Of course Helen Illingworth was suspicious, but why should Rodney
doubt his assumption of the blame? And they were working to
establish his innocence. The thought disquieted him lest they should
discover the truth in some way. And it gave him joy also. They
would work despite any remonstrance from him. He thought of that
protest to his father always with uneasiness. If he could only have
found it and destroyed it himself he would have been happier. Could
it be in existence somewhere? Would it turn up? Would they unearth
it? Well, he had done his best for his father, yet he was glad those
two disbelieved and were working for him.
Meade had been the most brilliant, Winters the most indifferent,
Rodney the most persevering, of the trio at college. He remembered
that well. His first thought was to forbid Rodney to do anything
further, although how far his friend would respect his wishes he
could not tell. Anyway, he did not have to decide that matter,
because he could not say a word to him. To have allowed Winters to
write would have betrayed his whereabouts. He was living with
Winters under an assumed name of course. He had had his hair cut
differently and had grown a beard and mustache. He thought it would
have taken a keen eye indeed to have recognized him with these
changes.
In the end he handed the letter back to Winters, only charging him
that if he wrote to Rodney he must not betray the fact that Meade was
with him. He had plenty of time to think over the situation. He
decided finally that so long as he had been born an engineer and
trained and educated as an engineer and had worked as an engineer
that an engineer he would have to be until the end of the chapter.
He would go out and seek work, not such work as his ability and
experience and education had entitled him to undertake, but under
some assumed name he would begin at the very beginning, at the foot
of the ladder as a rodman, if he could; and then he would work on
quietly, faithfully, obscurely, praying for his chance. If it came
he would strive to be equal to the opportunity; if it did not at
least he would be engaged in honest work in an honest way.
It was a very humble programme, not at all promising or heroic or
romantic, just a beginning. He would work on and wait. They say
that all things come to him who waits. That is only half true. Some
things come to him who waits sometimes. That is more nearly
accurate. Well, he could think of no better plan. So he bade
Winters good-by, swearing him again to secrecy until he should lift
the ban against speech, and rode away. When he got to the little
village on the Picket Wire below the dam he stopped a long time
gazing at the long bridge, or viaduct, of steel that was replacing
the old wooden trestle and carrying the railroad from the hills to
the eastward over the river.
It was not such an undertaking as the lost International, still it
was interesting engineering construction. It was work that would be
intensely congenial, to which he was drawn almost irresistibly, yet
he managed to hold himself aloof. The Martlet people were building
this steel bridge and they had just finished the arch up under the
mesa. A well-known construction company was building the great earth
dam across the Picket Wire in the valley.
Meade's engineering life had been spent mainly out of the United
States. He had never been connected with the Martlet and its
employees until he had been associated with his father on the
International. He could have gone among them with little danger of
immediate discovery, since most of the men he had known had gone down
with the bridge, but he decided not to do so. The work on the dam
would be simpler and he would have less opportunity to betray himself
and it would give him more chance to work up in a plausible and
reasonable way. Besides, if Colonel Illingworth came on to inspect
his bridge, as he would probably do, Meade would have to leave before
his arrival. The dam would be safer. No one would ever think of
looking for him there. And no one would ever recognize in the
rough-bearded workman the clear-cut, smooth-faced young engineer of
other days.
The dam was twenty miles up the valley. Yes, he would be less apt to
be observed working there than on the bridge. Yet as he recalled
that private car and that it might come there, he realized that she
might be on it. His heart leaped even as it had leaped at the sight
of the viaduct then building, as it had quivered to the familiar
rat-tat-tat of the pneumatic riveters and the clang and the clash of
the structural steel. But what was the use? He would not dare trust
himself to look at her even from a distance. No, it was the dam that
best suited his purpose, so he turned away from the bridge and rode
up the valley. There he was fortunate in falling into a position, as
has been set forth.
XXI
MARSHALING THE EVIDENCE
For all her sweetness and light, Helen Illingworth was dowered with
intense energy and a powerful will. What she began she finished, and
she was not deterred from beginning things by fears of consequences.
When she had so powerful an incentive as the rehabilitation of her
lover, the resumption of their engagement, and their prospective
marriage there was nothing that could stop her. She supplemented a
man's analytical powers with a woman's intuition in her work.
She was convinced that Meade had not told the truth in that famous
declaration in his father's office. She respected him for his desire
to shield his father's name and fame even at the expense of his
veracity, albeit she would not have been a woman if she had not
resented the fact that in so doing he had sacrificed her happiness as
well as his own. Indeed, perhaps, she could not have borne that
separation and delay had it not been for the consciousness that in
any event her father's hatred of the very name of Meade would have
forced her to choose between the two men, and womanlike, she shrank
from the necessity of such a decision. Time would be her ally. She
was the more content to wait, therefore.
The question whether Meade, Junior, was the more responsible or even
responsible at all was more or less academic to Illingworth. He
would have had nothing further to do with either of them if both were
living, and certainly not with the younger survivor. Really from the
point of view of wealth and station a marriage between his daughter
and Meade might have been considered a condescension on her part, in
her father's eyes at least. Nothing could have justified such an
alliance from a worldly standpoint but Meade's continued and
unequivocal success.
Rightly had the old man made the match dependent upon the successful
completion of the bridge. He congratulated himself on that wise
decision. He tried to believe that if it had come to a final choice
the daughter, in spite of the fact that such is the habit of women in
the experience of life, would not have given up age and her father
for youth and her lover. Indeed she was too genuinely devoted to her
father to do that except as a last resort. She cherished the hope
first, that Meade could re-establish himself--she had too sweeping a
confidence in his character and capacity to doubt that--and second,
that it could be shown that he had not been responsible for the
failure of the bridge. She was more and more convinced that his
assumption of the blame had been dictated by the highest of motives
and instead of being a fit subject for censure and condemnation he
merited admiration and applause. She hoped with her woman's wit to
prove this eventually, perhaps in spite of her lover, and to this end
she applied herself assiduously to solve the problem.
To her, at her request, came Rodney. Now the reporters had dealt
very gently with Helen Illingworth. They had made no announcement of
the engagement or of its breaking at her father's earnest request.
There was no necessity of bringing her into the bridge story,
although it would have added a dramatic touch to their narratives.
They had held a brief conference before they separated and at
Rodney's suggestion they had agreed to leave her out of it. There
was enough without her. None of the yellow journals had suspected
the broken engagement since it had never been announced, and the
loyal young fellows kept their compact religiously as they had
cheerfully promised themselves they would do.
Not that Helen was in the least ashamed of the engagement. Her
inclination when she found it had not been referred to in any of the
reports or discussions of the catastrophe had been to avow it. But
upon reflection she saw it would only have caused further talk, it
would have annoyed her father beyond expression, it would not have
helped Meade any, and it might hamper her in her work. She realized
that she had Rodney to thank for this omission and after she had time
to collect herself she asked him to call upon her. He was very glad
to come.
"I sent for you, Mr. Rodney, on account of Mr. Bertram Meade," she
began, after thanking him for his courtesy toward her the day the
older Meade died and thereafter.
"I divined as much, Miss Illingworth."
"I want you to help me."
"I shall be delighted to do so for three reasons."
"And those are?"
"First, for your own sake. I know, you will pardon me, how deeply
interested you are in Meade's rehabilitation. Second, because I
believe that he was not telling the truth, that he is shielding his
father. Third, because he was my dearest friend at college. We were
classmates and his happiness and future are as dear to me as my own."
"Mr. Rodney," returned the woman, flushing a little, "you know of
course that we were engaged. You heard me say it. I know that it
was due to you that the engagement was kept out of the papers.
Personally, I should have proclaimed it from the house-tops but for
my father. He considers it broken."
"And you? Forgive me, Miss Illingworth!"
"It is as binding upon me as it ever was, although Mr. Meade gave me
complete and entire release before he went away."
"I suppose so. That would be like him."
"He said he would not link my life and its possibilities with a
wrecked career like his and, although I told him frankly that nothing
could be worse than separation, he persisted and----"
"I understand," said Rodney gravely. "Indeed as a man of honor he
could do no less."
"You are all alike," said the woman a little bitterly. "Your notions
are supreme. You may break hearts, you may ruin lives, you may
sacrifice love and your best friend so long as you preserve those
notions of honor intact."
"And yet it is just because we preserve those ideas of honor, which
you call our notions, that your heart breaks in parting. If we
weren't honorable men you wouldn't care for us at all."
"Yes, I suppose that's it. Well, I do care very much, as you
understand. I may as well be frank with you. My father, of course,
is bitterly antagonistic to Mr. Meade. He won't even allow his name
to be mentioned."
"One can hardly blame him for that, Miss Illingworth. The failure of
the bridge seriously embarrassed the Martlet Bridge Company, and it
is a great handicap for them to overcome in seeking any further
contracts."
"I know it was only my father's private fortune and that of all the
others, that kept the works from going under."
"Everybody knows that and honors your father and his associates for
their sacrifices."
"But I did not summon you here to discuss the affairs of the Martlet
Bridge Company," said Helen, "interesting though they may be, but to
see if by working together there was not some way by which we could
prove that Bertram Meade has assumed the blame to save the honor and
fame of his father."
"You believe that, Miss Illingworth?"
"I am sure of it."
"So am I," said Rodney quickly.
"Thank God," cried the girl a little hysterically, surprised and
almost swept off her feet by this prompt avowal by one who, though
young, was already an authority in the literature of engineering.
"Why do you say that? What evidence have you?"
"Unfortunately," answered Rodney, "I haven't any tangible evidence
whatever, but I know Bert Meade as few people know him, Miss
Illingworth, perhaps not even you," he went on, in spite of her
unspoken, but vigorous protest at that last statement, as she shook
her head and smiled at him. "And there are several little
circumstances that make me feel that he could not have been to blame.
Have you any ground for your conviction?"
"Probably even less than you have and yet I, too, know him. You were
four years at college with him, I was five minutes in his arms," she
said boldly, "on the bridge. He saved my life there. I have never
told anyone before." Rapidly she narrated the incident. "This is
what made him speak, but this is beside the point and does not
interest you," she concluded graphically.
"On the contrary it interests me intensely. It adds the least touch
of romance to the tragedy. If I were a writer of fiction instead of
handling the dry details of engineering operations, what an
opportunity is here presented!"
"But you will respect my confidence?"
"Absolutely, my dear young lady. You may speak with perfect
assurance."
Helen Illingworth looked into the plain, homely, but strong, reliable
face of the man and dismissed any thought of reserve from her mind.
"Let us place," she began, "the little circumstances upon which our
intuitions are based, if intuitions are ever based on anything
tangible, together. Perhaps the sum of them may yield something."
"The suggestion is admirable," assented Rodney, "and as I knew him
first and longest I will begin. Perhaps it would be well, too, to
take down our evidence and then transcribe the notes so that we may
consider them at leisure, getting an eye view as well as an ear view
of them."
"That will be an admirable plan, but how?" asked the girl eagerly.
"I happen to have mastered shorthand and I can take down my words and
yours."
He drew out a note-book, pad, and pencil from his pocket and sat down
at the nearest table.
"Now, in the first place," he began, writing and speaking at the same
time--it was a little difficult at first being so unusual, but as he
spoke slowly and thoughtfully he managed it--"point one is Meade's
absolutely unbounded devotion to his father. The old man was not
always right. His theories and propositions were arguable and some
were controverted. The boy was as clear as a bell on most things,
but I recall that he would maintain his father's propositions
tenaciously, determinedly, long after everybody, perhaps even the old
man himself, had been convinced of their fallacy. Engineering is in
Meade's blood. He is the fifth of his family to graduate at Harvard
and three of his forbears were engineers, his grandfather noted and
his father world-famous. He fairly idolized his father. The
affection between them was delightful. The king could do no wrong.
Meade was quick-tempered and not very receptive to criticism, but he
would take the severest stricture from the old man without a murmur."
"Here we have," said the woman, who had listened with strained
attention, "an early devotion to a person and an unbounded respect
for his attainments."
"Exactly."
"Go on."
"The next point is, Meade was inordinately proud of his family
reputation, especially in the engineering field. Of the two of the
line who were not engineers, one was a soldier and a distinguished
one, but his career had little interest for Meade. I have heard him
say that there had been a steady, upward movement in his family, that
had reached its culmination in his father. He hoped to be a good,
useful engineer, but he never dreamed of going any higher or even
approaching the altitude of the other man."
"It was a sort of fetish with him, then, wasn't it?" asked the woman
as Rodney stopped again.
"You have hit it exactly. His love for the man, his admiration for
the engineer, which sometimes blinded him, and his pride in his
father's career as typifying his family, were unbounded."
"You have established a motive for any sacrifice: love, respect,
pride!"
"That's the way it presents itself to me, Miss Illingworth. I know
thoroughly the quixotic, impulsive, self-sacrificing nature of the
man. I know that he would have done anything on earth to save his
father, even at the sacrifice of his own career, and since I have
seen you I can realize how powerful these motives must have been."
Rodney said this quite simply, as if it were a matter of course,
rather than a compliment, and bluntly as he might have said it to a
friend and comrade, and Helen Illingworth understood and was grateful.
"It has been a grief to me that I weighed so little in comparison,"
she said simply.
"I shouldn't put it that way exactly," observed Rodney carefully.
"You see even if it could be shown that it was the old man's fault
entirely the young one would still have to share some of the blame."
"You mean he should have foreseen it and pointed it out?"
"Yes."
"I think he did."
"I think so, too, but if he did foresee it and point it out, he
should not have allowed the older man to overawe him or force him to
accept what he believed to be structurally unsound. And Meade
realized that he was practically done for when he gave you up, unless
he wished you to share his disgrace, and in the face of every
conceivable opposition a woman would have to meet. I don't know
whether he reasoned it out exactly in this way. I don't think he had
time to argue the case, the shock was so swift and sudden, but as
soon as he did see the situation he discovered that you were lost
anyway, except of the charity of your affection, which he could not
accept, and that he could save his father. This may all be the
wildest speculation, but this is the way it presents itself to me."
"And to me," said Helen, "but before we go any further, let me say I
should rather be his wife, shamed, humiliated, heartbroken,
blameworthy though he may be, than enjoy any other fate or fortune."
"If anyone did love Meade for himself that is the kind of affection
his qualities merit and would evoke in the mind of a discerning
woman."
"Thank you. Will you go on, now?"
"Of course you know that what we have said is not evidence. It is
all assumption, perhaps presumption."
"It's as true as gospel," said the girl earnestly.
"To you and to me, yes. Well," he continued, "I remember that Meade
and I were talking just before he went to Burma three years ago about
a new book by a German named Schmidt-Chemnitz, in which certain
methods of calculations were proposed for the design of lacings.
They were empiric, of course, because there haven't been enough
experiments on big members like those in the International from which
to deduce the true laws. You know it was the lacings of one of the
compression members of the cantilever that gave way."
"Wait a minute," said Helen.
She went to her desk, opened a drawer, extracted therefrom a paper.
"Look at this," she said. She put her finger on the little sketch
Abbott and Curtiss had discussed on the observation platform of the
private car. "These are lacings, aren't they?"
"Yes," said Rodney, studying the sketch with deep interest. "Where
did you get this?"
"Presently," said Miss Illingworth. "Go on with your account."
"Well, Meade and I got into a hot discussion over some of
Schmidt-Chemnitz's formulas. I maintained that they were wrong. He
took the opposite view. He was right. He was so interested in the
matter that after we separated he wrote me a letter about it, adding
some new arguments to re-enforce his contention. The other day I
made a careful search among my papers and by happy chance I found the
letter. I was half-convinced by his reasoning then, although the
matter was dropped. I am altogether convinced now. His argument is
very clear. I have examined since then the plan and sketches for
that bridge. The calculations did not agree with those of
Schmidt-Chemnitz. His methods were not used. Meade could not have
forgotten the matter. I am morally certain that he made a protest to
his father, probably in writing, then allowed himself to be persuaded
by his father's reasoning. As a matter of fact, I suppose that
Bertram Meade, Senior, was a greater authority on steel bridge
designing than even Schmidt-Chemnitz. Well, sometimes, the smaller
man is right. We know now and Bertram Meade, Senior, would admit it
if he were alive, that Schmidt-Chemnitz was right, and we can make a
good guess that young Meade did not let it pass without a protest."
"Mr. Rodney, it's wonderful."
"Well, that's not all. There was not a little bit of hesitation in
Meade's assumption of the blame, not a person who heard it doubted it
apparently. I have sounded them all carefully, except myself."
"And me."
"It was a splendid piece of dramatic acting,--one hates to call such
a sacrifice by such a name--but that is what it was."
"My thought exactly," said the woman. "Is that all?"
"Not yet. I was the first man to see the older Meade except his son
and Shurtliff."
"Oh, Shurtliff!"
"We'll come to him presently. It was obvious that the older Meade
had been writing. I don't know whether the others noticed it, but it
is my business to take in even inconsiderable details. The pen was
still between his fingers. His hand was constricted and the pen had
not dropped out, in fact I myself took it out and laid it on the
desk."
"His last conscious act was to write something, therefore?"
"Yes, for confirmation I ascertained that there were ink-stains on
his fingers."
"What did he write and to whom?"
"I don't know. I can only guess."
"What do you guess?"
"The assumption of entire responsibility and the exculpation of his
son, probably to some paper."
"From the same motives that prompted Bert?"
"No, because it was true. But that is only an assumption, although
not altogether without further evidence."
"And what is that?" asked the woman eagerly.
She had sat down opposite Rodney at the table and was leaning toward
him. Her color came and went, her breathing was rapid and strained
under the wild beating of her heart.
"The blotter on the desk. I examined it at my leisure. It had been
used some time. I went over it with a magnifying glass. Meade,
Senior, had evidently written a letter. I found the words 'fault is
mine.' I have the blotter in my desk. The word 'fault' is barely
decipherable, 'is' can be made out with difficulty, but 'mine' is
quite plain. I am familiar with the older Meade's handwriting, and
though this is weaker and feebler and more irregular than was his
custom--ordinarily he wrote a bold, free hand--this is unmistakably
his. Of course no one can say that he wrote any letter. This is
piling assumption upon assumption and, furthermore, there is no
evidence of any signature having been written beneath it."
"But there are signatures on the blotter?"
"Yes, one in particular, very clear."
"It might have been added later."
"Of course."
"Is that all?"
"There is one more bit of evidence."
"What's that?"
"The sheet of paper on which the design computations for the
compression chord members appear was not with the other plans and
tracings of the bridge."
"How do you know?"
"These plans were taken over by the Martlet Company after Meade's
death and Mr. Curtiss and I examined them. We found that sheet
missing."
"It's wonderful!" cried the girl, her eyes shining. "I was convinced
before, but, if I had not been, you would have persuaded me beyond a
doubt."
"I have persuaded myself, too," said Rodney. "But there is not a
single thing here that would justify any publicity even if we were
prepared to go against Meade's obvious desire. As I say, it is all
assumption. No one could prove it."
"You are wrong," said the girl. "One person can prove it."
"Who is that?"
"Shurtliff."
"I wondered if that would occur to you."