THE MYSTERY SOLVED
THEY tell the story yet on the P. & O., and, indeed, everywhere that
railroad men foregather—they tell it with shining eyes and fast-beating
hearts—how Jack Welsh, grasping in an instant the meaning of Allan’s
words, tied his handkerchief over mouth and nose, and fought his way
inch by inch into that burning house, crawling on hands and knees with
his face close to the floor where the smoke was thinnest—fought his way
up the stairs and from room to room, until he found the one where five
men lay, bound and senseless, on the floor; and they tell how he dragged
them one by one to the open air, feeling the hot floor tremble under him
toward the end, and himself falling unconscious beside the last man as
he dropped him to the ground.
They tell the story with the proud consciousness that this man was one
of themselves, and that what he did was done in the way of duty, with no
thought of fame or reward, without pausing to count the risk.
But even this heroism might have been of small avail, had not Reddy
Magraw at that instant come upon the scene. Let him tell the story, as
he told it next day to Mrs. Welsh.
“You know, whin I come down to your house the first thing in the mornin’
an’ found Jack had gone out to Schooley’s, I was purty mad, fer we had
kind of arranged t’ go out there togither, if Allan didn’t show up; an’
it didn’t seem t’ me that he was playin’ just fair, though o’ course I
understand now that he didn’t have time t’ call me. Well, I made up my
mind I’d git out there as quick as I could, so I hopped the first train
I could ketch, which was second ninety-eight, and I reckon I must have
jumped off not more’n half an hour after Jack an’ Mamie did—though mind
you, you hadn’t said anything about Mamie goin’ along, an’ I reckon I
know why,” and here he stopped for a long look deep into Mrs. Welsh’s
eyes.
“Go ahead with the story,” she said. “Though I don’t say you ain’t
right.”
“O’ course I’m right,” said Reddy, confidently. “Well, as I was sayin’,
I got off the train an’ wandered around fer some time, an’ then struck
the road an’ started t’ foller it; an’ purty soon I seed smoke over the
tree-tops an’ after that I didn’t loiter none, I tell you.
“Well, sir, when I run around the corner o’ that house, I purty nigh
dropped dead in my tracks. There on the ground lay about a dozen men, as
it seemed to me; there was the lunatic, an’ a sight he was, with his
face all covered with blood; an’ there was Jack, an’ his face was
covered with blood, too, but not his own, the lunatic’s; and there was
Allan West, lookin’ deader ’n a salt mackerel; there was five other
fellys, some a-layin’ nice an’ still, an’ some kind o’ squirmin’ around
an’ moanin’; an’ there was Mamie, with Allan’s head in her lap a-lookin’
most dead herself; an’ when I see her settin’ there, I tell you my heart
jest seemed to swell up inside me like it was a-goin’ t’ bust.
“Well, I didn’t know no more what to do than a rabbit. There was eight
men whose lives depended on me, more or less; not that I’d ’a’ cared
about the lunatic, but even without him there was seven, an’ me no
doctor, neither. But Mamie certainly did show what was in her. Where she
learned it I don’t know, but she set me t’ pumpin’ them fellers’ arms up
an’ down n’ blowin’ down their throats—Jack an’ Allan first—an’ it
wasn’t a great while till Jack came around. He was kind o’ weak an’
giddy, but not fer long; an’ in ten or fifteen minutes, we had three
others all right; an’ jest about then, the lunatic began to come to, so
we tied his hands an’ feet t’ make sure he didn’t git away, or sneak up
on any of us from behind an’ cave our heads in. An’ when he did come to,
he laid there an’ cussed somethin’ frightful. I wanted t’ hit him with
the rock ag’in, but Mamie said no, to gag him, an’ we stuffed his mouth
full of his own dirty clothes, an’ I guess he wished he’d kept ’em
cleaner.
“But what worried us most of all was Allan. He jest laid there limp as a
rag, an’ Mamie workin’ with him, purty nigh as white as he was.”
“He can’t die!” she kept saying to herself, over and over. “He can’t
die! It was God brought me here to save him, and he can’t die now!”
The smoke and flames had burst up from the burning house, a beacon to
all the country-side, and assistance was at hand ere long; strong hands
and tender hearts; and presently two great wagons, bedded with straw to
take conscious and unconscious alike to Schooley’s, whither already a
swift rider had been dispatched to summon aid from Wadsworth. And at
Wadsworth, too, it may well be believed that no time was lost. A special
was got ready in a hurry; doctors and nurses summoned; and when the
little cavalcade reached Schooley’s, the special was waiting there for
it; and trained hands took over the work of relief.
Trained hands which worked swiftly and surely, and presently Allan
opened his eyes and looked up at Mamie and smiled at her.
“Dear Mamie!” he murmured and closed his eyes and slept.
And the overwrought girl, conscious for the first time of her utter
fatigue, reeled and would have fallen had not a strong arm caught her
and carried her to a cot.
I have wondered often what force it was drew Mamie from her bed, that
morning, with sure knowledge of Allan’s danger, and guided her to him
along that rutted country road. The human mind is a strange and
wonderful thing, with the seeming power of projecting itself through
space, at times, and summoning loved ones or conveying a message to
them.
Science seems to admit so much—or, at least, hesitates to deny it, in
face of the evidence. And I have sometimes thought that, as Allan fell
through the swirling smoke down that flight of stairs in the old stone
house, his last conscious thought of Mamie, that thought somehow flashed
to her across the miles that lay between them—a C. Q. D. signal of
distress, as it were, from him to her, on the wonderful wireless of the
mind.
At least, I have no other explanation—I only know it really happened
just as I have told it here.
* * * * *
A great crowd was waiting when that special pulled in to Wadsworth—a
crowd which cheered and cheered as Allan and Jack Welsh and Mamie were
borne to the carriages which were in waiting; a crowd from which three
women threw themselves upon the conductor and brakemen, weak but
smiling; a crowd which cursed the idiot and would have torn him from his
cot and committed I know not what violence but for the platoon of
police, assisted by Stanley’s specials, with Stanley himself, saturnine
yet smiling, at the head of them.
For Stanley had returned and with him three prisoners and a wagon load
of the richest silks ever shipped over an American railroad.
For the whole thing had been a case of robbery, after all, just as
Stanley had suspected.
It had been carefully planned. The conspirators—old hands at the
game—had learned that a shipment of silks of unusual richness had been
made by a New York house to its jobbers in Saint Louis—had even received
from some traitorous clerk the number of the car in which they were
carried—had flagged the train, took conductor and brakemen prisoners, as
they hurried forward to find out what the red light meant; had
afterwards secured the engineer and fireman at the point of a revolver,
extinguished the headlight, and looted the car at their leisure.
Then, after carefully sealing it up again so that the robbery would not
be discovered until the car arrived at its destination, they had
convoyed the prisoners to the old stone house, and committed them to the
care of the half-witted monster they had brought with them from the city
slums, with instructions that they be released in forty-eight hours, in
which time they fancied they would be able to get well beyond reach of
pursuit.
But they had not fully appreciated their confederate’s crazed condition;
they had not foreseen in what a horrible way he would carry out their
instructions—give them credit for that. Nor had they foreseen that,
within a very few hours, one of the keenest detectives in the middle
west would be after them. They had thought such search as would be made
would be for the missing men, and had hoped that, in the disorganized
condition of the road, no very effective search could be made at all.
How Stanley followed them, like the bloodhound that he was, and finally
ran them down need not be related in detail here. Stanley himself has
told the story in the book of memoirs which he published after he had
retired from active service. Once he had got his clue to them, the rest
was a question of only a few hours; for a wagon heavily laden cannot
proceed at any great rate of speed, nor can it pass along the roads
unseen. He had sworn in two deputies at a farm house, and with their
assistance, had no difficulty in surprising the robbers, as they jogged
along a country road, thinking themselves quite secure. It was merely
the matter of a levelled revolver and a stern command, and the
application of certain lengths of rope to wrists and ankles. Then,
turning the wagon about, he had driven in triumph back to Wadsworth,
reaching there just at dawn.
And the first news he had heard was of Allan’s disappearance. Puzzled
and worried, he had seen his prisoners lodged safely in the county jail,
and was just preparing to join the search himself, when news of the
rescue flashed in from Schooley’s.
Oh, but there were crazy people on Wadsworth’s streets that day—people
wild with excitement, telling the story over and over to each other,
shaking each other’s hands, repeating this detail or that as though they
would never tire of hearing it. And the reporters! Well, the wildest
stretch of their imaginations had conceived no such story as this! And
they flashed it forth to the four points of the compass, so that, next
morning, the whole country read the tale of the heroism of Jack Welsh
and his daughter, Mamie.
* * * * *
It was perhaps, a year afterwards that the postman, one morning, brought
a little registered package for John Welsh. Jack chanced to be at home
that morning, and opened the package in considerable surprise, for
registered packages were not of common occurrence with him.
“Why, what’s this?” he said, and held up what appeared to be a medal of
gold.
“Let’s see it,” said Mary, quickly, and examined it with eager eyes.
“Why, look!” she cried. “On one side is a woman holdin’ a wreath, an’ on
the other it says ‘To John Welsh, for valour, February 2, 1906.’ It’s
from the hayro fund!” she cried. “Jack—”
But Jack, looking very red and uncomfortable, had bolted from the house.
“I does my work,” he muttered angrily to himself, as he strode up the
street, “but I ain’t no hayro, an’ what’s more, I won’t be one! What do
they mean by sendin’ me a medal? Confound their impudence, anyway. Why
can’t they leave a feller alone? I don’t want their old medal!”
But Mary put it carefully away, and it is to this day her dearest
treasure, to be shown proudly whenever the story of Jack’s exploit is
told—provided, always, that Jack isn’t there!
* * * * *
And the robbers? Conviction followed, as a matter of course. There could
be no doubt of their guilt, and in the end they saw the wisdom of
confessing and throwing themselves upon the mercy of the court. The
madman was consigned to an asylum for the criminally insane, where he
remains to this day, occupying for the most part a straitjacket and a
padded cell, for he has never recovered from his lust of blood and
instinct to murder.
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