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Page 100
"Yes, Miss Warfield."
"Did the impact of the engine force these spikes out of the
ties?"
"Yes, Miss Warfield, it forced them out."
"How do you know it forced them out?"
"Well, Miss Warfield," said the man, pointing to the rail and the
denuded cross-ties, don't you see they're out?"
"I see that they are out," replied Marion, "but I do not yet see
that they have been forced out."
She moved a step closer to the track boss and her voice hardened.
"If these spikes were forced out by the impact of the engine, we
ought to find torn spike holes inclining toward the end of the
crossties. . . . Look!"
The big practical workman suddenly realized what the girl meant.
He stooped over and began to flash his torch along the end of the
ties. We crowded against him. Every one of the spike holes, for
the entire length of the rail, was straight and clean. The man
seized one of the spikes and scrutinized it under his torch.
Then he stood up. For a moment he did not speak. He merely
looked at Marion. "It's the holy truth!" he said. "Somebody
pulled these spikes with a clawbar. That weakened the rail, and
she bowed out when the engine struck her."
Then he turned around, and shouted down the track to his crew.
"Hey, boys! Spread out along the right of way and see if you
can't find a claw-bar. The devils that do these tricks always
throw away their tools."
We stood together in a little tragic group. The old peasant
woman came over to where I stood, she walked with a dead, wooden
step. "Contessa," she whispered, her old lips against my hand.
"You will save him?"
And suddenly with a wild human resentment, I longed to cut a way
out of the trap of this Fatality; to force its ruthless decree
into a sort of equity, if I could do it.
"Yes," I said, "I will save him!"
It was an impulse with no plan behind it. But the dabbing of the
withered mouth on my fingers was like actual physical contact
with a human heart.
For a moment she looked at me as one among the damned might look
at Michael. Then she went slowly away, down through the wooded
copse of the meadow. And I turned about to meet Marion. I knew
that she was now after the identity of the wrecker, and I faced
her to foul her lines.
"This is not the work of one with murder in his heart," she said
"A criminal agent set on a ruthless destruction of property and
life would have drawn these spikes on a trestle or an embankment,
at a point where the train would be running at high speed."
She paused for a moment, then she went on speaking to me as
though she merely uttered her mental comment to herself.
"These spikes are drawn at a point where the train slows down for
a crossing and precisely where the engine would go off onto the
hard road-bed of the highway into a level meadow. That means
some one planned this wreck to result in the least destruction of
life and property possible. Now, what class of persons could be
after the effect of a wreck, exclusive of a loss of life?"
I saw where her relentless deductions would presently lead. This
was precisely the result that a discharged foreign workman would
seek in his reprisal. This man would have hot blood, the
southern Europe instinct for revenge, but with such a mother, no
mere lust to kill. I tried to divert her from the fugitive.
"Train robbers," I said. "I wonder what was in the express-car?"
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