Chapter X: Book III: The Heart of Man (3)

“Struck dead! Why do you use that word, struck? Struck dead! she, a young woman. Oh, Doris, an accident! My darling has been killed in an accident!”

“They do not call it accident. They call it what it never was. What it never was,” she insisted, pressing him back with frightened hands, as he strove to rise. “Miss Challoner was--” How nearly the word shot had left her lips. How fiercely above all else, in that harrowing moment had risen the desire to fling the accusation of that word into the ears of him who listened from his secret hiding-place. But she refrained out of compassion for the man she loved, and declared instead, “Miss Challoner died from a wound; how given, why given, no one knows. I had rather have died myself than have to tell you this. Oh, Mr. Brotherson, speak, sob, do anything but--”

She started back, dropping his hands as she did so. With quick intuition she saw that he must be left to himself if he were to meet this blow without succumbing. The body must have freedom if the spirit would not go mad. Conscious, or perhaps not conscious, of his release from her restraining hand, albeit profiting by it, he staggered to his feet, murmuring that word of doom: “Wound! wound! my darling died of a wound! What kind of a wound?” he suddenly thundered out. “I cannot understand what you mean by wound. Make it clear to me. Make it clear to me at once. If I must bear this grief, let me know its whole depth. Leave nothing to my imagination or I cannot answer for myself. Tell it all, Doris.”

And Doris told him:

“She was on the mezzanine floor of the hotel where she lives. She was seemingly happy and had been writing a letter--a letter to me which they never forwarded. There was no one else by but some strangers--good people whom one must believe. She was crossing the floor when suddenly she threw up her hands and fell. A thin, narrow paper-cutter was in her grasp; and it flew into the lobby. Some say she struck herself with that cutter; for when they picked her up they found a wound in her breast which that cutter might have made.”

“Edith? never!”

The words were chokingly said; he was swaying, almost falling, but he steadied himself.

“Who says that?” he asked.

“It was the coroner’s verdict.”

“And she died that way--died?”

“Immediately.”

“After writing to you?”

“Yes.”

“What was in that letter?”

“Nothing of threat, they say. Only just cheer and expressions of hope. Just like the others, Mr. Brotherson.”

“And they accuse her of taking her own life? Their verdict is a lie. They did not know her.”

Then, after some moments of wild and confused feeling, he declared, with a desperate effort at self-control: “You said that some believe this. Then there must be others who do not. What do they say?”

“Nothing. They simply feel as you do. They see no reason for the act and no evidence of her having meditated it. Her father and her friend insist besides, that she was incapable of such a horror. The mystery of it is killing us all; me above others, for I’ve had to show you a cheerful face, with my brain reeling and my heart like lead in my bosom.”

She held out her hands. She tried to draw his attention to herself; not from any sentiment of egotism, but to break, if she could, the strain of these insupportable horrors where so short a time before Hope sang and Life revelled in re-awakened joys.

Perhaps some faint realisation of this reached him, for presently he caught her by the hands and bowed his head upon her shoulder and finally let her seat him again, before he said:

“Do they know of--of my interest in this?”

“Yes; they know about the two O. B.s.”

“The two--” He was on his feet again, but only for a moment; his weakness was greater than his will power.

“Orlando and Oswald Brotherson,” she explained, in answer to his broken appeal. “Your brother wrote letters to her as well as you, and signed them just as you did, with his initials only. These letters were found in her desk, and he was supposed, for a time, to have been the author of all that were so signed. But they found out the difference after awhile. Yours were easily recognised after they learned there was another O. B. who loved her.”

The words were plain enough, but the stricken listener did not take them in. They carried no meaning to him. How should they? The very idea she sought to impress upon him by this seemingly careless allusion was an incredible one. She found it her dreadful task to tell him the hard, bare truth.

“Your brother,” said she, “was devoted to Miss Challoner, too. He even wanted to marry her. I cannot keep back this fact. It is known everywhere, and by everybody but you.”

“Orlando?” His lips took an ironical curve, as he uttered the word. This was a young girl’s imaginative fancy to him. “Why Orlando never knew her, never saw her, never--”

“He met her at Lenox.”

The name produced its effect. He stared, made an effort to think, repeated Lenox over to himself; then suddenly lost his hold upon the idea which that word suggested, struggled again for it, seized it in an instant of madness and shouted out:

“Yes, yes, I remember. I sent him there--” and paused, his mind blank again.

Poor Doris, frightened to her very soul, looked blindly about for help; but she did not quit his side; she did not dare to, for his lips had reopened; the continuity of his thoughts had returned; he was going to speak.

“I sent him there.” The words came in a sort of shout. “I was so hungry to hear of her and I thought he might mention her in his letter. Insane! Insane! He saw her and--What’s that you said about his loving her? He couldn’t have loved her; he’s not of the loving sort. They’ve deceived you with strange tales. They’ve deceived the whole world with fancies and mad dreams. He may have admired her, but loved her,--no! or if he had, he would have respected my claims.”

“He did not know them.”

A laugh; a laugh which paled Doris’ cheek; then his tones grew even again, memory came back and he muttered faintly:

“That is true. I said nothing to him. He had the right to court her--and he did, you say; wrote to her; imposed himself upon her, drove her mad with importunities she was forced to rebuke; and--and what else? There is something else. Tell me; I will know it all.”

He was standing now, his feebleness all gone, passion in every lineament and his eye alive and feverish, with emotion. “Tell me,” he repeated, with unrestrained vehemence. “Tell me all. Kill me with sorrow but save me from being unjust.”

“He wrote her a letter; it frightened her. He followed it up by a visit--”

Doris paused; the sentence hung suspended. She had heard a step--a hand on the door.

Orlando had entered the room.

XXXIII. ALONE

Oswald had heard nothing, seen nothing. But he took note of Doris’ silence, and turning towards her in frenzy saw what had happened, and so was in a measure prepared for the stern, short sentence which now rang through the room:

“Wait, Miss Scott! you tell the story badly. Let him listen to me. From my mouth only shall he hear the stern and seemingly unnatural part I played in this family tragedy.”

The face of Oswald hardened. Those pliant features--beloved for their gracious kindliness--set themselves in lines which altered them almost beyond recognition; but his voice was not without some of its natural sweetness, as, after a long and hollow look at the other’s composed countenance, he abruptly exclaimed:

“Speak! I am bound to listen; you are my brother.”

Orlando turned towards Doris. She was slipping away.

“Don’t go,” said he.

But she was gone.

Slowly he turned back.

Oswald raised his hand and checked the words with which he would have begun his story.

“Never mind the beginnings,” said he. “Doris has told all that. You saw Miss Challoner in Lenox--admired her--offered yourself to her and afterwards wrote her a threatening letter because she rejected you.”

“It is true. Other men have followed just such unworthy impulses--and been ashamed and sorry afterwards. I was sorry and I was ashamed, and as soon as my first anger was over went to tell her so. But she mistook my purpose and--”

“And what?”

Orlando hesitated. Even his iron nature trembled before the misery he saw--a misery he was destined to augment rather than soothe. With pains altogether out of keeping with his character, he sought in the recesses of his darkened mind for words less bitter and less abrupt than those which sprang involuntarily to his lips. But he did not find them. Though he pitied his brother and wished to show that he did, nothing but the stern language suitable to the stern fact he wished to impart, would leave his lips.

“And ended the pitiful struggle of the moment with one quick, unpremeditated blow,” was what he said. “There is no other explanation possible for this act, Oswald. Bitter as it is for me to acknowledge it, I am thus far guilty of this beloved woman’s death. But, as God hears me, from the moment I first saw her, to the moment I saw her last, I did not know, nor did I for a moment dream that she was anything to you or to any other man of my stamp and station. I thought she despised my country birth, my mechanical attempts, my lack of aristocratic pretensions and traditions.”

“Edith?”

“Now that I know she had other reasons for her contempt--that the words she wrote were in rebuke to the brother rather than to the man, I feel my guilt and deplore my anger. I cannot say more. I should but insult your grief by any lengthy expressions of regret and sorrow.”

A groan of intolerable anguish from the sick man’s lips, and then the quick thrust of his re-awakened intelligence rising superior to the overthrow of all his hopes.

“For a woman of Edith’s principle to seek death in a moment of desperation, the provocation must have been very great. Tell me if I’m to hate you through life--yea through all eternity--or if I must seek in some unimaginable failure of my own character or conduct the cause of her intolerable despair.”

“Oswald!” The tone was controlling, and yet that of one strong man to another. “Is it for us to read the heart of any woman, least of all of a woman of her susceptibilities and keen inner life? The wish to end all comes to some natures like a lightning flash from a clear sky. It comes, it goes, often without leaving a sign. But if a weapon chances to be near--(here it was in hand)--then death follows the impulse which, given an instant of thought, would have vanished in a back sweep of other emotions. Chance was the real accessory to this death by suicide. Oswald, let us realise it as such and accept our sorrow as a mutual burden and turn to what remains to us of life and labour. Work is grief’s only consolation. Then let us work.”

But of all this Oswald had caught but the one word.

“Chance?” he repeated. “Orlando, I believe in God.”

“Then seek your comfort there. I find it in harnessing the winds; in forcing the powers of nature to do my bidding.”

The other did not speak, and the silence grew heavy. It was broken, when it was broken, by a cry from Oswald:

“No more,” said he, “no more.” Then, in a yearning accent, “Send Doris to me.”

Orlando started. This name coming so close upon that word comfort produced a strange effect upon him. But another look at Oswald and he was ready to do his bidding. The bitter ordeal was over; let him have his solace if it was in her power to give it to him.

Orlando, upon leaving his brother’s room, did not stop to deliver that brother’s message directly to Doris; he left this for Truda to do, and retired immediately to his hangar in the woods. Locking himself in, he slightly raised the roof and then sat down before the car which was rapidly taking on shape and assuming that individuality and appearance of sentient life which hitherto he had only seen in dreams. But his eye, which had never failed to kindle at this sight before, shone dully in the semi-gloom. The air-car could wait; he would first have his hour in this solitude of his own making. The gaze he dreaded, the words from which he shrank could not penetrate here. He might even shout her name aloud, and only these windowless walls would respond. He was alone with his past, his present and his future.

Alone!

He needed to be. The strongest must pause when the precipice yawns before him. The gulf can be spanned; he feels himself forceful enough for that; but his eyes must take their measurement of it first; he must know its depths and possible dangers. Only a fool would ignore these steeps of jagged rock; and he was no fool, only a man to whom the unexpected had happened, a man who had seen his way clear to the horizon and then had come up against this! Love, when he thought such folly dead! Remorse, when Glory called for the quiet mind and heart!

He recognised its mordant fang, and knew that its ravages, though only just begun, would last his lifetime. Nothing could stop them now, nothing, nothing. And he laughed, as the thought went home; laughed at the irony of fate and its inexorableness; laughed at his own defeat and his nearness to a barred Paradise. Oswald loved Edith, loved her yet, with a flame time would take long to quench. Doris loved Oswald and he Doris; and not one of them would ever attain the delights each was so fitted to enjoy. Why shouldn’t he laugh? What is left to man but mockery when all props fall? Disappointment was the universal lot; and it should go merrily with him if he must take his turn at it. But here the strong spirit of the man re-asserted itself; it should be but a turn. A man’s joys are not bounded by his loves or even by the satisfaction of a perfectly untrammelled mind. Performance makes a world of its own for the capable and the strong, and this was still left to him. He, Orlando Brotherson, despair while his great work lay unfinished! That would be to lay stress on the inevitable pains and fears of commonplace humanity. He was not of that ilk. Intellect was his god; ambition his motive power. What would this casual blight upon his supreme contentment be to him, when with the wings of his air-car spread, he should spurn the earth and soar into the heaven of fame simultaneously with his flight into the open.

He could wait for that hour. He had measured the gulf before him and found it passable. Henceforth no looking back.

Rising, he stood for a moment gazing, with an alert eye now, upon such sections of his car as had not yet been fitted into their places; then he bent forward to his work, and soon the lips which had uttered that sardonic laugh a few minutes before, parted in gentler fashion, and song took the place of curses--a ballad of love and fondest truth. But Orlando never knew what he sang. He had the gift and used it.

Would his tones, however, have rung out with quite so mellow a sweetness had he seen the restless figure even then circling his retreat with eyes darting accusation and arms lifted towards him in wild but impotent threat?

Yes, I think they would; for he knew that the man who thus expressed his helplessness along with his convictions, was no nearer the end he had set himself to attain than on the day he first betrayed his suspicions.

XXXIV. THE HUT CHANGES ITS NAME

That night Oswald was taken very ill. For three days his life hung in the balance, then youth and healthy living triumphed over shock and bereavement, and he came slowly back to his sad and crippled existence.

He had been conscious for a week or more of his surroundings, and of his bitter sorrows as well, when one morning he asked Doris whose face it was he had seen bending over him so often during the last week: “Have you a new doctor? A man with white hair and a comforting smile? Or have I dreamed this face? I have had so many fancies this might easily be one of them.”

“No, it is not a fancy,” was the quiet reply. “Nor is it the face of a doctor. It is that of friend. One whose heart is bound up in your recovery; one for whom you must live, Mr. Brotherson.”

“I don’t know him, Doris. It’s a strange face to me. And yet, it’s not altogether strange. Who is this man and why should he care for me so deeply?”

“Because you share one love and one grief. It is Edith’s father whom you see at your bedside. He has helped to nurse you ever since you came down this second time.”

“Edith’s father! Doris, it cannot be. Edith’s father!”

“Yes, Mr. Challoner has been in Derby for the last two weeks. He has only one interest now; to see you well again.”

“Why?”

Doris caught the note of pain, if not suspicion, in this query, and smiled as she asked in turn:

“Shall he answer that question himself? He is waiting to come in. Not to talk. You need not fear his talking. He’s as quiet as any man I ever saw.”

The sick man closed his eyes, and Doris watching, saw the flush rise to his emaciated cheek, then slowly fade away again to a pallor that frightened her. Had she injured where she would heal? Had she pressed too suddenly and too hard on the ever gaping wound in her invalid’s breast? She gasped in terror at the thought, then she faintly smiled, for his eyes had opened again and showed a calm determination as he said:

“I should like to see him. I should like him to answer the question I have just put you. I should rest easier and get well faster--or not get well at all.”

This latter he half whispered, and Doris, tripping from the room may not have heard it, for her face showed no further shadow as she ushered in Mr. Challoner, and closed the door behind him. She had looked forward to this moment for days. To Oswald, however, it was an unexpected excitement and his voice trembled with something more than physical weakness as he greeted his visitor and thanked him for his attentions.

“Doris says that you have shown me this kindness from the desire you have to see me well again Mr. Challoner. Is this true?”

“Very true. I cannot emphasise the fact too strongly.”

Oswald’s eyes met his again, this time with great earnestness.

“You must have serious reasons for feeling so--reasons which I do not quite understand. May I ask why you place such value upon a life which, if ever useful to itself or others, has lost and lost forever, the one delight which gave it meaning?”

It was for Mr. Challoner’s voice to tremble now, as reaching out his hand, he declared, with unmistakable feeling:

“I have no son. I have no interest left in life, outside this room and the possibilities it contains for me. Your attachment to my daughter has created a bond between us, Mr. Brotherson, which I sincerely hope to see recognised by you.”

Startled and deeply moved, the young man stretched out a shaking hand towards his visitor, with the feeble but exulting cry:

“Then you do not blame me for her wretched and mysterious death. You hold me guiltless of the misery which nerved her despairing arm?”

“Quite guiltless.”

Oswald’s wan and pinched features took on a beautiful expression and Mr. Challoner no longer wondered at his daughter’s choice.

“Thank God!” fell from the sick man’s lips, and then there was a silence during which their two hands met.

It was some minutes before either spoke and then it was Oswald who said:

“I must confide to you certain facts. I honoured your daughter and realised her position fully. Our plight was never made in words, nor should I have presumed to advance any claim to her hand if I had not made good my expectations, Mr. Challoner. I meant to win both her regard and yours by acts, not words. I felt that I had a great deal to do and I was prepared to work and wait. I loved her--” He turned away his head and the silence which filled up the gap, united those two hearts, as the old and young are seldom united.

But when a little later, Mr. Challoner rejoined Doris, in her little sitting-room, he nevertheless showed a perplexity she had hoped to see removed by this understanding with the younger Brotherson.

The cause became apparent as soon as he spoke.

“These brothers hold by each other,” said he. “Oswald will hear nothing against Orlando. He says that he has redeemed his fault. He does not even protest that his brother’s word is to be believed in this matter. He does not seem to think that necessary. He evidently regards Orlando’s personality as speaking as truly and satisfactorily for itself, as his own does. And I dared not undeceive him.”

“He does not know all our reasons for distrust. He has heard nothing about the poor washerwoman.”

“No, and he must not,--not for weeks. He has borne all that he can.”

“His confidence in his older brother is sublime. I do not share it; but I cannot help but respect him for it.”

It was warmly said, and Mr. Challoner could not forbear casting an anxious look at her upturned face. What he saw there made him turn away with a sigh.

“This confidence has for me a very unhappy side,” he remarked. “It shows me Oswald’s thought. He who loved her best, accepts the cruel verdict of an unreasoning public.”

Doris’ large eyes burned with a weird light upon his face.

“He has not had my dream,” she murmured, with all the quiet of an unmoved conviction.

Yet as the days went by, even her manner changed towards the busy inventor. It was hardly possible for it not to. The high stand he took; the regard accorded him on every side; his talent; his conversation, which was an education in itself, and, above all, his absorption in a work daily advancing towards completion, removed him so insensibly and yet so decidedly, from the hideous past of tragedy with which his name, if not his honour, was associated, that, unconsciously to herself, she gradually lost her icy air of repulsion and lent him a more or less attentive ear, when he chose to join their small company of an evening. The result was that he turned so bright a side upon her that toleration merged from day to day into admiration and memory lost itself in anticipation of the event which was to prove him a man of men, if not one of the world’s greatest mechanical geniuses.

Meantime, Oswald was steadily improving in health, if not in spirits. He had taken his first walk without any unfavourable results, and Orlando decided from this that the time had come for an explanation of his device and his requirements in regard to it. Seated together in Oswald’s room, he broached the subject thus:

“Oswald, what is your idea about what I’m making up there?”

“That it will be a success.”

“I know; but its character, its use? What do you think it is?”

“I’ve an idea; but my idea don’t fit the conditions.”

“How’s that?”

“The shed is too closely hemmed in. You haven’t room--”

“For what?”

“To start an aeroplane.”

“Yet it is certainly a device for flying.”

“I supposed so; but--”

“It is an air-car with a new and valuable idea--the idea for which the whole world has been seeking ever since the first aeroplane found its way up from the earth. My car needs no room to start in save that which it occupies. If it did, it would be but the modification of a hundred others.”

“Orlando!”

As Oswald thus gave expression to his surprise, their two faces were a study: the fire of genius in the one; the light of sympathetic understanding in the other.

“If this car, now within three days of its completion,” Orlando proceeded, “does not rise from the oval of my hangar like a bird from its nest, and after a wide and circling flight descend again into the self same spot without any swerving from its direct course, then have I failed in my endeavour and must take a back seat with the rest. But it will not fail. I’m certain of success, Oswald. All I want just now is a sympathetic helper--you, for instance; someone who will aid me with the final fittings and hold his peace to all eternity if the impossible occurs and the thing proves a failure.”

“Have you such pride as that?”

“Precisely.”

“So much that you cannot face failure?”

“Not when attached to my name. You can see how I feel about that by the secrecy I have worked under. No other person living knows what I have just communicated to you. Every part shipped here came from different manufacturing firms; sometimes a part of a part was all I allowed to be made in any one place. My fame, like my ship, must rise with one bound into the air, or it must never rise at all. It was not made for petty accomplishment, or the slow plodding of commonplace minds. I must startle, or remain obscure. That is why I chose this place for my venture, and you for my helper and associate.”

“You want me to ascend with you?”

“Exactly.”

“At the end of three days?”

“Yes.”

“Orlando, I cannot.”

“You cannot? Not strong enough yet? I’ll wait then,--three days more.”

“The time’s too short. A month is scarcely sufficient. It would be folly, such as you never show, to trust a nerve so undermined as mine till time has restored its power. For an enterprise like this you need a man of ready strength and resources; not one whose condition you might be obliged to consider at a very critical moment.”

Orlando, balked thus at the outset, showed his displeasure.

“You do not do justice to your will. It is strong enough to carry you through anything.”

“It was.”

“You can force it to act for you.”

“I fear not, Orlando.”

“I counted on you and you thwart me at the most critical moment of my life.”

Oswald smiled; his whole candid and generous nature bursting into view, in one quick flash.

“Perhaps,” he assented; “but you will thank me when you realise my weakness. Another man must be found--quick, deft, secret, yet honourably alive to the importance of the occasion and your rights as a great original thinker and mechanician.”

“Do you know such a man?”

“I don’t; but there must be many such among our workmen.”

“There isn’t one; and I haven’t time to send to Brooklyn. I reckoned on you.”

“Can you wait a month?”

“No.”

“A fortnight, then?”

“No, not ten days.”

Oswald looked surprised. He would like to have asked why such precipitation was necessary, but the tone in which this ultimatum was given was of that decisive character which admits of no argument. He, therefore, merely looked his query. But Orlando was not one to answer looks; besides, he had no reply for the same importunate question urged by his own good sense. He knew that he must make the attempt upon which his future rested soon, and without risk of the sapping influence of lengthened suspense and weeks of waiting. He could hold on to those two demons leagued in attack against him, for a definite seven days, but not for an indeterminate time. If he were to be saved from folly,--from himself--events must rush.

He, therefore, repeated his no, with increased vehemence, adding, as he marked the reproach in his brother’s eye, “I cannot wait. The test must be made on Saturday evening next, whatever the conditions; whatever the weather. An air-car to be serviceable must be ready to meet lightning and tempest, and what is worse, perhaps, an insufficient crew.” Then rising, he exclaimed, with a determination which rendered him majestic, “If help is not forthcoming, I’ll do it all myself. Nothing shall hold me back; nothing shall stop me; and when you see me and my car rise above the treetops, you’ll feel that I have done what I could to make you forget--”

He did not need to continue. Oswald understood and flashed a grateful look his way before saying:

“You will make the attempt at night?”

“Certainly.”

“And on Saturday?”

“I’ve said it.”

“I will run over in my mind the qualifications of such men as I know and acquaint you with the result to-morrow.”

“There are adjustments to be made. A man of accuracy is necessary.”

“I will remember.”

“And he must be likable. I can do nothing with a man with whom I’m not perfectly in accord.”

“I understand that.”

“Good-night then.” A moment of hesitancy, then, “I wish not only yourself but Miss Scott to be present at this test. Prepare her for the spectacle; but not yet, not till within an hour or two of the occasion.”

And with a proud smile in which flashed a significance which startled Oswald, he gave a hurried nod and turned away.

When in an hour afterwards, Doris looked in through the open door, she found Oswald sitting with face buried in his hands, thinking so deeply that he did not hear her. He had sat like this, immovable and absorbed, ever since his brother had left him.

XXXV. SILENCE--AND A KNOCK

Oswald did not succeed in finding a man to please Orlando. He suggested one person after another to the exacting inventor, but none were satisfactory to him and each in turn was turned down. It is not every one we want to have share a world-wide triumph or an ignominious defeat. And the days were passing.

He had said in a moment of elation, “I will do it alone;” but he knew even then that he could not. Two hands were necessary to start the car; afterwards, he might manage it alone. Descent was even possible, but to give the contrivance its first lift required a second mechanician. Where was he to find one to please him? And what was he to do if he did not? Conquer his prejudices against such men as he had seen, or delay the attempt, as Oswald had suggested, till he could get one of his old cronies on from New York. He could do neither. The obstinacy of his nature was such as to offer an invincible barrier against either suggestion. One alternative remained. He had heard of women aviators. If Doris could be induced to accompany him into the air, instead of clinging sodden-like to the weight of Oswald’s woe, then would the world behold a triumph which would dwarf the ecstasy of the bird’s flight and rob the eagle of his kingly pride. But Doris barely endured him as yet, and the thought was not one to be considered for a moment. Yet what other course remained? He was brooding deeply on the subject, in his hangar one evening--(it was Thursday and Saturday was but two days off) when there came a light knock at the door.

This had never occurred before. He had given strict orders, backed by his brother’s authority, that he was never to be intruded upon when in this place; and though he had sometimes encountered the prying eyes of the curious flashing from behind the trees encircling the hangar, his door had never been approached before, or his privacy encroached upon. He started then, when this low but penetrating sound struck across the turmoil of his thoughts, and cast one look in the direction from which it came; but he did not rise, or even change his position on his workman’s stool.

Then it came again, still low but with an insistence which drew his brows together and made his hand fall from the wire he had been unconsciously holding through the mental debate which was absorbing him. Still he made no response, and the knocking continued. Should he ignore it entirely, start up his motor and render himself oblivious to all other sounds? At every other point in his career he would have done this, but an unknown, and as yet unnamed, something had entered his heart during this fatal month, which made old ways impossible and oblivion a thing he dared not court too recklessly. Should this be a summons from Doris! Should (inconceivable idea, yet it seized upon him relentlessly and would not yield for the asking) should it be Doris herself!

Taking advantage of a momentary cessation of the ceaseless tap tap, he listened. Silence was never profounder than in this forest on that windless night. Earth and air seemed, to his strained ear, emptied of all sound. The clatter of his own steady, unhastened heart-beat was all that broke upon the stillness. He might be alone in the Universe for all token of life beyond these walls, or so he was saying to himself, when sharp, quick, sinister, the knocking recommenced, demanding admission, insisting upon attention, drawing him against his own will to his feet, and finally, though he made more than one stand against it, to the very door.

“Who’s there?” he asked, imperiously and with some show of anger.

No answer, but another quiet knock.

“Speak! or go from my door. No one has the right to intrude here. What is your name and business?”

Continued knocking--nothing more.

With an outburst of wrath, which made the hangar ring, Orlando lifted his fist to answer this appeal in his own fierce fashion from his own side of the door, but the impulse paused at fulfilment, and he let his arm fall again in a rush of self-hatred which it would have pained his worst enemy, even little Doris, to witness. As it reached his side, the knock came again.

It was too much. With an oath, Orlando reached for his key. But before fitting it into the lock, he cast a look behind him. The car was in plain sight, filling the central space from floor to roof. A single glance from a stranger’s eye, and its principal secret would be a secret no longer. He must not run such a risk. Before he answered this call, he must drop the curtain he had rigged up against such emergencies as these. He had but to pull a cord and a veil would fall before his treasure, concealing it as effectually as an Eastern bride is concealed behind her yashmak.

Stepping to the wall, he drew that cord, then with an impatient sigh, returned to the door.

Another quiet but insistent knock greeted him. In no fury now, but with a vague sense of portent which gave an aspect of farewell to the one quick glance he cast about the well-known spot, he fitted the key in the lock, and stood ready to turn it.

“I ask again your name and your business,” he shouted out in loud command. “Tell them or--” He meant to say, “or I do not turn this key.” But something withheld the threat. He knew that it would perish in the utterance; that he could not carry it out. He would have to open the door now, response or no response. “Speak!” was the word with which he finished his demand.

A final knock.

Pulling a pistol from his pocket, with his left hand, he turned the key with his right.

The door remained unopened.

Stepping slowly back, he stared at its unpainted boards for a moment, then he spoke up quietly, almost courteously:

“Enter.”

But the command passed unheeded; the latch was not raised, and only the slightest tap was heard.

With a bound he reached forward and pulled the door open. Then a great silence fell upon him and a rigidity as of the grave seized and stiffened his powerful frame.

The man confronting him from the darkness was Sweetwater.

XXXVI. THE MAN WITHIN AND THE MAN WITHOUT

An instant of silence, during which the two men eyed each other; then, Sweetwater, with an ironical smile directed towards the pistol lightly remarked:

“Mr. Challoner and other men at the hotel are acquainted with my purpose and await my return. I have come--” here he cast a glowing look at the huge curtain cutting off the greater portion of the illy-lit interior--“to offer you my services, Mr. Brotherson. I have no other motive for this intrusion than to be of use. I am deeply interested in your invention, to the development of which I have already lent some aid, and can bring to the test you propose a sympathetic help which you could hardly find in any other person living.”

The silence which settled down at the completion of these words had a weight which made that of the previous moment seem light and all athrob with sound. The man within had not yet caught his breath; the man without held his, in an anxiety which had little to do with the direction of the weapon, into which he looked. Then an owl hooted far away in the forest, and Orlando, slowly lowering his arm, asked in an oddly constrained tone:

“How long have you been in town?”

The answer cut clean through any lingering hope he may have had.

“Ever since the day your brother was told the story of his great misfortune.”

“Ah! still at your old tricks! I thought you had quit that business as unprofitable.”

“I don’t know. I never expect quick returns. He who holds on for a rise sometimes reaps unlooked-for profits.”

The arm and fist of Orlando Brotherson ached to hurl this fellow back into the heart of the midnight woods.

But they remained quiescent and he spoke instead. “I have buried the business. You will never resuscitate it through me.”

Sweetwater smiled. There was no mirth in his smile though there was lightness in his tone as said:

“Then let us go back to the matter in hand. You need a helper; where are you going to find one if you don’t take me?”

A growl from Brotherson’s set lips. Never had he looked more dangerous than in the one burning instant following this daring repetition of the detective’s outrageous request. But as he noted how slight was the figure opposing him from the other side of the threshold, he was swayed by his natural admiration of pluck in the physically weak, and lost his threatening attitude, only to assume one which Sweetwater secretly found it even harder to meet.

“You are a fool,” was the stinging remark he heard flung at him. “Do you want to play the police-officer here and arrest me in mid air?”

“Mr. Brotherson, you understand me as little as I am supposed to understand you. Humble as my place is in society and, I may add, in the Department whose interests I serve, there are in me two men. One you know passably well--the detective whose methods, only indifferently clever show that he has very much to learn. Of the other--the workman acquainted with hammer and saw, but with some knowledge too of higher mathematics and the principles upon which great mechanical inventions depend, you know little, and must imagine much. I was playing the gawky when I helped you in the old house in Brooklyn. I was interested in your air-ship--Oh, I recognised it for what it was, notwithstanding its oddity and lack of ostensible means for flying--but I was not caught in the whirl of its idea; the idea by which you doubtless expect, and with very good reason too, to revolutionise the science of aviation. But since then I’ve been thinking it over, and am so filled with your own hopes that either I must have a hand in the finishing and sailing of the one you have yourself constructed, or go to work myself on the hints you have unconsciously given me, and make a car of my own.”

Audacity often succeeds where subtler means fail. Orlando, with a curious twist of his strong lip, took hold of the detective’s arm and drew him in, shutting and locking the door carefully behind him.

“Now,” said he, “you shall tell me what you think you have discovered, to make any ideas of your own available in the manufacture of a superior self-propelling air-ship.”

Sweetwater who had been so violently wheeled about in entering that he stood with his back to the curtain concealing the car, answered without hesitation.

“You have a device, entirely new so far as I can judge, by which this car can leap at once into space, hold its own in any direction, and alight again upon any given spot without shock to the machine or danger to the people controlling it.”

“Explain the device.”

“I will draw it.”

“You can?”

“As I see it.”

“As you see it!”

“Yes. It’s a brilliant idea; I could never have conceived it.”

“You believe--”

“I know.”

“Sit here. Let’s see what you know.”

Sweetwater sat down at the table the other pointed out, and drawing forward a piece of paper, took up a pencil with an easy air. Brotherson approached and stood at his shoulder. He had taken up his pistol again, why he hardly knew, and as Sweetwater began his marks, his fingers tightened on its butt till they turned white in the murky lamplight.

“You see,” came in easy tones from the stooping draughtsman, “I have an imagination which only needs a slight fillip from a mind like yours to send it in the desired direction. I shall not draw an exact reproduction of your idea, but I think you will see that I understand it very well. How’s that for a start?”

Brotherson looked and hastily drew back. He did not want the other to note his surprise.

“But that is a portion you never saw,” he loudly declared.

“No, but I saw this,” returned Sweetwater, working busily on some curves; “and these gave me the fillip I mentioned. The rest came easily.”

Brotherson, in dread of his own anger, threw his pistol to the other end of the shed:

“You knave! You thief!” he furiously cried.

“How so?” asked Sweetwater smilingly, rising and looking him calmly in the face. “A thief is one who appropriates another man’s goods, or, let us say, another man’s ideas. I have appropriated nothing yet. I’ve only shown you how easily I could do so. Mr. Brotherson, take me in as your assistant. I will be faithful to you, I swear it. I want to see that machine go up.”

“For how many people have you drawn those lines?” thundered the inexorable voice.

“For nobody; not for myself even. This is the first time they have left their hiding-place in my brain.”

“Can you swear to that?”

“I can and will, if you require it. But you ought to believe my word, sir. I am square as a die in all matters not connected--well, not connected with my profession,” he smiled in a burst of that whimsical humour, which not even the seriousness of the moment could quite suppress.

“And what surety have I that you do not consider this very matter of mine as coming within the bounds you speak of?”

“None. But you must trust me that far.”

Brotherson surveyed him with an irony which conveyed a very different message to the detective than any he had intended. Then quickly:

“To how many have you spoken, dilating upon this device, and publishing abroad my secret?”

“I have spoken to no one, not even to Mr. Gryce. That shows my honesty as nothing else can.”

“You have kept my secret intact?”

“Entirely so, sir.”

“So that no one, here or elsewhere, shares our knowledge of the new points in this mechanism?”

“I say so, sir.”

“Then if I should kill you,” came in ferocious accents, “now--here--”

“You would be the only one to own that knowledge. But you won’t kill me.”

“Why?”

“Need I go into reasons?”

“Why? I say.”

“Because your conscience is already too heavily laden to bear the burden of another unprovoked crime.”

Brotherson, starting back, glared with open ferocity upon the man who dared to face him with such an accusation.

“God! why didn’t I shoot you on entrance!” he cried. “Your courage is certainly colossal.”

A fine smile, without even the hint of humour now, touched the daring detective’s lip. Brotherson’s anger seemed to grow under it, and he loudly repeated:

“It’s more than colossal; it’s abnormal and--” A moment’s pause, then with ironic pauses--“and quite unnecessary save as a matter of display, unless you think you need it to sustain you through the ordeal you are courting. You wish to help me finish and prepare for flight?”

“I sincerely do.”

“You consider yourself competent?”

“I do.”

Brotherson’s eyes fell and he walked once to the extremity of the oval flooring and back.

“Well, we will grant that. But that’s not all that is necessary. My requirements demand a companion in my first flight. Will you go up in the car with me on Saturday night?”

A quick affirmative was on Sweetwater’s lips but the glimpse which he got of the speaker’s face glowering upon him from the shadows into which Brotherson had withdrawn, stopped its utterance, and the silence grew heavy. Though it may not have lasted long by the clock, the instant of breathless contemplation of each other’s features across the intervening space was of incalculable moment to Sweetwater, and, possibly, to Brotherson. As drowning men are said to live over their whole history between their first plunge and their final rise to light and air, so through the mind of the detective rushed the memories of his past and the fast fading glories of his future; and rebelling at the subtle peril he saw in that sardonic eye, he vociferated an impulsive:

“No! I’ll not--” and paused, caught by a new and irresistible sensation.

A breath of wind--the first he had felt that night--had swept in through some crevice in the curving wall, flapping the canvas enveloping the great car. It acted like a peal to battle. After all, a man must take some risks in his life, and his heart was in this trial of a redoubtable mechanism in which he had full faith. He could not say no to the prospect of being the first to share a triumph which would send his name to the ends of the earth; and, changing the trend of his sentence, he repeated with a calmness which had the force of a great decision.

“I will not fail you in anything. If she rises--” here his trembling hand fell on the curtain shutting off his view of the ship, “she shall take me with her, so that when she descends I may be the first to congratulate the proud inventor of such a marvel.”

“So be it!” shot from the other’s lips, his eyes losing their threatening look, and his whole countenance suddenly aglow with the enthusiasm of awakened genius.

Coming from the shadows, he laid his hand on the cord regulating the rise and fall of the concealing curtain.

“Here she is!” he cried and drew the cord.

The canvas shook, gathered itself into great folds and disappeared in the shadows from which he had just stepped.

The air-car stood revealed--a startling, because wholly unique, vision.

Long did Sweetwater survey it, then turning with beaming face upon the watchful inventor, he uttered a loud Hurrah.

Next moment, with everything forgotten between them save the glories of this invention, both dropped simultaneously to the floor and began that minute examination of the mechanism necessary to their mutual work.

XXXVII. HIS GREAT HOUR

Saturday night at eight o’clock.

So the fiat had gone forth, with no concession to be made on account of weather.

As Oswald came from his supper and took a look at the heavens from the small front porch, he was deeply troubled that Orlando had remained so obstinate on this point. For there were ominous clouds rolling up from the east, and the storms in this region of high mountains and abrupt valleys were not light, nor without danger even to those with feet well planted upon mother earth.

If the tempest should come up before eight!

Mr. Challoner, who, from some mysterious impulse of bravado on the part of Brotherson, was to be allowed to make the third in this small band of spectators, was equally concerned at this sight, but not for Brotherson. His fears were for Oswald, whose slowly gathering strength could illy bear the strain which this additional anxiety for his brother’s life must impose upon him. As for Doris, she was in a state of excitement more connected with the past than with the future. That afternoon she had laid her hand in that of Orlando Brotherson, and wished him well. She! in whose breast still lingered reminiscences of those old doubts which had beclouded his image for her at their first meeting. She had not been able to avoid it. His look was a compelling one, and it had demanded thus much from her; and--a terrible thought to her gentle spirit--he might be going to his death!

It had been settled by the prospective aviator that they were to watch for the ascent from the mouth of the grassy road leading in to the hangar. The three were to meet there at a quarter to eight and await the stroke and the air-cars rise. That time was near, and Mr. Challoner, catching a glimpse of Oswald’s pallid and unnaturally drawn features, as he set down the lantern he carried, shuddered with foreboding and wished the hour passed.

Doris’ watchful glance never left the face whose lightest change was more to her than all Orlando’s hopes. But the result upon her was not to weaken her resolution, but to strengthen it. Whatever the outcome of the next few minutes, she must stand ready to sustain her invalid through it. That the darkness of early evening had deepened to oppression, was unnoticed for the moment. The fears of an hour past had been forgotten. Their attention was too absorbed in what was going on before them, for even a glance overhead.

Suddenly Mr. Challoner spoke.

“Who is the man whom Mr. Brotherson has asked to go up with him?”

It was Oswald who answered.

“He has never told me. He has kept his own counsel about that as about everything else connected with this matter. He simply advised me that I was not to bother about him any more; that he had found the assistant he wanted.”

“Such reticence seems unpardonable. You have--displayed great patience, Oswald.”

“Because I understand Orlando. He reads men’s natures like a book. The man he trusts, we may trust. To-morrow, he will speak openly enough. All cause for reticence will be gone.”

“You have confidence then in the success of this undertaking?”

“If I hadn’t, I should not be here. I could hardly bear to witness his failure, even in a secret test like this. I should find it too hard to face him afterwards.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Orlando has great pride. If this enterprise fails I cannot answer for him. He would be capable of anything. Why, Doris! what is the matter, child? I never saw you look like that before.”

She had been down on her knees regulating the lantern, and the sudden flame, shooting up, had shown him her face turned up towards his in an apprehension which verged on horror.

“Do I look frightened?” she asked, remembering herself and lightly rising. “I believe that I am a little frightened. If--if anything should go wrong! If an accident-” But here she remembered herself again and quickly changed her tone. “But your confidence shall be mine. I will believe in his good angel or--or in his self-command and great resolution. I’ll not be frightened any more.”

But Oswald did not seem satisfied. He continued to look at her in vague concern.