: O. Brotherson, Derby, Pa.

This explained her presence, but the boxes told nothing. They were of all sizes and shapes, and some of them so large that the assistance of another man was needed to handle them. Sweetwater was about to offer his services when a second man appeared from somewhere in the rear, and the detective’s attention being thus released from the load out of which he could make nothing, he allowed it to concentrate upon the young girl who had it in charge and who, for many reasons, was the one person of supreme importance to him.

She had swung open the two wide doors, and now stood waiting for horse and wagon to enter. With locks flying free—she wore no bonnet—she presented a picture of ever increasing interest to Sweetwater. Truly she was a very beautiful girl, buoyant, healthy and sweet; as unlike as possible his preconceived notions of Miss Challoner’s humble little protegee. Her brown hair of a rich chestnut hue, was in itself a wonder. On no head, even in the great city he had just left, had he seen such abundance, held in such modest restraint. Nature had been partial to this little working girl and given her the chevelure of a queen.

But this was nothing. No one saw this aureole when once the eye had rested on her features and caught the full nobility of their expression and the lurking sweetness underlying her every look. She herself made the charm and whether placed high or placed low, must ever attract the eye and afterwards lure the heart, by an individuality which hardly needed perfect features in which to express itself.

Young yet, but gifted, as girls of her class often are, with the nicest instincts and purest aspirations, she showed the elevation of her thoughts both in her glance and the poise with which she awaited events. Sweetwater watched her with admiration as she superintended the unloading of the wagon and the disposal of the various boxes on the floor within; but as nothing she said during the process was calculated to afford the least enlightenment in regard to their contents, he presently wearied of his inaction and turned back towards the highway, comforting himself with the reflection that in a few short hours he would have her to himself when nothing but a blunder on his part should hinder him from sounding her young mind and getting such answers to his questions as the affair in which he was so deeply interested, demanded.