THE EXPLANATION
We had not noticed a car which had stopped just past us and Garrick was
surprised at hearing his own name called.
We looked up from contemplating the discovery he had made in the road,
to see Miss Winslow waving to us. She had motored down from Tuxedo
immediately after receiving the message over the telephone, and with
her keen eye had picked out both the place of the accident and
ourselves studying it.
As we approached, I could see that she was much more pale than usual.
Evidently her anxiety for Warrington was thoroughly genuine. The
slanderous letter had not shaken her faith in him, yet.
She had left her car and was walking back along the road with us toward
the broken fence. Garrick had been talking to her earnestly and now,
having introduced her to Dr. Mead, the doctor and he decided to climb
down to inspect the wrecked car itself in the ravine below.
Miss Winslow cast a quick look from the broken fence down at the torn
and twisted wreckage of the car and gave a suppressed little cry and
shudder.
"How is Mortimer?" she asked of me eagerly, for I had agreed to stay
with her while the others went down the slope. "I mean how is he
really? Is he likely to be better soon, as Mr. Garrick said over the
telephone?" she appealed.
"Surely--absolutely," I assured her, knowing that if Garrick had said
that he had meant it. "Miss Winslow, believe me, neither Mr. Garrick
nor Dr. Mead is concealing anything. It is pretty bad, of course. Such
things are always bad. But it might be far worse. And besides, the
worst now has passed."
Garrick had already promised to accompany her over to Dr. Mead's after
he had made his examination of the wrecked car to confirm what the
doctor had already observed. It took several minutes for them to
satisfy themselves and meanwhile Violet Winslow, already highly
unstrung by the news from Garrick, waited more and more nervously.
In spite of his careful examination of the wrecked car, Garrick found
practically nothing more than Dr. Mead had already told him. It was
with considerable relief that Miss Winslow saw the two again climbing
up the slope in the direction of the road.
A few minutes later we were on our way back, Dr. Mead and Garrick
leading the way in the doctor's car, while I accompanied Miss Winslow
in her own car.
She said little, and it was plain to see that she was consumed by
anxiety. Now and then she would ask a question about the accident, and
although I tried in every way to divert her mind to other subjects she
unfailingly came back to that.
Tempering the details as much as I could I repeated for her just what
had happened to the best of our knowledge.
"And you have no idea who it could have been?" she asked turning those
liquid eyes of hers on my face.
If there were any secret about it, it was perhaps fortunate that I did
not know. I don't think I am more than ordinarily susceptible and I
know I did not delude myself that Miss Winslow ever could be anything
except a friend to either Garrick or myself. But I felt I could not
resist the appeal in those eyes. I wondered if even they, by some magic
intuition, might not pierce the very soul of man and uncover a lying
heart. I felt that Warrington could not have been other than he said he
was and still have been hastening to meet those eyes.
"Miss Winslow," I answered, "I have no more idea than you have who it
could be."
I was telling the truth and I felt that I could meet her gaze.
There must have been something about how I had phrased my answer that
caused her to look at me more searchingly than before. Suddenly she
turned her face away and gazed at the passing landscape from the car.
She said nothing, but as I continued to watch her finely moulded
features, I saw that she was making an effort to control herself. It
flashed over me, somehow, that perhaps, after all, she herself
suspected someone. It was not that she said anything. It was merely an
indefinable impression I received.
Had Warrington any enemies, not in the underworld, but among those of
his own set, rivals, perhaps, who might even stoop to secure the aid of
those of the underworld who could be bought to commit any crime in the
calendar for a price? I did not pause to examine the plausibility or
the impossibility of such a theory. What interested me was whether in
her mind there was such a thought. Had she, perhaps, really more of an
idea than I who it could be? She betrayed nothing of what her intuition
told her, but I felt sure that, even though she knew nothing, there was
at least something she feared.
At last we arrived at Dr. Mead's and I handed her out of the car and
into the tastefully furnished little house. There was an air of
quietness about it that often indefinably pervades a house in which
there is illness or a tragedy.
"May I--see him?" pleaded Miss Winslow, as Dr. Mead placed a chair for
her.
I wondered what he would have done if there had been some good reason
why he should resist the pleading of her deep eyes.
"Why--er--for a minute--yes," he answered. "Later, soon, he may see
visitors longer, but just now I think for a few hours the less he is
disturbed the better."
The doctor excused himself for a moment to look at his patient and
prepare him for the visit. Meanwhile Miss Winslow waited in the
reception room downstairs, still very pale and nervous.
Warrington was in much less pain now than he had been when we left and
Dr. Mead decided that, since the nurse had made him so much more
comfortable, no further drug was necessary. In fact as his natural
vitality due to his athletic habits and clean living asserted itself,
it seemed as if his injuries which at first had looked so serious were
not likely to prove as bad as the doctor had anticipated.
Still, he was badly enough as it was. The new nurse smoothed out his
pillows and deftly tried to conceal as much as she could that would
suggest how badly he was injured and at last Violet Winslow was allowed
to enter the room where the poor boy lay.
Miss Winslow never for a moment let her wonderful self-control fail
her. Quickly and noiselessly, like a ministering angel, she seemed to
float rather than walk over the space from the door to the bed.
As she bent over him and whispered, "Mortimer!" the simple tone seemed
to have an almost magic effect on him.
He opened his eyes which before had been languidly closed and gazed up
at her face as if he saw a vision. Slowly the expression on his face
changed as he realized that it was indeed Violet herself. In spite of
the pain of his hurts which must have been intense a smile played over
his features, as if he realized that it would never do to let her know
how serious had been his condition.
As she bent over her hand had rested on the white covers of the bed.
Feebly, in spite of the bandages that swathed the arm nearest her, he
put out his own brawny hand and rested it on hers. She did not withdraw
it, but passed the other hand gently over his throbbing forehead. Never
have I seen a greater transformation in an invalid than was evident in
Mortimer Warrington. No tonic in all the pharmacopoeia of Dr. Mead
could have worked a more wonderful change.
Not a word was said by either Warrington or Violet for several seconds.
They seemed content just to gaze into each other's faces, oblivious to
us.
Warrington was the first to break the silence, in answer to what he
knew must be her unspoken question.
"Your aunt--gambling," he murmured feebly, trying hard to connect his
words so as to appear not so badly off as he had when he had spoken
before. "I didn't know--till they told me--that the estate owned
it--was coming to tell you--going to cancel the lease--close it up--no
one ever lose money there again--"
The words, jerky though they were, cost him a great physical effort to
say. She seemed to realize it, but there was a look of triumph on her
face as she understood.
She had not been mistaken. Warrington was all that she had thought him
to be.
He was looking eagerly into her face and as he looked he read in it the
answer to the questionings that had sent him off in the early hours of
the morning on his fateful ride to Tuxedo.
Dr. Mead cleared his throat. Miss Winslow recognised it as a signal
that the time was growing short for the interview.
Reluctantly, she withdrew her hand from his, their eyes met another
instant, and with a hasty word of sympathy and encouragement she left
the room, conscious now that other eyes were watching.
"Oh, to think it was to tell me that that he got into it all," she
cried, as she sank into a deep chair in the reception room,
endeavouring not to give way to her feelings, now that the strain was
off and she had no longer to keep a brave face. "I--I feel guilty!"
"I wouldn't say that," soothed Garrick. "Who knows? Perhaps if he had
stayed in the city--they might have succeeded,--whoever it was back of
this thing."
She looked up at Garrick, startled, I thought, with the same expression
I had seen when she turned her face away in the car and I got the
impression that she felt more than she knew of the case.
"I may--see--Mr. Warrington again soon?" she asked, now again mistress
of her feelings after Garrick's interruption that had served to take
her mind off a morbid aspect of the affair.
"Surely," agreed Dr. Mead. "I expect his progress to be rapid after
this."
"Thank you," she murmured, as she slowly rose and prepared to make the
return trip to her aunt's home.
"Oh, Mr. Garrick," she confided, as he helped her on with the wraps she
had thrown carelessly on a chair when she entered, "I can't help it--I
do feel guilty. Perhaps he thinks I am--like Aunt Emma---"
"Perhaps it was quite as much to convince your aunt as you that he took
the trip," suggested Garrick.
Miss Winslow understood. "Why is it," she murmured, "that sometimes
people with the best intentions manage to bring about things that
are--more terrible?"
Garrick smiled. Quite evidently she and her aunt were not exactly in
tune. He said nothing.
As for Dr. Mead he seemed really pleased, for the patient had
brightened up considerably after even the momentary glimpse he had had
of Violet. Altogether I felt that although they had seen each other
only for a moment, it had done both good. Miss Winslow's fears had been
quieted and Warrington had been encouraged by the realisation that, in
spite of its disastrous ending, his journey had accomplished its
purpose anyway.
There was, as Dr. Mead assured us, every prospect now that Warrington
would pull through after the murderous assault that had been made on
him.
We saw Miss Winslow safely off on her return trip, much relieved by the
promise of the doctor that she might call once a day to see how the
patient was getting along.
Warrington was now resting more easily than he had since the accident
and Garrick, having exhausted the possibilities of investigation at the
scene of the accident, announced that he would return to the city.
At the railroad terminus he called up both the apartment and the office
in order to find out whether we had had any visitors during our
absence. No one had called at the apartment, but the office boy
downtown said that there was a man who had called and was coming back
again.
A half hour or so later when we arrived at the office we found McBirney
seated there, patiently determined to find Garrick.
Evidently the news of the assault on Warrington had travelled fast, for
the first thing McBirney wanted to know was how it happened and how his
client was. In a few words Garrick told him as much about it as was
necessary. McBirney listened attentively, but we could see that he was
bursting with his own budget of news.
"And, McBirney," concluded Garrick, without going into the question of
the marks of the tires, "most remarkable of all, I am convinced that
the car in which his assailant rode was no other than the Mercedes that
was stolen from Warrington in the first place."
"Say," exclaimed McBirney in surprise, "that car must be all over at
once!"
"Why--what do you mean?"
"You know I have my own underground sources of information," explained
the detective with pardonable pride at adding even a rumour to the
budget of news. "Of course you can't be certain of such things, but one
of my men, who is scouting around the Tenderloin looking for what he
can find, tells me that he saw a car near that gambling joint on
Forty-eighth Street and that it may have been the repainted and
renumbered Warrington car--at least it tallies with the description
that we got from the garage keeper in north Jersey.
"Did he see who drove it?" asked Garrick eagerly.
"Not very well. It was a short, undersized man, as nearly as he could
make out. Someone whom he did not recognize jumped in it from the
gambling house and they disappeared. Even though my man, his suspicions
aroused, tried to follow them in a taxicab they managed to leave him
behind."
"In what direction did they go?" asked Garrick.
"Toward the West Side--where those fly-by-night garages are all
located."
"Or, perhaps, the Jersey ferries," suggested Garrick.
"Well, I thought you might like to know about this undersized driver,"
said McBirney a little sulkily because Garrick had not displayed as
much enthusiasm as he expected.
"I do," hastened Garrick. "Of course I do. And it may prove to be a
very important clew. But I was just running ahead of your story. The
undersized man couldn't have figured in the case afterward, assuming
that it was the car. He must have left it, probably in the city. Have
you any idea who it could be?"
"Not unless he might be an employee or a keeper of one of those
night-hawk garages," persisted McBirney. "That is possible."
"Quite," agreed Garrick.
McBirney had delivered his own news and in turn had received ours, or
at least such of it as Garrick chose to tell at present. He was
apparently satisfied and rose to go.
"Keep after that undersized fellow, will you?" asked Garrick. "If you
could find out who he is and he should happen to be connected with one
of those garages we might get on the right trail at last."
"I will," promised McBirney. "He's evidently an expert driver of motor
cars himself; my man could see that."
McBirney had gone. Garrick sat for several minutes gazing squarely at
me. Then he leaned back in his chair, with his hands behind his head.
"Mark my words, Marshall," he observed slowly, "someone connected with
that gambling joint in some way has got wind of the fact that
Warrington is going to revoke the lease and close it up. We've got to
beat them to it--that's all."