The Sleuth of St. James Street [75]
girl had taken a special course in college to fit her to revise her grandfather's great work. There was no grandson to undertake this labor, and she had gone about the task herself. She would not trust the great book to outside hands. A Warfield had written it, and a Warfield should keep the edition up. Her revision was now in the hands of a publisher in Boston, and it was sound and comprehensive, the critics said; the ablest textbook on circumstantial evidence in America. I looked in a sort of wonder at this girl, carried off her feet by a tawny barbarian! Marion was absorbed in the thing; and I understood her anxiety. But the most pressing danger, she did not seem to realize. It lay, I thought, in the revenge of a discharged workman. Clinton Howard had to drop any number of incompetent persons, and they wrote him all sorts of threatening letters, I had been told. With all the awful things that happen over the country some of these angry people might do anything. There are always some half-mad people. She went on. "But Clinton says the public is as just as Daniel. If he has an accident in the ordinary course of affairs the public will hold him for it. But if anything should happen that he could not help, the public will not hold him responsible." I realized the force of that. What reasonable human care could prevent he must answer for, but the outrage of a criminal would not be taken in the public mind against him. On the contrary, the sympathy of the public would flow in. When the people feel that a man is making every effort for their welfare, the criminal act of an outsider brings them over wholly to his support. Profound interest carried Marion off her feet. "I was in a panic the other day, and Clinton said, `Don't let rotten luck get your goat. I'm done if an engineer runs by a block, but nothing else can put it over on me'!" She laughed with me at the direct, virile, idiom of young America in action. An event interrupted the discourse. The motor took a sharp curve and a young man running across the road suddenly flung himself face, down in the grass beyond the curb. "Is he hurt?" said Marion to the chauffeur. "No, Miss, he's hiding, Miss," said the man, and we swept out of sight. I thought it more likely that the creature was in liquor. In spite of the great country-houses, it was not good hunting-ground for the criminal class, during the season when everybody was about. The very number of servants, when a place is open, in a rather effective way, police it. Besides the young man looked like a sort of workman. One gets such impressions at a glance. The motor descended the long hill toward the river and the flat valley. It hummed into the curves and hollows, through the pockets of chill air, and out again into the soft September night. Then finally it swept out into the flat valley, and stopped with a grind of the emergency brake that caused the wheels to skid, ripping up the dust and gravel. For a moment in the jar and confusion we did not realize what had happened, then we saw a great locomotive lying on its side, and a line of Pullmans, sunk to the axles in the soft earth. The whole "Montreal Express" was derailed, here in the flat land at the grade crossing. The thing had been done some time. The fire had been drawn from the engine; there was only a sputtering of steam. The passengers had been removed. A wrecking-car had come up from down the line. A telegrapher was setting up a little instrument on a box by the roadside. A lineman was climbing a pole to connect his wire. A track boss with a torch and a crew of men were coming up from an examination of the line littered with its wreck. I hardly know what happened in the next few minutes. We were out of the motor and among the men almost before the car stopped. No one had been hurt. The passenger-coaches were not turned over, and the engineer and fireman had jumped as the cab toppled. By the greatest good fortune the train had gone off the track in this low flat land almost level with the grade. Several things joined to avoid a terrible