“And she died that way--died?”

“Immediately.”

“After writing to you?”

“Yes.”

“What was in that letter?”

“Nothing of threat, they say. Only just cheer and expressions of hope.

Just like the others, Mr. Brotherson.”

“And they accuse her of taking her own life? Their verdict is a lie.

They did not know her.”

Then, after some moments of wild and confused feeling, he declared, with

a desperate effort at self-control: “You said that some believe this.

Then there must be others who do not. What do they say?”

“Nothing. They simply feel as you do. They see no reason for the act and

no evidence of her having meditated it. Her father and her friend insist

besides, that she was incapable of such a horror. The mystery of it is

killing us all; me above others, for I’ve had to show you a cheerful

face, with my brain reeling and my heart like lead in my bosom.”

She held out her hands. She tried to draw his attention to herself; not

from any sentiment of egotism, but to break, if she could, the strain of

these insupportable horrors where so short a time before Hope sang and

Life revelled in re-awakened joys.

Perhaps some faint realisation of this reached him, for presently he

caught her by the hands and bowed his head upon her shoulder and finally

let her seat him again, before he said:

“Do they know of--of my interest in this?”

“Yes; they know about the two O. B.s.”

“The two--” He was on his feet again, but only for a moment; his

weakness was greater than his will power.

“Orlando and Oswald Brotherson,” she explained, in answer to his broken

appeal. “Your brother wrote letters to her as well as you, and signed

them just as you did, with his initials only. These letters were found

in her desk, and he was supposed, for a time, to have been the author of

all that were so signed. But they found out the difference after awhile.

Yours were easily recognised after they learned there was another O. B.

who loved her.”

The words were plain enough, but the stricken listener did not take them

in. They carried no meaning to him. How should they? The very idea she

sought to impress upon him by this seemingly careless allusion was an

incredible one. She found it her dreadful task to tell him the hard,

bare truth.

“Your brother,” said she, “was devoted to Miss Challoner, too. He

even wanted to marry her. I cannot keep back this fact. It is known

everywhere, and by everybody but you.”

“Orlando?” His lips took an ironical curve, as he uttered the word. This

was a young girl’s imaginative fancy to him. “Why Orlando never knew

her, never saw her, never--”

“He met her at Lenox.”

The name produced its effect. He stared, made an effort to think,

repeated Lenox over to himself; then suddenly lost his hold upon the

idea which that word suggested, struggled again for it, seized it in an

instant of madness and shouted out:

“Yes, yes, I remember. I sent him there--” and paused, his mind blank

again.

Poor Doris, frightened to her very soul, looked blindly about for help;

but she did not quit his side; she did not dare to, for his lips had

reopened; the continuity of his thoughts had returned; he was going to

speak.

“I sent him there.” The words came in a sort of shout. “I was so hungry

to hear of her and I thought he might mention her in his letter. Insane!

Insane! He saw her and--What’s that you said about his loving her? He

couldn’t have loved her; he’s not of the loving sort. They’ve deceived

you with strange tales. They’ve deceived the whole world with fancies

and mad dreams. He may have admired her, but loved her,--no! or if he

had, he would have respected my claims.”

“He did not know them.”

A laugh; a laugh which paled Doris’ cheek; then his tones grew even

again, memory came back and he muttered faintly:

“That is true. I said nothing to him. He had the right to court her--and

he did, you say; wrote to her; imposed himself upon her, drove her mad

with importunities she was forced to rebuke; and--and what else? There

is something else. Tell me; I will know it all.”

He was standing now, his feebleness all gone, passion in every lineament

and his eye alive and feverish, with emotion. “Tell me,” he repeated,

with unrestrained vehemence. “Tell me all. Kill me with sorrow but save

me from being unjust.”

“He wrote her a letter; it frightened her. He followed it up by a

visit--”

Doris paused; the sentence hung suspended. She had heard a step--a hand

on the door.

Orlando had entered the room.

XXXIII. ALONE

Oswald had heard nothing, seen nothing. But he took note of Doris’

silence, and turning towards her in frenzy saw what had happened, and so

was in a measure prepared for the stern, short sentence which now rang

through the room:

“Wait, Miss Scott! you tell the story badly. Let him listen to me. From

my mouth only shall he hear the stern and seemingly unnatural part I

played in this family tragedy.”

The face of Oswald hardened. Those pliant features--beloved for their

gracious kindliness--set themselves in lines which altered them almost

beyond recognition; but his voice was not without some of its natural

sweetness, as, after a long and hollow look at the other’s composed

countenance, he abruptly exclaimed:

“Speak! I am bound to listen; you are my brother.”

Orlando turned towards Doris. She was slipping away.

“Don’t go,” said he.

But she was gone.

Slowly he turned back.

Oswald raised his hand and checked the words with which he would have

begun his story.

“Never mind the beginnings,” said he. “Doris has told all that. You

saw Miss Challoner in Lenox--admired her--offered yourself to her and

afterwards wrote her a threatening letter because she rejected you.”

“It is true. Other men have followed just such unworthy impulses--and

been ashamed and sorry afterwards. I was sorry and I was ashamed, and as

soon as my first anger was over went to tell her so. But she mistook my

purpose and--”

“And what?”

Orlando hesitated. Even his iron nature trembled before the misery he

saw--a misery he was destined to augment rather than soothe. With pains

altogether out of keeping with his character, he sought in the recesses

of his darkened mind for words less bitter and less abrupt than those

which sprang involuntarily to his lips. But he did not find them. Though

he pitied his brother and wished to show that he did, nothing but the

stern language suitable to the stern fact he wished to impart, would

leave his lips.

“And ended the pitiful struggle of the moment with one quick,

unpremeditated blow,” was what he said. “There is no other explanation

possible for this act, Oswald. Bitter as it is for me to acknowledge it,

I am thus far guilty of this beloved woman’s death. But, as God hears

me, from the moment I first saw her, to the moment I saw her last, I did

not know, nor did I for a moment dream that she was anything to you

or to any other man of my stamp and station. I thought she despised

my country birth, my mechanical attempts, my lack of aristocratic

pretensions and traditions.”

“Edith?”

“Now that I know she had other reasons for her contempt--that the words

she wrote were in rebuke to the brother rather than to the man, I feel

my guilt and deplore my anger. I cannot say more. I should but insult

your grief by any lengthy expressions of regret and sorrow.”

A groan of intolerable anguish from the sick man’s lips, and then the

quick thrust of his re-awakened intelligence rising superior to the

overthrow of all his hopes.

“For a woman of Edith’s principle to seek death in a moment of

desperation, the provocation must have been very great. Tell me if I’m

to hate you through life--yea through all eternity--or if I must seek

in some unimaginable failure of my own character or conduct the cause of

her intolerable despair.”

“Oswald!” The tone was controlling, and yet that of one strong man to

another. “Is it for us to read the heart of any woman, least of all of

a woman of her susceptibilities and keen inner life? The wish to end all

comes to some natures like a lightning flash from a clear sky. It comes,

it goes, often without leaving a sign. But if a weapon chances to be

near--(here it was in hand)--then death follows the impulse which, given

an instant of thought, would have vanished in a back sweep of other

emotions. Chance was the real accessory to this death by suicide.

Oswald, let us realise it as such and accept our sorrow as a mutual

burden and turn to what remains to us of life and labour. Work is

grief’s only consolation. Then let us work.”

But of all this Oswald had caught but the one word.

“Chance?” he repeated. “Orlando, I believe in God.”

“Then seek your comfort there. I find it in harnessing the winds; in

forcing the powers of nature to do my bidding.”

The other did not speak, and the silence grew heavy. It was broken, when

it was broken, by a cry from Oswald:

“No more,” said he, “no more.” Then, in a yearning accent, “Send Doris

to me.”

Orlando started. This name coming so close upon that word comfort

produced a strange effect upon him. But another look at Oswald and he

was ready to do his bidding. The bitter ordeal was over; let him have

his solace if it was in her power to give it to him.

Orlando, upon leaving his brother’s room, did not stop to deliver that

brother’s message directly to Doris; he left this for Truda to do, and

retired immediately to his hangar in the woods. Locking himself in,

he slightly raised the roof and then sat down before the car which was

rapidly taking on shape and assuming that individuality and appearance

of sentient life which hitherto he had only seen in dreams. But his eye,

which had never failed to kindle at this sight before, shone dully in

the semi-gloom. The air-car could wait; he would first have his hour

in this solitude of his own making. The gaze he dreaded, the words from

which he shrank could not penetrate here. He might even shout her name

aloud, and only these windowless walls would respond. He was alone with

his past, his present and his future.

Alone!

He needed to be. The strongest must pause when the precipice yawns

before him. The gulf can be spanned; he feels himself forceful enough

for that; but his eyes must take their measurement of it first; he must

know its depths and possible dangers. Only a fool would ignore these

steeps of jagged rock; and he was no fool, only a man to whom the

unexpected had happened, a man who had seen his way clear to the horizon

and then had come up against this! Love, when he thought such folly

dead! Remorse, when Glory called for the quiet mind and heart!

He recognised its mordant fang, and knew that its ravages, though

only just begun, would last his lifetime. Nothing could stop them now,

nothing, nothing. And he laughed, as the thought went home; laughed at

the irony of fate and its inexorableness; laughed at his own defeat and

his nearness to a barred Paradise. Oswald loved Edith, loved her yet,

with a flame time would take long to quench. Doris loved Oswald and he

Doris; and not one of them would ever attain the delights each was so

fitted to enjoy. Why shouldn’t he laugh? What is left to man but mockery

when all props fall? Disappointment was the universal lot; and it should

go merrily with him if he must take his turn at it. But here the strong

spirit of the man re-asserted itself; it should be but a turn. A man’s

joys are not bounded by his loves or even by the satisfaction of a

perfectly untrammelled mind. Performance makes a world of its own for

the capable and the strong, and this was still left to him. He, Orlando

Brotherson, despair while his great work lay unfinished! That would be

to lay stress on the inevitable pains and fears of commonplace humanity.

He was not of that ilk. Intellect was his god; ambition his motive

power. What would this casual blight upon his supreme contentment be

to him, when with the wings of his air-car spread, he should spurn the

earth and soar into the heaven of fame simultaneously with his flight

into the open.

He could wait for that hour. He had measured the gulf before him and

found it passable. Henceforth no looking back.

Rising, he stood for a moment gazing, with an alert eye now, upon such

sections of his car as had not yet been fitted into their places; then

he bent forward to his work, and soon the lips which had uttered that

sardonic laugh a few minutes before, parted in gentler fashion, and

song took the place of curses--a ballad of love and fondest truth. But

Orlando never knew what he sang. He had the gift and used it.

Would his tones, however, have rung out with quite so mellow a sweetness

had he seen the restless figure even then circling his retreat with

eyes darting accusation and arms lifted towards him in wild but impotent

threat?

Yes, I think they would; for he knew that the man who thus expressed his

helplessness along with his convictions, was no nearer the end he had

set himself to attain than on the day he first betrayed his suspicions.

XXXIV. THE HUT CHANGES ITS NAME

That night Oswald was taken very ill. For three days his life hung in

the balance, then youth and healthy living triumphed over shock and

bereavement, and he came slowly back to his sad and crippled existence.

He had been conscious for a week or more of his surroundings, and of his

bitter sorrows as well, when one morning he asked Doris whose face it

was he had seen bending over him so often during the last week: “Have

you a new doctor? A man with white hair and a comforting smile? Or have

I dreamed this face? I have had so many fancies this might easily be one

of them.”

“No, it is not a fancy,” was the quiet reply. “Nor is it the face of

a doctor. It is that of friend. One whose heart is bound up in your

recovery; one for whom you must live, Mr. Brotherson.”

“I don’t know him, Doris. It’s a strange face to me. And yet, it’s not

altogether strange. Who is this man and why should he care for me so

deeply?”

“Because you share one love and one grief. It is Edith’s father whom you

see at your bedside. He has helped to nurse you ever since you came down

this second time.”

“Edith’s father! Doris, it cannot be. Edith’s father!”

“Yes, Mr. Challoner has been in Derby for the last two weeks. He has

only one interest now; to see you well again.”

“Why?”

Doris caught the note of pain, if not suspicion, in this query, and

smiled as she asked in turn:

“Shall he answer that question himself? He is waiting to come in. Not

to talk. You need not fear his talking. He’s as quiet as any man I ever

saw.”

The sick man closed his eyes, and Doris watching, saw the flush rise

to his emaciated cheek, then slowly fade away again to a pallor that

frightened her. Had she injured where she would heal? Had she pressed

too suddenly and too hard on the ever gaping wound in her invalid’s

breast? She gasped in terror at the thought, then she faintly smiled,

for his eyes had opened again and showed a calm determination as he

said:

“I should like to see him. I should like him to answer the question I

have just put you. I should rest easier and get well faster--or not get

well at all.”

This latter he half whispered, and Doris, tripping from the room may not

have heard it, for her face showed no further shadow as she ushered in

Mr. Challoner, and closed the door behind him. She had looked forward

to this moment for days. To Oswald, however, it was an unexpected

excitement and his voice trembled with something more than physical

weakness as he greeted his visitor and thanked him for his attentions.

“Doris says that you have shown me this kindness from the desire you

have to see me well again Mr. Challoner. Is this true?”

“Very true. I cannot emphasise the fact too strongly.”

Oswald’s eyes met his again, this time with great earnestness.

“You must have serious reasons for feeling so--reasons which I do not

quite understand. May I ask why you place such value upon a life which,

if ever useful to itself or others, has lost and lost forever, the one

delight which gave it meaning?”

It was for Mr. Challoner’s voice to tremble now, as reaching out his

hand, he declared, with unmistakable feeling:

“I have no son. I have no interest left in life, outside this room and

the possibilities it contains for me. Your attachment to my daughter has

created a bond between us, Mr. Brotherson, which I sincerely hope to see

recognised by you.”

Startled and deeply moved, the young man stretched out a shaking hand

towards his visitor, with the feeble but exulting cry:

“Then you do not blame me for her wretched and mysterious death. You

hold me guiltless of the misery which nerved her despairing arm?”

“Quite guiltless.”

Oswald’s wan and pinched features took on a beautiful expression and Mr.

Challoner no longer wondered at his daughter’s choice.

“Thank God!” fell from the sick man’s lips, and then there was a silence

during which their two hands met.

It was some minutes before either spoke and then it was Oswald who said:

“I must confide to you certain facts. I honoured your daughter and

realised her position fully. Our plight was never made in words, nor

should I have presumed to advance any claim to her hand if I had not

made good my expectations, Mr. Challoner. I meant to win both her regard

and yours by acts, not words. I felt that I had a great deal to do and

I was prepared to work and wait. I loved her--” He turned away his head

and the silence which filled up the gap, united those two hearts, as the

old and young are seldom united.

But when a little later, Mr. Challoner rejoined Doris, in her little

sitting-room, he nevertheless showed a perplexity she had hoped to see

removed by this understanding with the younger Brotherson.

The cause became apparent as soon as he spoke.

“These brothers hold by each other,” said he. “Oswald will hear nothing

against Orlando. He says that he has redeemed his fault. He does not

even protest that his brother’s word is to be believed in this matter.

He does not seem to think that necessary. He evidently regards Orlando’s

personality as speaking as truly and satisfactorily for itself, as his

own does. And I dared not undeceive him.”

“He does not know all our reasons for distrust. He has heard nothing

about the poor washerwoman.”

“No, and he must not,--not for weeks. He has borne all that he can.”

“His confidence in his older brother is sublime. I do not share it; but

I cannot help but respect him for it.”

It was warmly said, and Mr. Challoner could not forbear casting an

anxious look at her upturned face. What he saw there made him turn away

with a sigh.

“This confidence has for me a very unhappy side,” he remarked. “It shows

me Oswald’s thought. He who loved her best, accepts the cruel verdict of

an unreasoning public.”

Doris’ large eyes burned with a weird light upon his face.

“He has not had my dream,” she murmured, with all the quiet of an

unmoved conviction.

Yet as the days went by, even her manner changed towards the busy

inventor. It was hardly possible for it not to. The high stand he took;

the regard accorded him on every side; his talent; his conversation,

which was an education in itself, and, above all, his absorption in a

work daily advancing towards completion, removed him so insensibly and

yet so decidedly, from the hideous past of tragedy with which his name,

if not his honour, was associated, that, unconsciously to herself, she

gradually lost her icy air of repulsion and lent him a more or less

attentive ear, when he chose to join their small company of an evening.

The result was that he turned so bright a side upon her that toleration

merged from day to day into admiration and memory lost itself in

anticipation of the event which was to prove him a man of men, if not

one of the world’s greatest mechanical geniuses.

Meantime, Oswald was steadily improving in health, if not in spirits. He

had taken his first walk without any unfavourable results, and Orlando

decided from this that the time had come for an explanation of his

device and his requirements in regard to it. Seated together in Oswald’s

room, he broached the subject thus:

“Oswald, what is your idea about what I’m making up there?”

“That it will be a success.”

“I know; but its character, its use? What do you think it is?”

“I’ve an idea; but my idea don’t fit the conditions.”

“How’s that?”

“The shed is too closely hemmed in. You haven’t room--”

“For what?”

“To start an aeroplane.”

“Yet it is certainly a device for flying.”

“I supposed so; but--”

“It is an air-car with a new and valuable idea--the idea for which the

whole world has been seeking ever since the first aeroplane found its

way up from the earth. My car needs no room to start in save that which

it occupies. If it did, it would be but the modification of a hundred

others.”

“Orlando!”

As Oswald thus gave expression to his surprise, their two faces were

a study: the fire of genius in the one; the light of sympathetic

understanding in the other.

“If this car, now within three days of its completion,” Orlando

proceeded, “does not rise from the oval of my hangar like a bird from

its nest, and after a wide and circling flight descend again into the

self same spot without any swerving from its direct course, then have I

failed in my endeavour and must take a back seat with the rest. But it

will not fail. I’m certain of success, Oswald. All I want just now is a

sympathetic helper--you, for instance; someone who will aid me with

the final fittings and hold his peace to all eternity if the impossible

occurs and the thing proves a failure.”

“Have you such pride as that?”

“Precisely.”

“So much that you cannot face failure?”

“Not when attached to my name. You can see how I feel about that by the

secrecy I have worked under. No other person living knows what I have

just communicated to you. Every part shipped here came from different

manufacturing firms; sometimes a part of a part was all I allowed to be

made in any one place. My fame, like my ship, must rise with one bound

into the air, or it must never rise at all. It was not made for petty

accomplishment, or the slow plodding of commonplace minds. I must

startle, or remain obscure. That is why I chose this place for my

venture, and you for my helper and associate.”

“You want me to ascend with you?”

“Exactly.”

“At the end of three days?”

“Yes.”

“Orlando, I cannot.”

“You cannot? Not strong enough yet? I’ll wait then,--three days more.”

“The time’s too short. A month is scarcely sufficient. It would be

folly, such as you never show, to trust a nerve so undermined as mine

till time has restored its power. For an enterprise like this you need

a man of ready strength and resources; not one whose condition you might

be obliged to consider at a very critical moment.”

Orlando, balked thus at the outset, showed his displeasure.

“You do not do justice to your will. It is strong enough to carry you

through anything.”

“It was.”

“You can force it to act for you.”

“I fear not, Orlando.”

“I counted on you and you thwart me at the most critical moment of my

life.”

Oswald smiled; his whole candid and generous nature bursting into view,

in one quick flash.

“Perhaps,” he assented; “but you will thank me when you realise my

weakness. Another man must be found--quick, deft, secret, yet honourably

alive to the importance of the occasion and your rights as a great

original thinker and mechanician.”

“Do you know such a man?”

“I don’t; but there must be many such among our workmen.”

“There isn’t one; and I haven’t time to send to Brooklyn. I reckoned on

you.”

“Can you wait a month?”

“No.”

“A fortnight, then?”

“No, not ten days.”

Oswald looked surprised. He would like to have asked why such

precipitation was necessary, but the tone in which this ultimatum was

given was of that decisive character which admits of no argument. He,

therefore, merely looked his query. But Orlando was not one to answer

looks; besides, he had no reply for the same importunate question urged

by his own good sense. He knew that he must make the attempt upon which

his future rested soon, and without risk of the sapping influence of

lengthened suspense and weeks of waiting. He could hold on to those two

demons leagued in attack against him, for a definite seven days, but

not for an indeterminate time. If he were to be saved from folly,--from

himself--events must rush.

He, therefore, repeated his no, with increased vehemence, adding, as he

marked the reproach in his brother’s eye, “I cannot wait. The test must

be made on Saturday evening next, whatever the conditions; whatever the

weather. An air-car to be serviceable must be ready to meet lightning

and tempest, and what is worse, perhaps, an insufficient crew.” Then

rising, he exclaimed, with a determination which rendered him majestic,

“If help is not forthcoming, I’ll do it all myself. Nothing shall hold

me back; nothing shall stop me; and when you see me and my car rise

above the treetops, you’ll feel that I have done what I could to make

you forget--”

He did not need to continue. Oswald understood and flashed a grateful

look his way before saying:

“You will make the attempt at night?”

“Certainly.”

“And on Saturday?”

“I’ve said it.”

“I will run over in my mind the qualifications of such men as I know and

acquaint you with the result to-morrow.”

“There are adjustments to be made. A man of accuracy is necessary.”

“I will remember.”

“And he must be likable. I can do nothing with a man with whom I’m not

perfectly in accord.”

“I understand that.”

“Good-night then.” A moment of hesitancy, then, “I wish not only

yourself but Miss Scott to be present at this test. Prepare her for the

spectacle; but not yet, not till within an hour or two of the occasion.”

And with a proud smile in which flashed a significance which startled

Oswald, he gave a hurried nod and turned away.

When in an hour afterwards, Doris looked in through the open door, she

found Oswald sitting with face buried in his hands, thinking so deeply

that he did not hear her. He had sat like this, immovable and absorbed,

ever since his brother had left him.

XXXV. SILENCE--AND A KNOCK

Oswald did not succeed in finding a man to please Orlando. He suggested

one person after another to the exacting inventor, but none were

satisfactory to him and each in turn was turned down. It is not every

one we want to have share a world-wide triumph or an ignominious defeat.

And the days were passing.

He had said in a moment of elation, “I will do it alone;” but he knew

even then that he could not. Two hands were necessary to start the car;

afterwards, he might manage it alone. Descent was even possible, but to

give the contrivance its first lift required a second mechanician. Where

was he to find one to please him? And what was he to do if he did not?

Conquer his prejudices against such men as he had seen, or delay the

attempt, as Oswald had suggested, till he could get one of his old

cronies on from New York. He could do neither. The obstinacy of his

nature was such as to offer an invincible barrier against either

suggestion. One alternative remained. He had heard of women aviators.

If Doris could be induced to accompany him into the air, instead of

clinging sodden-like to the weight of Oswald’s woe, then would the world

behold a triumph which would dwarf the ecstasy of the bird’s flight and

rob the eagle of his kingly pride. But Doris barely endured him as yet,

and the thought was not one to be considered for a moment. Yet what

other course remained? He was brooding deeply on the subject, in his

hangar one evening--(it was Thursday and Saturday was but two days off)

when there came a light knock at the door.

This had never occurred before. He had given strict orders, backed by

his brother’s authority, that he was never to be intruded upon when in

this place; and though he had sometimes encountered the prying eyes of

the curious flashing from behind the trees encircling the hangar, his

door had never been approached before, or his privacy encroached upon.

He started then, when this low but penetrating sound struck across the

turmoil of his thoughts, and cast one look in the direction from

which it came; but he did not rise, or even change his position on his

workman’s stool.

Then it came again, still low but with an insistence which drew

his brows together and made his hand fall from the wire he had been

unconsciously holding through the mental debate which was absorbing him.

Still he made no response, and the knocking continued. Should he ignore

it entirely, start up his motor and render himself oblivious to all

other sounds? At every other point in his career he would have done

this, but an unknown, and as yet unnamed, something had entered his

heart during this fatal month, which made old ways impossible and

oblivion a thing he dared not court too recklessly. Should this be a

summons from Doris! Should (inconceivable idea, yet it seized upon him

relentlessly and would not yield for the asking) should it be Doris

herself!

Taking advantage of a momentary cessation of the ceaseless tap tap,

he listened. Silence was never profounder than in this forest on that

windless night. Earth and air seemed, to his strained ear, emptied of

all sound. The clatter of his own steady, unhastened heart-beat was all

that broke upon the stillness. He might be alone in the Universe for all

token of life beyond these walls, or so he was saying to himself, when

sharp, quick, sinister, the knocking recommenced, demanding admission,

insisting upon attention, drawing him against his own will to his feet,

and finally, though he made more than one stand against it, to the very

door.

“Who’s there?” he asked, imperiously and with some show of anger.

No answer, but another quiet knock.

“Speak! or go from my door. No one has the right to intrude here. What

is your name and business?”

Continued knocking--nothing more.

With an outburst of wrath, which made the hangar ring, Orlando lifted

his fist to answer this appeal in his own fierce fashion from his own

side of the door, but the impulse paused at fulfilment, and he let his

arm fall again in a rush of self-hatred which it would have pained his

worst enemy, even little Doris, to witness. As it reached his side, the

knock came again.

It was too much. With an oath, Orlando reached for his key. But before

fitting it into the lock, he cast a look behind him. The car was in

plain sight, filling the central space from floor to roof. A single

glance from a stranger’s eye, and its principal secret would be a secret

no longer. He must not run such a risk. Before he answered this call,

he must drop the curtain he had rigged up against such emergencies

as these. He had but to pull a cord and a veil would fall before his

treasure, concealing it as effectually as an Eastern bride is concealed

behind her yashmak.

Stepping to the wall, he drew that cord, then with an impatient sigh,

returned to the door.

Another quiet but insistent knock greeted him. In no fury now, but with

a vague sense of portent which gave an aspect of farewell to the one

quick glance he cast about the well-known spot, he fitted the key in the

lock, and stood ready to turn it.

“I ask again your name and your business,” he shouted out in loud

command. “Tell them or--” He meant to say, “or I do not turn this key.”

But something withheld the threat. He knew that it would perish in the

utterance; that he could not carry it out. He would have to open the

door now, response or no response. “Speak!” was the word with which he

finished his demand.

A final knock.

Pulling a pistol from his pocket, with his left hand, he turned the key

with his right.

The door remained unopened.

Stepping slowly back, he stared at its unpainted boards for a moment,

then he spoke up quietly, almost courteously:

“Enter.”

But the command passed unheeded; the latch was not raised, and only the

slightest tap was heard.

With a bound he reached forward and pulled the door open. Then a

great silence fell upon him and a rigidity as of the grave seized and

stiffened his powerful frame.

The man confronting him from the darkness was Sweetwater.

XXXVI. THE MAN WITHIN AND THE MAN WITHOUT

An instant of silence, during which the two men eyed each other; then,

Sweetwater, with an ironical smile directed towards the pistol lightly

remarked:

“Mr. Challoner and other men at the hotel are acquainted with my purpose

and await my return. I have come--” here he cast a glowing look at

the huge curtain cutting off the greater portion of the illy-lit

interior--“to offer you my services, Mr. Brotherson. I have no other

motive for this intrusion than to be of use. I am deeply interested in

your invention, to the development of which I have already lent some

aid, and can bring to the test you propose a sympathetic help which you

could hardly find in any other person living.”

The silence which settled down at the completion of these words had a

weight which made that of the previous moment seem light and all athrob

with sound. The man within had not yet caught his breath; the man

without held his, in an anxiety which had little to do with the

direction of the weapon, into which he looked. Then an owl hooted far

away in the forest, and Orlando, slowly lowering his arm, asked in an

oddly constrained tone:

“How long have you been in town?”

The answer cut clean through any lingering hope he may have had.

“Ever since the day your brother was told the story of his great

misfortune.”

“Ah! still at your old tricks! I thought you had quit that business as

unprofitable.”

“I don’t know. I never expect quick returns. He who holds on for a rise

sometimes reaps unlooked-for profits.”

The arm and fist of Orlando Brotherson ached to hurl this fellow back

into the heart of the midnight woods.

But they remained quiescent and he spoke instead. “I have buried the

business. You will never resuscitate it through me.”

Sweetwater smiled. There was no mirth in his smile though there was

lightness in his tone as said:

“Then let us go back to the matter in hand. You need a helper; where are

you going to find one if you don’t take me?”

A growl from Brotherson’s set lips. Never had he looked more dangerous

than in the one burning instant following this daring repetition of

the detective’s outrageous request. But as he noted how slight was the

figure opposing him from the other side of the threshold, he was swayed

by his natural admiration of pluck in the physically weak, and lost his

threatening attitude, only to assume one which Sweetwater secretly found

it even harder to meet.

“You are a fool,” was the stinging remark he heard flung at him. “Do you

want to play the police-officer here and arrest me in mid air?”

“Mr. Brotherson, you understand me as little as I am supposed to

understand you. Humble as my place is in society and, I may add, in the

Department whose interests I serve, there are in me two men. One you

know passably well--the detective whose methods, only indifferently

clever show that he has very much to learn. Of the other--the workman

acquainted with hammer and saw, but with some knowledge too of higher

mathematics and the principles upon which great mechanical inventions

depend, you know little, and must imagine much. I was playing the gawky

when I helped you in the old house in Brooklyn. I was interested in

your air-ship--Oh, I recognised it for what it was, notwithstanding its

oddity and lack of ostensible means for flying--but I was not caught in

the whirl of its idea; the idea by which you doubtless expect, and with

very good reason too, to revolutionise the science of aviation. But

since then I’ve been thinking it over, and am so filled with your own

hopes that either I must have a hand in the finishing and sailing of the

one you have yourself constructed, or go to work myself on the hints you

have unconsciously given me, and make a car of my own.”

Audacity often succeeds where subtler means fail. Orlando, with a

curious twist of his strong lip, took hold of the detective’s arm and

drew him in, shutting and locking the door carefully behind him.

“Now,” said he, “you shall tell me what you think you have discovered,

to make any ideas of your own available in the manufacture of a superior

self-propelling air-ship.”

Sweetwater who had been so violently wheeled about in entering that he

stood with his back to the curtain concealing the car, answered without

hesitation.

“You have a device, entirely new so far as I can judge, by which this

car can leap at once into space, hold its own in any direction, and

alight again upon any given spot without shock to the machine or danger

to the people controlling it.”

“Explain the device.”

“I will draw it.”

“You can?”

“As I see it.”

“As you see it!”

“Yes. It’s a brilliant idea; I could never have conceived it.”

“You believe--”

“I know.”

“Sit here. Let’s see what you know.”

Sweetwater sat down at the table the other pointed out, and drawing

forward a piece of paper, took up a pencil with an easy air. Brotherson

approached and stood at his shoulder. He had taken up his pistol again,

why he hardly knew, and as Sweetwater began his marks, his fingers

tightened on its butt till they turned white in the murky lamplight.

“You see,” came in easy tones from the stooping draughtsman, “I have an

imagination which only needs a slight fillip from a mind like yours to

send it in the desired direction. I shall not draw an exact reproduction

of your idea, but I think you will see that I understand it very well.

How’s that for a start?”

Brotherson looked and hastily drew back. He did not want the other to

note his surprise.

“But that is a portion you never saw,” he loudly declared.

“No, but I saw this,” returned Sweetwater, working busily on some

curves; “and these gave me the fillip I mentioned. The rest came

easily.”

Brotherson, in dread of his own anger, threw his pistol to the other end

of the shed:

“You knave! You thief!” he furiously cried.

“How so?” asked Sweetwater smilingly, rising and looking him calmly in

the face. “A thief is one who appropriates another man’s goods, or, let

us say, another man’s ideas. I have appropriated nothing yet. I’ve only

shown you how easily I could do so. Mr. Brotherson, take me in as your

assistant. I will be faithful to you, I swear it. I want to see that

machine go up.”

“For how many people have you drawn those lines?” thundered the

inexorable voice.

“For nobody; not for myself even. This is the first time they have left

their hiding-place in my brain.”

“Can you swear to that?”

“I can and will, if you require it. But you ought to believe my word,

sir. I am square as a die in all matters not connected--well, not

connected with my profession,” he smiled in a burst of that whimsical

humour, which not even the seriousness of the moment could quite

suppress.

“And what surety have I that you do not consider this very matter of

mine as coming within the bounds you speak of?”

“None. But you must trust me that far.”

Brotherson surveyed him with an irony which conveyed a very different

message to the detective than any he had intended. Then quickly:

“To how many have you spoken, dilating upon this device, and publishing

abroad my secret?”

“I have spoken to no one, not even to Mr. Gryce. That shows my honesty

as nothing else can.”

“You have kept my secret intact?”

“Entirely so, sir.”

“So that no one, here or elsewhere, shares our knowledge of the new

points in this mechanism?”

“I say so, sir.”

“Then if I should kill you,” came in ferocious accents, “now--here--”

“You would be the only one to own that knowledge. But you won’t kill

me.”

“Why?”

“Need I go into reasons?”

“Why? I say.”

“Because your conscience is already too heavily laden to bear the burden

of another unprovoked crime.”

Brotherson, starting back, glared with open ferocity upon the man who

dared to face him with such an accusation.

“God! why didn’t I shoot you on entrance!” he cried. “Your courage is

certainly colossal.”

A fine smile, without even the hint of humour now, touched the daring

detective’s lip. Brotherson’s anger seemed to grow under it, and he

loudly repeated:

“It’s more than colossal; it’s abnormal and--” A moment’s pause, then

with ironic pauses--“and quite unnecessary save as a matter of display,

unless you think you need it to sustain you through the ordeal you are

courting. You wish to help me finish and prepare for flight?”

“I sincerely do.”

“You consider yourself competent?”

“I do.”

Brotherson’s eyes fell and he walked once to the extremity of the oval

flooring and back.

“Well, we will grant that. But that’s not all that is necessary. My

requirements demand a companion in my first flight. Will you go up in

the car with me on Saturday night?”

A quick affirmative was on Sweetwater’s lips but the glimpse which he

got of the speaker’s face glowering upon him from the shadows into which

Brotherson had withdrawn, stopped its utterance, and the silence grew

heavy. Though it may not have lasted long by the clock, the instant of

breathless contemplation of each other’s features across the intervening

space was of incalculable moment to Sweetwater, and, possibly, to

Brotherson. As drowning men are said to live over their whole history

between their first plunge and their final rise to light and air, so

through the mind of the detective rushed the memories of his past and

the fast fading glories of his future; and rebelling at the subtle peril

he saw in that sardonic eye, he vociferated an impulsive:

“No! I’ll not--” and paused, caught by a new and irresistible sensation.

A breath of wind--the first he had felt that night--had swept in through

some crevice in the curving wall, flapping the canvas enveloping the

great car. It acted like a peal to battle. After all, a man must take

some risks in his life, and his heart was in this trial of a redoubtable

mechanism in which he had full faith. He could not say no to the

prospect of being the first to share a triumph which would send his name

to the ends of the earth; and, changing the trend of his sentence, he

repeated with a calmness which had the force of a great decision.

“I will not fail you in anything. If she rises--” here his trembling

hand fell on the curtain shutting off his view of the ship, “she shall

take me with her, so that when she descends I may be the first to

congratulate the proud inventor of such a marvel.”

“So be it!” shot from the other’s lips, his eyes losing their

threatening look, and his whole countenance suddenly aglow with the

enthusiasm of awakened genius.

Coming from the shadows, he laid his hand on the cord regulating the

rise and fall of the concealing curtain.

“Here she is!” he cried and drew the cord.

The canvas shook, gathered itself into great folds and disappeared in

the shadows from which he had just stepped.

The air-car stood revealed--a startling, because wholly unique, vision.

Long did Sweetwater survey it, then turning with beaming face upon the

watchful inventor, he uttered a loud Hurrah.

Next moment, with everything forgotten between them save the glories of

this invention, both dropped simultaneously to the floor and began that

minute examination of the mechanism necessary to their mutual work.

XXXVII. HIS GREAT HOUR

Saturday night at eight o’clock.

So the fiat had gone forth, with no concession to be made on account of

weather.

As Oswald came from his supper and took a look at the heavens from the

small front porch, he was deeply troubled that Orlando had remained so

obstinate on this point. For there were ominous clouds rolling up from

the east, and the storms in this region of high mountains and abrupt

valleys were not light, nor without danger even to those with feet well

planted upon mother earth.

If the tempest should come up before eight!

Mr. Challoner, who, from some mysterious impulse of bravado on the part

of Brotherson, was to be allowed to make the third in this small band of

spectators, was equally concerned at this sight, but not for Brotherson.

His fears were for Oswald, whose slowly gathering strength could illy

bear the strain which this additional anxiety for his brother’s life

must impose upon him. As for Doris, she was in a state of excitement

more connected with the past than with the future. That afternoon she

had laid her hand in that of Orlando Brotherson, and wished him well.

She! in whose breast still lingered reminiscences of those old doubts

which had beclouded his image for her at their first meeting. She had

not been able to avoid it. His look was a compelling one, and it had

demanded thus much from her; and--a terrible thought to her gentle

spirit--he might be going to his death!

It had been settled by the prospective aviator that they were to watch

for the ascent from the mouth of the grassy road leading in to the

hangar. The three were to meet there at a quarter to eight and await

the stroke and the air-cars rise. That time was near, and Mr. Challoner,

catching a glimpse of Oswald’s pallid and unnaturally drawn features, as

he set down the lantern he carried, shuddered with foreboding and wished

the hour passed.

Doris’ watchful glance never left the face whose lightest change was

more to her than all Orlando’s hopes. But the result upon her was not to

weaken her resolution, but to strengthen it. Whatever the outcome of the

next few minutes, she must stand ready to sustain her invalid through

it. That the darkness of early evening had deepened to oppression, was

unnoticed for the moment. The fears of an hour past had been forgotten.

Their attention was too absorbed in what was going on before them, for

even a glance overhead.

Suddenly Mr. Challoner spoke.

“Who is the man whom Mr. Brotherson has asked to go up with him?”

It was Oswald who answered.

“He has never told me. He has kept his own counsel about that as about

everything else connected with this matter. He simply advised me that I

was not to bother about him any more; that he had found the assistant he

wanted.”

“Such reticence seems unpardonable. You have--displayed great patience,

Oswald.”

“Because I understand Orlando. He reads men’s natures like a book. The

man he trusts, we may trust. To-morrow, he will speak openly enough. All

cause for reticence will be gone.”

“You have confidence then in the success of this undertaking?”

“If I hadn’t, I should not be here. I could hardly bear to witness his

failure, even in a secret test like this. I should find it too hard to

face him afterwards.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Orlando has great pride. If this enterprise fails I cannot answer for

him. He would be capable of anything. Why, Doris! what is the matter,

child? I never saw you look like that before.”

She had been down on her knees regulating the lantern, and the sudden

flame, shooting up, had shown him her face turned up towards his in an

apprehension which verged on horror.

“Do I look frightened?” she asked, remembering herself and lightly

rising. “I believe that I am a little frightened. If--if anything should

go wrong! If an accident-” But here she remembered herself again and

quickly changed her tone. “But your confidence shall be mine. I

will believe in his good angel or--or in his self-command and great

resolution. I’ll not be frightened any more.”

But Oswald did not seem satisfied. He continued to look at her in vague

concern.

He hardly knew what to make of the intense feeling she had manifested.

Had Orlando touched her girlish heart? Had this cold-blooded nature,

with its steel-like brilliancy and honourable but stern views of life,

moved this warm and sympathetic soul to more than admiration? The

thought disturbed him so he forgot the nearness of the moment they were

all awaiting till a quick rasping sound from the hangar, followed by the

sudden appearance of an ever-widening band of light about its upper rim,

drew his attention and awakened them all to a breathless expectation.

The lid was rising. Now it was half-way up, and now, for the first time,

it was lifted to its full height and stood a broad oval disc against the

background of the forest. The effect was strange. The hangar had been

made brilliant by many lamps, and their united glare pouring from its

top and illuminating not only the surrounding treetops but the broad

face of this uplifted disc, roused in the awed spectator a thrill such

as in mythological times might have greeted the sudden sight of Vulcan’s

smithy blazing on Olympian hills. But the clang of iron on iron would

have attended the flash and gleam of those unexpected fires, and here

all was still save for that steady throb never heard in Olympus or the

halls of Valhalla, the pant of the motor eager for flight in the upper

air.

As they listened in a trance of burning hope which obliterated all else,

this noise and all others near and distant, was suddenly lost in a loud

clatter of writhing and twisting boughs which set the forest in a roar

and seemed to heave the air about them.

A wind had swooped down from the east, bending everything before it and

rattling the huge oval on which their eyes were fixed as though it would

tear it from its hinges.

The three caught at each other’s hands in dismay. The storm had come

just on the verge of the enterprise, and no one might guess the result.

“Will he dare? Will he dare?” whispered Doris, and Oswald answered,

though it seemed next to impossible that he could have heard her:

“He will dare. But will he survive it? Mr. Challoner,” he suddenly

shouted in that gentleman’s ear, “what time is it now?”

Mr. Challoner, disengaging himself from their mutual grasp, knelt down

by the lantern to consult his watch.

“One minute to eight,” he shouted back.

The forest was now a pandemonium. Great boughs, split from their parent

trunks, fell crashing to the ground in all directions. The scream of

the wind roused echoes which repeated themselves, here, there and

everywhere. No rain had fallen yet, but the sight of the clouds

skurrying pell-mell through the glare thrown up from the shed, created

such havoc in the already overstrained minds of the three onlookers,

that they hardly heeded, when with a clatter and crash which at another

time would have startled them into flight, the swaying oval before them

was whirled from its hinges and thrown back against the trees already

bending under the onslaught of the tempest. Destruction seemed the

natural accompaniment of the moment, and the only prayer which sprang to

Oswald’s lips was that the motor whose throb yet lingered in their blood

though no longer taken in by the ear, would either refuse to work or

prove insufficient to lift the heavy car into this seething tumult of

warring forces. His brother’s life hung in the balance against his fame,

and he could not but choose life for him. Yet, as the multitudinous

sounds about him yielded for a moment to that brother’s shout, and he

knew that the moment had come, which would soon settle all, he

found himself staring at the elliptical edge of the hangar, with an

anticipation which held in it as much terror as joy, for the end of a

great hope or the beginning of a great triumph was compressed into this

trembling instant and if--

Great God! he sees it! They all see it! Plainly against that portion

of the disc which still lifted itself above the further wall, a curious

moving mass appears, lengthens, takes on shape, then shoots suddenly

aloft, clearing the encircling tops of the bending, twisting and

tormented trees, straight into the heart of the gale, where for one

breathless moment it whirls madly about like a thing distraught, then

in slow but triumphant obedience to the master hand that guides it,

steadies and mounts majestically upward till it is lost to their view in

the depths of impenetrable darkness.

Orlando Brotherson has accomplished his task. He has invented a

mechanism which can send an air-car straight up from its mooring place.

As the three watchers realise this, Oswald utters a cry of triumph,

and Doris throws herself into Mr. Challoner’s arms. Then they all stand

transfixed again, waiting for a descent which may never come.

But hark! a new sound, mingling its clatter with all the others. It is

the rain. Quick, maddening, drenching, it comes; enveloping them in wet

in a moment. Can they hold their faces up against it?

And the wind! Surely it must toss that aerial messenger before it and

fling it back to earth, a broken and despised toy.

“Orlando?” went up in a shriek. “Orlando?” Oh, for a ray of light in

those far-off heavens For a lull in the tremendous sounds shivering the

heavens and shaking the earth! But the tempest rages on, and they can

only wait, five minutes, ten minutes, looking, hoping, fearing, without

thought of self and almost without thought of each other, till suddenly

as it had come, the rain ceases and the wind, with one final wail of

rage and defeat, rushes away into the west, leaving behind it a sudden

silence which, to their terrified hearts, seems almost more dreadful to

bear than the accumulated noises of the moment just gone.

Orlando was in that shout of natural forces, but he is not in this

stillness. They look aloft, but the heavens are void. Emptiness is where

life was. Oswald begins to sway, and Doris, remembering him now and

him only, has thrown her strong young arm about him, when--What is this

sound they hear high up, high up, in the rapidly clearing vault of the

heavens! A throb--a steady pant,--drawing near and yet nearer,--entering

the circlet of great branches over their heads--descending, slowly

descending,--till they catch another glimpse of those hazy outlines

which had no sooner taken shape than the car disappeared from their

sight within the elliptical wall open to receive it.

It had survived the gale! It has re-entered its haven, and that, too,

without colliding with aught around or any shock to those within, just

as Orlando had promised; and the world was henceforth his! Hail to

Orlando Brotherson!

Oswald could hardly restrain his mad joy and enthusiasm. Bounding to the

door separating him from this conqueror of almost invincible forces, he

pounded it with impatient fist.

“Let me in!” he cried. “You’ve done the trick, Orlando, you’ve done the

trick.”

“Yes, I have satisfied myself,” came back in studied self-control

from the other side of the door; and with a quick turning of the lock,

Orlando stood before them.

They never forgot him as he looked at that moment. He was drenched,

battered, palpitating with excitement; but the majesty of success was in

his eye and in the bearing of his incomparable figure.

As Oswald bounded towards him, he reached out his hand, but his glance

was for Doris.

“Yes,” he went on, in tones of suppressed elation, “there’s no flaw in

my triumph. I have done all that I set out to do. Now--”

Why did he stop and look hurriedly back into the hangar? He had

remembered Sweetwater. Sweetwater, who at that moment was stepping

carefully from his seat in some remote portion of the car. The triumph

was not complete. He had meant--

But there his thought stopped. Nothing of evil, nothing even of regret

should mar his great hour. He was a conqueror, and it was for him now to

reap the joy of conquest.

XXXVIII. NIGHT

Three days had passed, and Orlando Brotherson sat in his room at

the hotel before a table laden with telegrams, letters and marked

newspapers. The news of his achievement had gone abroad, and Derby was,

for the moment, the centre of interest for two continents.

His success was an established fact. The second trial which he had made

with his car, this time with the whole town gathered together in

the streets as witnesses, had proved not only the reliability of its

mechanism, but the great advantages which it possessed for a direct

flight to any given point. Already he saw Fortune beckoning to him in

the shape of an unconditional offer of money from a first-class source;

and better still,--for he was a man of untiring energy and boundless

resource--that opportunity for new and enlarged effort which comes with

the recognition of one’s exceptional powers.

All this was his and more. A sweeter hope, a more enduring joy had

followed hard upon gratified ambition. Doris had smiled on him;--Doris!

She had caught the contagion of the universal enthusiasm and had given

him her first ungrudging token of approval. It had altered his whole

outlook on life in an instant, for there was an eagerness in this

demonstration which proclaimed the relieved heart. She no longer trusted

either appearances or her dream. He had succeeded in conquering her

doubts by the very force of his personality, and the shadow which had

hitherto darkened their intercourse had melted quite away. She was ready

to take his word now and Oswald’s, after which the rest must follow.

Love does not lag far behind an ardent admiration.

Fame! Fortune! Love! What more could a man desire? What more could this

man, with his strenuous past and an unlimited capacity for an enlarged

future, ask from fate than this. Yet, as he bends over his letters,

fingering some, but reading none beyond a line or two, he betrays but a

passing elation, and hardly lifts his head when a burst of loud acclaim

comes ringing up to his window from some ardent passer-by: “Hurrah for

Brotherson! He has put our town on the map!”

Why this despondency? Have those two demons seized him again? It would

seem so and with new and overmastering fury. After the hour of triumph

comes the hour of reckoning. Orlando Brotherson in his hour of proud

attainment stands naked before his own soul’s tribunal and the pleader

is dumb and the judge inexorable. There is but one Witness to such

struggles; but one eye to note the waste and desolation of the

devastated soul, when the storm is over past.

Orlando Brotherson has succumbed; the attack was too keen, his forces

too shaken. But as the heavy minutes pass, he slowly re-gathers his

strength and rises, in the end, a conqueror. Nevertheless, he knows,

even in that moment of regained command, that the peace he had thus

bought with strain and stress is but momentary; that the battle is

on for life: that the days which to other eyes would carry a sense of

brilliancy--days teeming with work and outward satisfaction--would

hold within their hidden depths a brooding uncertainty which would rob

applause of its music and even overshadow the angel face of Love.

He quailed at the prospect, materialist though he was. The days--the

interminable days! In his unbroken strength and the glare of the noonday

sun, he forgot to take account of the nights looming in black and

endless procession before him. It was from the day phantom he shrank,

and not from the ghoul which works in the darkness and makes a grave of

the heart while happier mortals sleep.

And the former terror seemed formidable enough to him in this his hour

of startling realisation, even if he had freed himself for the nonce

from its controlling power. To escape all further contemplation of it

he would work. These letters deserved attention. He would carry them to

Oswald, and in their consideration find distraction for the rest of the

day, at least. Oswald was a good fellow. If pleasure were to be gotten

from these tokens of good-will, he should have his share of it. A gleam

of Oswald’s old spirit in Oswald’s once bright eye, would go far towards

throttling one of those demons whose talons he had just released from

his throat; and if Doris responded too, he would deserve his fate, if he

did not succeed in gaining that mastery of himself which would make such

hours as these but episodes in a life big with interest and potent with

great emotions.

Rising with a resolute air, he made a bundle of his papers and, with

them in hand, passed out of his room and down the hotel stairs.

A man stood directly in his way, as he made for the front door. It was

Mr. Challoner.

Courtesy demanded some show of recognition between them, and Brotherson

was passing with his usual cold bow, when a sudden impulse led him to

pause and meet the other’s eye, with the sarcastic remark:

“You have expressed, or so I have been told, some surprise at my choice

of mechanician. A man of varied accomplishments, Mr. Challoner, but one

for whom I have no further use. If, therefore, you wish to call off

your watch-dog, you are at liberty to do so. I hardly think he can be

serviceable to either of us much longer.”

The older gentleman hesitated, seeking possibly for composure, and when

he answered it was not only without irony but with a certain forced

respect:

“Mr. Sweetwater has just left for New York, Mr. Brotherson. He will

carry with him, no doubt, the full particulars of your great success.”

Orlando bowed, this time with distinguished grace. Not a flicker of

relief had disturbed the calm serenity of his aspect, yet when a moment

later, he stepped among his shouting admirers in the street, his air and

glance betrayed a bounding joy for which another source must be found

than that of gratified pride. A chain had slipped from his spirit,

and though the people shrank a little, even while they cheered, it was

rather from awe of his bearing and the recognition of that sense of

apartness which underlay his smile than from any perception of the man’s

real nature or of the awesome purpose which at that moment exalted

it. But had they known--could they have seen into this tumultuous

heart--what a silence would have settled upon these noisy streets; and

in what terror and soul-confusion would each man have slunk away from

his fellows into the quiet and solitude of his own home.

Brotherson himself was not without a sense of the incongruity underlying

this ovation; for, as he slowly worked himself along, the brightness of

his look became dimmed with a tinge of sarcasm which in its turn gave

way to an expression of extreme melancholy--both quite unbefitting the

hero of the hour in the first flush of his new-born glory. Had he seen

Doris’ youthful figure emerge for a moment from the vine-hung porch he

was approaching, bringing with it some doubt of the reception awaiting

him? Possibly, for he made a stand before he reached the house, and sent

his followers back; after which he advanced with an unhurrying step,

so that several minutes elapsed before he finally drew up before Mr.

Scott’s door and entered through the now empty porch into his brother’s

sitting-room.

He had meant to see Doris first, but his mind had changed. If all passed

off well between himself and Oswald, if he found his brother responsive

and wide-awake to the interests and necessities of the hour, he might

forego his interview with her till he felt better prepared to meet

it. For call it cowardice or simply a reasonable precaution, any delay

seemed preferable to him in his present mood of discouragement, to that

final casting of the die upon which hung so many and such tremendous

issues. It was the first moment of real halt in his whole tumultuous

life! Never, as daring experimentalist or agitator, had he shrunk from

danger seen or unseen or from threat uttered or unuttered, as he shrank

from this young girl’s no; and something of the dread he had felt lest

he should encounter her unaware in the hall and so be led on to speak

when his own judgment bade him be silent, darkened his features as he

entered his brother’s presence.

But Oswald was sunk in a bitter revery of his own, and took no heed

of these signs of depression. In the re-action following these days of

great excitement, the past had re-asserted itself, and all was gloom in

his once generous soul. This, Orlando had time to perceive, quick as the

change came when his brother really realised who his visitor was. The

glad “Orlando!” and the forced smile did not deceive him, and his voice

quavered a trifle as he held out his packet with the words:

“I have come to show you what the world says of my invention. We will

soon be great men,” he emphasised, as Oswald opened the letters. “Money

has been offered me and--Read! read!” he urged, with an unconscious

dictatorialness, as Oswald paused in his task. “See what the fates have

prepared for us; for you shall share all my honours, as you will from

this day share my work and enter into all my experiments. Cannot

you enthuse a little bit over it? Doesn’t the prospect contain any

allurement for you? Would you rather stay locked up in this petty

town--”

“Yes; or--die. Don’t look like that, Orlando. It was a cowardly speech

and I ask your pardon. I’m hardly fit to talk to-day. Edith--”

Orlando frowned.

“Not that name!” he harshly interrupted. “You must not hamper your life

with useless memories. That dream of yours may be sacred, but it belongs

to the past, and a great reality confronts you. When you have fully

recovered your health, your own manhood will rebel at a weakness

unworthy one of our name. Rouse yourself, Oswald. Take account of our

prospects. Give me your hand and say, ‘Life holds something for me yet.

I have a brother who needs me if I do not need him. Together, we can

prove ourselves invincible and wrench fame and fortune from the world.’”

But the hand he reached for did not rise at his command, though Oswald

started erect and faced him with manly earnestness.

“I should have to think long and deeply,” he said, “before I took upon

myself responsibilities like these. I am broken in mind and heart,

Orlando, and must remain so till God mercifully delivers me. I should be

a poor assistant to you--a drag, rather than a help. Deeply as I deplore

it, hard as it may be for one of your temperament to understand so

complete an overthrow, I yet must acknowledge my condition and pray you

not to count upon me in any plans you may form. I know how this looks--I

know that as your brother and truest admirer, I should respond, and

respond strongly, to such overtures as these, but the motive for

achievement is gone. She was my all; and while I might work, it would be

mechanically. The lift, the elevating thought is gone.”

Orlando stood a moment studying his brother’s face; then he turned

shortly about and walked the length of the room. When he came back, he

took up his stand again directly before Oswald, and asked, with a new

note in his voice:

“Did you love Edith Challoner so much as that?”

A glance from Oswald’s eye, sadder than any tear.

“So that you cannot be reconciled?”

A gesture. Oswald’s words were always few.

Orlando’s frown deepened.

“Such grief I partly understand,” said he. “But time will cure it. Some

day another lovely face--”

“We’ll not talk of that, Orlando.”

“No, we’ll not talk of that,” acquiesced the inventor, walking away

again, this time to the window. “For you there’s but one woman;--and

she’s a memory.”

“Killed!” broke from his brother’s lips. “Slain by her own hand under

an impulse of wildness and terror! Can I ever forget that? Do not expect

it, Orlando.”

“Then you do blame me?” Orlando turned and was looking full at Oswald.

“I blame your unreasonableness and your overweening pride.”

Orlando stood a moment, then moved towards the door. The heaviness of

his step smote upon Oswald’s ear and caused him to exclaim:

“Forgive me, Orlando.” But the other cut him short with an imperative:

“Thanks for your candour! If her spirit is destined to stand like an

immovable shadow between you and me, you do right to warn me. But this

interview must end all allusion to the subject. I will seek and find

another man to share my fortunes; (as he said this he approached

suddenly, and took his papers from the other’s hand) or--” Here he

hastily retraced his steps to the door which he softly opened. “Or”

he repeated--But though Oswald listened for the rest, it did not come.

While he waited, the other had given him one deeply concentrated look

and passed out.

No heartfelt understanding was possible between these two men.

Crossing the hall, Orlando knocked at the door of Doris’ little

sitting-room.

No answer, yet she was there. He knew it in every throbbing fibre of

his body. She was there and quite aware of his presence; of this he felt

sure; yet she did not bid him enter. Should he knock again? Never! but

he would not quit the threshold, not if she kept him waiting there for

hours. Perhaps she realised this. Perhaps she had meant to open the door

to him from the very first, who can tell? What avails is that she did

ultimately open it, and he, meeting her soft eye, wished from his very

heart that his impulse had led him another way, even if that way had

been to the edge of the precipice--and over.

For the face he looked upon was serene, and there was no serenity in

him; rather a confusion of unloosed passions fearful of barrier and

yearning tumultuously for freedom. But, whatever his revolt, the secret

revolt which makes no show in look or movement, he kept his ground

and forced a smile of greeting. If her face was quiet, it was also

lovely;--too lovely, he felt, for a man to leave it, whatever might come

of his lingering.

Nothing in all his life had ever affected him like it. For him there was

no other woman in the past, the present or the future, and, realising

this--taking in to the full what her affection and her trust might be to

him in those fearsome days to come, he so dreaded a rebuff--he, who had

been the courted of women and the admired of men ever since he could

remember,--that he failed to respond to her welcome and the simple

congratulations she felt forced to repeat. He could neither speak the

commonplace, nor listen to it. This was his crucial hour. He must find

support here, or yield hopelessly to the maelstrom in whose whirl he was

caught.

She saw his excitement and faltered back a step--a move which she

regretted the next minute, for he took advantage of it to enter and

close behind him the door which she would never have shut of her own

accord. Then he spoke, abruptly, passionately, but in those golden tones

which no emotion could render other than alluring:

“I am an unhappy man, Miss Scott. I see that my presence here is not

welcome, yet am sure that it would be so if it were not for a prejudice

which your generous nature should be the first to cast aside, in face of

the outspoken confidence of my brother: Oswald. Doris, little Doris, I

love you. I have loved you from the moment of our first meeting. Not to

many men is it given to find his heart so late, and when he does, it is

for his whole life; no second passion can follow it. I know that I am

premature in saying this; that you are not prepared to hear such words

from me and that it might be wiser for me to withhold them, but I must

leave Derby soon, and I cannot go until I know whether there is the

least hope that you will yet lend a light to my career or whether that

career must burn itself to ashes at your feet. Oswald--nay, hear me

out--Oswald lives in his memories; but I must have an active hope--a

tangible expectation--if I am to be the man I was meant to be. Will you,

then, coldly dismiss me, or will you let my whole future life prove to

you the innocence of my past? I will not hasten anything; all I ask is

some indulgence. Time will do the rest.”

“Impossible,” she murmured.

But that was a word for which he had no ear. He saw that she was moved,

unexpectedly so; that while her eyes wandered restlessly at times

towards the door, they ever came back in girlish wonder, if not

fascination, to his face, emboldening him so that he ventured at last,

to add:

“Doris, little Doris, I will teach you a marvellous lesson, if you will

only turn your dainty ear my way. Love such as mine carries infinite

treasure with it. Will you have that treasure heaped, piled before

your feet? Your lips say no, but your eyes--the truest eyes I ever

saw--whisper a different language. The day will come when you will find

your joy in the breast of him you are now afraid to trust.” And not

waiting for disclaimer or even a glance of reproach from the eyes he had

so wilfully misread, he withdrew with a movement as abrupt as that with

which he had entered.

Why, then, with the memory of this exultant hour to fend off all

shadows, did the midnight find him in his solitary hangar in the moonlit

woods, a deeply desponding figure again. Beside him, swung the huge

machine which represented a life of power and luxury; but he no longer

saw it. It called to him with many a creak and quiet snap,--sounds to

start his blood and fire his eye a week--nay, a day ago. But he was deaf

to this music now; the call went unheeded; the future had no further

meaning, for him, nor did he know or think whether he sat in light or in

darkness; whether the woods were silent about him, or panting with life

and sound. His demon had gripped him again and the final battle was on.

There would never be another. Mighty as he felt himself to be, there

were limits even to his capacity for endurance. He could sustain no

further conflict. How then would it end? He never had a doubt himself!

Yet he sat there.

Around him in the forest, the night owls screeched and innumerable small

things without a name, skurried from lair to lair.

He heard them not.

Above, the moon rode, flecking the deepest shadows with the silver from

her half-turned urn, but none of the soft and healing drops fell upon

him. Nature was no longer a goddess, but an avenger; light a revealer,

not a solace. Darkness the only boon.

Nor had time a meaning. From early eve to early morn he sat there and

knew not if it were one hour or twelve. Earth was his no longer. He

roused, when the sun made everything light about him, but he did not

think about it. He rose, but was not conscious that he rose. He unlocked

the door and stepped out into the forest; but he could never remember

doing this. He only knew later that he had been in the woods and now

was in his room at the hotel; all the rest was phantasmagoria, agony and

defeat.

He had crossed the Rubicon of this world’s hopes and fears, but he had

been unconscious of the passage.

XXXIX. THE AVENGER

“Dear Mr. Challoner:

“With every apology for the intrusion, may I request

a few minutes of private conversation with you this evening

at seven o’clock? Let it be in your own room.

“Yours truly,

“ORLANDO BROTHERSON.”

Mr. Challoner had been called upon to face many difficult and

heartrending duties since the blow which had desolated his home fell

upon him.

But from none of them had he shrunk as he did from the interview thus

demanded. He had supposed himself rid of this man. He had dismissed him

from his life when he had dismissed Sweetwater. His face, accordingly,

wore anything but a propitiatory look, when promptly at the hour of

seven, Orlando Brotherson entered his apartments.

His pleasure or his displeasure was, however, a matter of small

consequence to his self-invited visitor. He had come there with a set

purpose, and nothing in heaven or earth could deter him from it now.

Declining the offer of a seat, with the slightest of acknowledgments in

the way of a bow, he took a careful survey of the room before saying:

“Are we alone, Mr. Challoner, or is that man Sweetwater lurking

somewhere within hearing?”

“Mr. Sweetwater is gone, as I had the honour of telling you yesterday,”

was the somewhat stiff reply. “There are no witnesses to this

conference, if that is what you wish to know.”

“Thank you, but you will pardon my insistence if I request the privilege

of closing that door.” He pointed to the one communicating with the

bedroom. “The information I have to give you is not such as I am willing

to have shared, at least for the present.”

“You may close the door,” said Mr. Challoner coldly. “But is it

necessary for you to give me the information you mention, to-night?

If it is of such a nature that you cannot accord me the privilege of

sharing it, as yet, with others, why not spare me till you can? I have

gone through much, Mr. Brotherson.”

“You have,” came in steady assent as the man thus addressed stepped to

the door he had indicated and quietly closed it. “But,” he continued, as

he crossed back to his former position, “would it be easier for you to

go through the night now in anticipation of what I have to reveal than

to hear it at once from my lips while I am in the mood to speak?”

The answer was slow in coming. The courage which had upheld this rapidly

aging man through so many trying interviews, seemed inadequate for the

test put so cruelly upon it. He faltered and sank heavily into a chair,

while the stern man watching him, gave no signs of responsive sympathy

or even interest, only a patient and icy-tempered resolve.

“I cannot live in uncertainty;” such were finally Mr. Challoner’s

words. “What you have to say concerns Edith?” The pause he made was

infinitesimal in length, but it was long enough for a quick disclaimer.

But no such disclaimer came. “I will hear it,” came in reluctant finish.

Mr. Brotherson took a step forward. His manner was as cold as the heart

which lay like a stone in his bosom.

“Will you pardon me if I ask you to rise?” said he. “I have my

weaknesses too.” (He gave no sign of them.) “I cannot speak down from

such a height to the man I am bound to hurt.”

As if answering to the constraint of a will quite outside his own, Mr.

Challoner rose. Their heads were now more nearly on a level and Mr.

Brotherson’s voice remained low, as he proceeded, with quiet intensity.

“There has been a time--and it may exist yet, God knows--when you

thought me in some unknown and secret way the murderer of your daughter.

I do not quarrel with the suspicion; it was justified, Mr. Challoner. I

did kill your daughter, and with this hand! I can no longer deny it.”

The wretched father swayed, following the gesture of the hand thus held

out; but he did not fall, nor did a sound leave his lips.

Brotherson went coldly on:

“I did it because I regarded her treatment of my suit as insolent. I

have no mercy for any such display of intolerance on the part of the

rich and the fortunate. I hated her for it; I hated her class, herself

and all she stood for. To strike the dealer of such a hurt I felt to be

my right. Though a man of small beginnings and of a stock which such

as you call common, I have a pride which few of your blood can equal.

I could not work, or sleep or eat with such a sting in my breast as she

had planted there. To rid myself of it, I determined to kill her, and

I did. How? Oh, that was easy, though it has proved a great

stumbling-block to the detectives, as I knew it would! I shot her--but

not with an ordinary bullet. My charge was a small icicle made

deliberately for the purpose. It had strength enough to penetrate, but

it left no trace behind it. ‘A bullet of ice for a heart of ice,’ I had

said in the torment of my rage. But the word was without knowledge, Mr.

Challoner. I see it now; I have seen it for two whole weeks. I did not

misjudge her condemnation of me, but I misjudged its cause. It was not

to the comparatively poor, the comparatively obscure man she sought

to show contempt, but to the brother of Oswald whose claims she saw

insulted. A woman I should have respected, not killed. A woman of no

pride of station; a woman who loved a man not only of my own class but

of my own blood--a woman, to avenge whose unmerited death I stand

here before you a self-condemned criminal. That is but justice, Mr.

Challoner. That is the way I look at things. Though no sentimentalist;

and dead to all beliefs save the eternal truths of science, I have that

in me which will not let me profit, now that I know myself unworthy, by

the great success I have earned. Hence this confession, Mr. Challoner.

It has not come easily, nor do I shut my eyes in the least to the

results which must follow. But I can not do differently. To-morrow, you

may telegraph to New York. Till then I desire to be left undisturbed. I

have many things to dispose of in the interim.”

Mr. Challoner, very white by now, pointed to the door before he sank

again into his chair. Brotherson took it for dismissal and stepped

slowly back. Then their eyes met again and Mr. Challoner spoke his first

word:

“There was another--a poor woman--she died suddenly--and her wound was

not unlike that inflicted upon Edith. Did you--”

“I did.” The answer came without a tremour. “You may say and so may

others that I was less justified in this attack than in the other; but

I do not see it that way. A theory does not always work in practice.

I wished to test the unusual means I contemplated, and the woman I saw

before me across the court was hard-working and with nothing in life to

look forward to, so--”

A cry of bitter execration from Mr. Challoner cut him short. Turning

with a shrug he was about to lift his hand to the door, when he gave a

violent start and fell hastily back before a quickly entering figure of

such passion and fury as neither of these men had ever seen before.

It was Oswald! Oswald, the kindly! Oswald, the lover of men and the

adorer of women! Oswald, with the words of the dastardly confession he

had partly overheard searing hot within his brain! Oswald, raised in

a moment from the desponding invalid to a terrifying ministrant of

retributive justice.

Orlando could scarcely raise his hand before the other’s was upon his

throat.

“Murderer! doubly-dyed murderer of innocent women!” was hissed in the

strong man’s ears. “Not with the law but with me you must reckon, and

may God and the spirit of my mother nerve my arm!”

XL. DESOLATE

The struggle was fierce but momentary. Oswald with his weakened

powers could not long withstand the steady exertion of Orlando’s giant

strength, and ere long sank away from the contest into Mr. Challoner’s

arms.

“You should not have summoned the shade of our mother to your aid,”

observed the other with a smile, in which the irony was lost in terrible

presage. “I was always her favourite.”

Oswald shuddered. Orlando had spoken truly; she had always been blindly,

arrogantly trustful of her eldest son. No fault could she see in him;

and now--

Impetuously Oswald struggled with his weakness, raised himself in Mr.

Challoner’s arms and cried in loud revolt:

“But God is just. He will not let you escape. If He does, I will not.

I will hound you to the ends of this earth and, if necessary, into the

eternities. Not with the threat of my arm--you are my master there, but

with the curse of a brother who believed you innocent of his darling’s

blood and would have believed you so in face of everything but your own

word.”

“Peace!” adjured Orlando. “There is no account I am not ready to settle.

I have robbed you of the woman you love, but I have despoiled myself.

I stand desolate in the world, who but an hour ago could have chosen my

seat among the best and greatest. What can your curses do after that?”

“Nothing.” The word came slowly like a drop wrung from a nearly spent

heart. “Nothing; nothing. Oh, Orlando, I wish we were both dead and

buried and that there were no further life for either of us.”

The softened tone, the wistful prayer which would blot out an

immortality of joy for the one, that it might save the other from

an immortality of retribution, touched some long unsounded chord in

Orlando’s extraordinary nature.

Advancing a step, he held out his hand--the left one. “We’ll leave the

future to itself, Oswald, and do what we can with the present,” said he.

“I’ve made a mess of my life and spoiled a career which might have made

us both kings. Forgive me, Oswald. I ask for nothing else from God or

man. I should like that. It would strengthen me for to-morrow.”

But Oswald, ever kindly, generous and more ready to think of others than

of himself, had yet some of Orlando’s tenacity. He gazed at that hand

and a flush swept up over his cheek which instantly became ghastly

again.

“I cannot,” said he--“not even the left one. May God forgive me!”

Orlando, struck silent for a moment, dropped his hand and slowly turned

away. Mr. Challoner felt Oswald stiffen in his arms, and break suddenly

away, only to stop short before he had taken one of the half dozen steps

between himself and his departing brother.

“Where are you going?” he demanded in tones which made Orlando turn.

“I might say, To the devil,” was the sarcastic reply. “But I doubt if

he would receive me. No,” he added, in more ordinary tones as the other

shivered and again started forward, “you will have no trouble in finding

me in my own room to-night. I have letters to write and--other things.

A man like me cannot drop out without a ripple. You may go to bed and

sleep. I will keep awake for two.”

“Orlando!” Visions were passing before Oswald’s eyes, soul-crushing

visions such as in his blameless life he never thought could enter into

his consciousness or blast his tranquil outlook upon life. “Orlando!”

he again appealed, covering his eyes in a frenzied attempt to shut out

these horrors, “I cannot let you go like this. To-morrow--”

“To-morrow, in every niche and corner of this world, wherever Edith

Challoner’s name has gone, wherever my name has gone, it will be known

that the discoverer of a practical air-ship, is a man whom they can no

longer honour. Do you think that is not hell enough for me; or that I do

not realise the hell it will be for you? I’ve never wearied you or any

man with my affection; but I’m not all demon. I would gladly have spared

you this additional anguish; but that was impossible. You are my brother

and must suffer from the connection whether we would have it so or

not. If it promises too much misery--and I know no misery like that of

shame--come with me where I go to-morrow. There will be room for two.”

Oswald, swaying with weakness, but maddened by the sight of an overthrow

which carried with it the stifled affections and the admiration of his

whole life, gave a bound forward, opened his arms and--fell.

Orlando stopped short. Gazing down on his prostrate brother, he stood

for a moment with a gleam of something like human tenderness showing

through the flare of dying passions and perishing hopes; then he swung

open the door and passed quietly out, and Mr. Challoner could hear the

laughing remark with which he met and dismissed the half-dozen men and

women who had been drawn to this end of the hall by what had sounded to

them like a fracas between angry men.

XLI. FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

The clock in the hotel office struck three. Orlando Brotherson counted

the strokes; then went on writing. His transom was partly open and

he had just heard a step go by his door. This was nothing new. He had

already heard it several times before that night. It was Mr. Challoner’s

step, and every time it passed, he had rustled his papers or scratched

vigorously with his pen. “He is keeping watch for Oswald,” was his

thought. “They fear a sudden end to this. No one, not the son of my

mother knows me. Do I know myself?”

Four o’clock! The light was still burning, the pile of letters he was

writing increasing.

Five o’clock! A rattling shade betrays an open window. No other sound

disturbs the quiet of the room. It is empty now; but Mr. Challoner, long

since satisfied that all was well, goes by no more. Silence has settled

upon the hotel;--that heavy silence which precedes the dawn.

There was silence in the streets also. The few who were abroad, crept

quietly along. An electric storm was in the air and the surcharged

clouds hung heavy and low, biding the moment of outbreak. A man who had

left a place of many shadows for the more open road, paused and looked

up at these clouds; then went calmly on.

Suddenly the shriek of an approaching train tears through the valley.

Has it a call for this man? No. Yet he pauses in the midst of the street

he is crossing and watches, as a child might watch, for the flash of

its lights at the end of the darkened vista. It comes--filling the empty

space at which he stares with moving life--engine, baggage car and a

long string of Pullmans. Then all is dark again and only the noise of

its slackening wheels comes to him through the night. It has stopped at

the station. A minute longer and it has started again, and the quickly

lessening rumble of its departure is all that remains of this vision of

man’s activity and ceaseless expectancy. When it is quite gone and all

is quiet, a sigh falls from the man’s lips and he moves on, but this

time, for some unexplainable reason, in the direction of the station.

With lowered head he passes along, noting little till he arrives within

sight of the depot where some freight is being handled, and a trunk

or two wheeled down the platform. No sight could be more ordinary or

unsuggestive, but it has its attraction for him, for he looks up as he

goes by and follows the passage of that truck down the platform till it

has reached the corner and disappeared. Then he sighs again and again

moves on.

A cluster of houses, one of them open and lighted, was all which lay

between him now and the country road. He was hurrying past, for his step

had unconsciously quickened as he turned his back upon the station, when

he was seized again by that mood of curiosity and stepped up to the door

from which a light issued and looked in. A common eating-room lay before

him, with rudely spread tables and one very sleepy waiter taking orders

from a new arrival who sat with his back to the door. Why did the lonely

man on the sidewalk start as his eye fell on the latter’s commonplace

figure, a hungry man demanding breakfast in a cheap, country restaurant?

His own physique was powerful while that of the other looked slim and

frail. But fear was in the air, and the brooding of a tempest affects

some temperaments in a totally unexpected manner. As the man inside

turns slightly and looks up, the master figure on the sidewalk vanishes,

and his step, if any one had been interested enough to listen, rings

with a new note as it turns into the country road it has at last

reached.

But no one heeded. The new arrival munches his roll and waits

impatiently for his coffee, while without, the clouds pile soundlessly

in the sky, one of them taking the form of a huge hand with clutching

fingers reaching down into the hollow void beneath.

XLII. AT SIX

Mr. Challoner had been honest in his statement regarding the departure

of Sweetwater. He had not only paid and dismissed our young detective,

but he had seen him take the train for New York. And Sweetwater had gone

away in good faith, too, possibly with his convictions undisturbed, but

acknowledging at last that he had reached the end of his resources. But

the brain does not loose its hold upon its work as readily as the hand

does. He was halfway to New York and had consciously bidden farewell to

the whole subject, when he suddenly startled those about him by rising

impetuously to his feet. He sat again immediately, but with a light in

his small grey eye which Mr. Gryce would have understood and revelled

in. The idea for which he had searched industriously for months had come

at last, unbidden; thrown up from some remote recess of the mind which

had seemingly closed upon the subject forever.

“I have it. I have it,” he murmured in ceaseless reiteration to himself.

“I will go back to Mr. Challoner and let him decide if the idea is worth

pursuing. Perhaps an experiment may be necessary. It was bitter cold

that night; I wish it were icy weather now. But a chemist can help us

out. Good God! if this should be the explanation of the mystery, alas

for Orlando and alas for Oswald!”

But his sympathies did not deter him. He returned to Derby at once, and

as soon as he dared, presented himself at the hotel and asked for Mr.

Challoner.

He was amazed to find that gentleman already up and in a state of

agitation that was very disquieting. But he brightened wonderfully at

sight of his visitor, and drawing him inside the room, observed with

trembling eagerness:

“I do not know why you have come back, but never was man more welcome.

Mr. Brotherson has confessed.”

“Confessed!”

“Yes, he killed both women; my daughter and his neighbour, the

washerwoman, with a--”

“Wait,” broke in Sweetwater, eagerly, “let me tell you.” And stooping,

he whispered something in the other’s ear.

Mr. Challoner stared at him amazed, then slowly nodded his head.

“How came you to think--” he began; but Sweetwater in his great anxiety

interrupted him with a quick:

“Explanations will keep, Mr. Challoner. What of the man himself? Where

is he? That’s the important thing now.”

“He was in his room till early this morning writing letters, but he is

not there now. The door is unlocked and I went in. From appearances I

fear the worst. That is why your presence relieves me so. Where do you

think he is?”

“In his hangar in the woods. Where else would he go to--”

“I have thought of that. Shall we start out alone or take witnesses with

us?”

“We will go alone. Does Oswald anticipate--”

“He is sure. But he lacks strength to move. He lies on my bed in there.

Doris and her father are with him.”

“We will not wait a minute. How the storm holds off. I hope it will hold

off for another hour.”

Mr. Challoner made no reply. He had spoken because he felt compelled to

speak, but it had not been easy for him, nor could any trifles move him

now.

The town was up by this time and, though they chose the least frequented

streets, they had to suffer from some encounters. It was a good half

hour before they found themselves in the forest and in sight of the

hangar. One look that way, and Sweetwater turned to see what the effect

was upon Mr. Challoner.

A murmur of dismay greeted him. The oval of that great lid stood up

against the forest background.

“He has escaped,” cried Mr. Challoner.

But Sweetwater, laying a finger on his lip, advanced and laid his ear

against the door. Then he cast a quick look aloft. Nothing was to be

seen there. The darkness of storm in the heavens but nothing more.--Yes!

now, a flash of vivid and destructive lightning!

The two men drew back and their glances crossed.

“Let us return to the highroad,” whispered Sweetwater; “we can see

nothing here.”

Mr. Challoner, trembling very much, wheeled slowly about.

“Wait,” enjoined Sweetwater. “First let me take a look inside.”

Running to the nearest tree, he quickly climbed it, worked himself along

a protruding branch and looked down into the open hangar. It was now so

dark that details escaped him, but one thing was certain. The air-ship

was not there.

Descending, he drew Mr. Challoner hastily along. “He’s gone,” said he.

“Let us reach the high ground as quickly as we can. I’m glad that Mr.

Oswald Brotherson is not with us or--or Miss Doris.”

But this expression of satisfaction died on his lips. At the point where

the forest road debouches into the highway, he had already caught

a glimpse of their two figures. They were waiting for news, and the

brother spoke up the instant he saw Sweetwater:

“Where is he? You’ve not found him or you wouldn’t be coming alone. He

cannot have gone up. He cannot manage it without an assistant. We must

seek him somewhere else; in the forest or in our house at home. Ah!” The

lightning had forked again.

“He’s not in the forest and he’s not in your home,” returned Sweetwater.

“He’s aloft; the air-ship is not in the shed. And he can go up alone

now.” Then more slowly: “But he cannot come down.”

They strained their eyes in a maddening search of the heavens. But the

darkness had so increased that they could be sure of nothing. Doris sank

upon her knees.

Suddenly the lightning flashed again, this time so vividly and so near

that the whole heaven burst into fiery illumination above them and the

thunder, crashing almost simultaneously, seemed for a moment to rock

the world and bow the heavens towards them. Then a silence; then

Sweetwater’s whisper in Mr. Challoner’s ear:

“Take them away! I saw him; he was falling like a shot.”

Mr. Challoner threw out his arms, then steadied himself. Oswald was

reeling; Oswald had seen too. But Doris was there. When the lightning

flashed again, she was standing and Oswald was weeping on her bosom.