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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?”

She very nearly laughed. “This is New York,” she said, “not Arizona. And besides there was no express-car. This thing was done by somebody who wanted the effect of a wreck, and nothing else, and it was done by some one who knew about railroads.

“Now, what class of persons who know about railroads could be moved by that motive?”

She was driving straight now at the boy I stood to cover. At another step she would name the class. Discharged workmen would know about railroads; they would be interested to show how less efficient the road was without them; and a desperate one might plan such a wreck as a demonstration. If so, he would wish only the effect of the wreck, and not loss of life. Marion was going dead ahead on the right line, in another moment she would remember the man we passed, and the “black band” letters. I made a final desperate effort to divert her.

“Come along!” I called, “the first thing to do now is to talk with Clinton Howard. The nearest telephone will be at Crewe’s house on the hill.”

And it won.

“Lisa!” she cried, “you’re right I We must tell him at once.”

We hurried down the track to the motor-car. I had gained a little time. But how could I keep my promise. And the next moment the problem became more difficult. The track boss came up with a short iron bar that his men had found in the weeds along the right of way.

“There’s the claw-bar, that the devil done it with,” he said.

“You can tell it’s just been handled by the way the rust’s rubbed off.”

It was conclusive evidence. Everybody could see how the workman’s hands, as he labored with the claw-bar to draw the spikes, had cleaned off the rust.

I hurried the motor away. We raced up the long winding road to Crewe’s country-house, sitting like a feudal castle on the summit. And I wondered, at every moment, how I could keep my promise. The boy was a criminal, deserving to be hanged, no doubt, but the naked mother’s heart that had dabbed against my fingers overwhelmed me.

Almost in a flash, I thought, we were in the grounds and before Crewe’s house. Then I noticed lights and a confusion of voices. No one came to meet us. And we got out of the motor and went in through the open door. We found a group of excited servants. An old butler began to stammer to Marion.

“It was his heart, Miss . . . the doctor warned the attendants. But he got away to-night. It was overexertion, Miss. He fell just now as the attendants brought him in.” And he flung open the library door.

On a leather couch illumined by the brilliant light, Crewe lay; his massive relentless face with the great bowed nose, like the iron cast of what Marion had called a Nietzsche creature, motionless in death; his arms straight beside him with the great gloved hands open.

And all at once, at the sight, with a heavenly inspiration, I kept my promise.

“Look!” I cried. “Oh, everybody, how the palms of his gloves are covered with rust!”