Chapter XXXVIII: The Greatest Gift

The boy stood with uplifted head, breathing heavily through parted lips, a mad joy burning in his eyes. But the two officers ignored him to observe the effect of the news on his sister. Alison had given a single broken cry as her brother handed her the newspaper. She moved on tottering feet to the window, but her hands were so unsteady that she could not possibly have read the wavering print of the eagerly gripped news sheet.

By a mutual impulse Devreaux and Dexter crossed behind her. The colonel passed both arms about her, caught her wrists, and stopped the paper from rustling. Then he and the corporal leaned over the girl's shoulder to peruse the story for themselves.

It was a short telegraphic item, tucked away on an inside page, and they saw at a glance that Archie had not misread the account. The item told of a practicing physician who had been suddenly afflicted with a criminal dementia. He had destroyed two of his patients by slyly switching the medicines he had prescribed. His mental state was not discovered until after he had wantonly committed a second murder. Under cross-questioning he had broken down in confession, and the authorities then were able to establish proof positive of his guilt in the two separate crimes. His first victim was a wealthy bachelor, Oscar Preston. The dead man's nephew, Archie, the account went on to say, was falsely accused of the murder and indicted on a first degree charge. With his sister Alison, his co-heir in the Preston estate, the boy had fled. At the time of writing the whereabouts of the fugitives was unknown. Every effort had been made to find them, but so far the search had proven unsuccessful. The authorities were still hoping to get into communication with the missing brother and sister, not to arrest them now, but to restore their rights under the law.

Alison somehow managed to read through the blurred paragraph of type, and as she finished her fingers unlocked and the paper fluttered from her hands. With a sudden movement she turned to face her brother.

"Archie!" She looked at the boy for a moment with tears brimming her eyes, and then she went to him, and her arms reached out and clasped tightly about his shoulders. "It's over--it's over!" she sobbed. "You can go back home--everything's all right! I'm so glad, I--I don't know what to say."

Colonel Devreaux scrutinized the pair for a moment from under frowning brows, and then he too walked forward. "Well, I suppose you're open to congratulations, Archie," he remarked brusquely.

The boy gently disengaged himself from Alison's embrace. "It's fine--it's wonderful!" he asserted jubilantly. "I can hardly believe it!"

"I wonder if you really appreciate your good fortune?" inquired the officer as he stared grimly at the young man.

"I do!" exclaimed the other. "I can go back. No more suffering and hardship! I can face my friends. I can take my old place again!"

The lines of Devreaux's face seemed to grow deeper and more inflexible as he listened. "You don't even begin to understand," he rasped out. "You've got the finest thing that was ever given to a man, and you haven't given it a thought. I'm talking about the loyalty that has stood by in your time of need--that would have gone with you through the blazing pit. You're thinking how nice it will be to get back to town, a free man--and I'm thinking about your sister."

The boy's eyes opened with a startled expression, and a slow flush darkened his face. "I--you're wrong," he returned unsteadily. "I'm thinking of her too. Alison! She's been magnificent!"

"I only thought I'd remind you," said the colonel, glowering. "That story in the paper is probably authentic. I've got to take you to the fort with me, but when I telegraph your local police they'll undoubtedly order your release. You'll be at liberty to go where you please. But it'll be different with Alison."

"What?" gasped the boy, his brows sharply contracting.

"That little affair in the cabin south of here, where the two men were shot in their bunks, Alison was there that night, and nobody else, as far as we can make out." A touch of sadness crept into the old officer's voice as he shook his grizzled head. "Your sister has those same qualities of loyalty and courage that--well, that make my policemen--my boys--stand by me: and I'm sincerely sorry that she can't go home with you." Devreaux turned soberly to the girl. "There's too much evidence stacked up, and we have no alternative," he said. "Until you're able to explain away that business in the burned cabin, there can be no hope of your release. The most we can promise you is fair treatment and an impartial hearing."

While the colonel was delivering himself of this speech, the door opened, and one of the constables entered the room. The newcomer walked to the fireplace, where a row of camp kettles were simmering over coals. He raised the lid of one of the pots, prodded inside, and faced about to announce that dinner was ready.

Devreaux nodded. "Good! Let's eat."

Plates were filled from the kettles, and food was given to the four manacled prisoners. Then Sergeant Brunswick and Constable Devlin were summoned into the cabin. Two packing boxes were shoved together to serve as a table, and Archie and Alison and the five policemen sat down to their evening meal.

This was the first opportunity Dexter's comrades had found to draw out the story of his recent adventures, and until their curiosity was satisfied, he was scarcely allowed the time to eat. He answered a multitude of questions, and finally pushed away his plate and settled back with a sigh to recount in detail the events that had taken place since the morning he had left the colonel at the bear cave.

Devreaux had lighted up an old blackened pipe, and he sat in silence, grim and immobile, peering at the young policeman through a cloud of tobacco smoke. When Dexter finished his story the old man vouchsafed the briefest nod. "For a single-handed job," he conceded, "you have accomplished all that the service could expect."

"I still don't understand how you ever found the pass," put in Sergeant Brunswick. "We came through a regular puzzle box to reach this place, and if we hadn't had your trail marks to follow, it might have taken us weeks to grope our way to the outlet."

"Pure piece of luck that brought me to the pass," said Dexter. "I was feeling around blindly, without any notion which direction to go, when I happened to discover an ancient blaze wrinkle in the bark of a great white fir. I chopped into the sapwood and found a deep buried ax mark, and some time-glazed scribbling that gave me my direction points. After that I had only to pick out the biggest trees in the line, and invariably there was an old ax scar to lead me on my way. So I was guided straight to the pass."

Brunswick wrinkled his forehead in growing interest. "What sort of scribbling was it?" he asked.

"Letter that looked like a 'W,' and something else that wasn't quite legible. I estimated that the marks were at least a half century old."

"Funny!" remarked the sergeant. "It sounds as though some surveyors had traveled through here some time or other, and I always had an idea that the nest of mountains on this side of the water shed was practically unexplored country."

"Which proves that you don't know your district history," cut in Devreaux quietly. The colonel glanced across at Dexter. "You say there was a letter 'W.' Letter 'U' also, wasn't there?"

"I couldn't quite make out the rest," was the reply. "It might have been a 'U.'"

"Certainly it was! 'W.U.'--'Western Union'!"

Devreaux put down his empty coffee cup, and scanned the circle of faces about the table. "This isn't terra incognita, as some of you seem to think," he resumed. "It's a lost country now, but it was thoroughly explored at one time--about sixty years ago. The trail Dexter found was blazed by the pioneers of the old Western Union company.

"I wasn't much more than a kid at the time," the colonel resumed as the others waited, silent. "The date was somewhere around 1865. A long time ago, but I remember hearing the story--how an attempt was made to lay an all-land telegraph across America and Asia and Europe.

"The idea," continued Devreaux, "was to string a cable from the United States through the northwest wilderness, across Behring Strait to Siberia, and thence to Russia and the capitals of Europe."

"It was never accomplished," interrupted Dexter.

"No. But a lot of the work was actually done. Parties of men were sent through these mountains to hunt out the easiest passes and defiles, and blaze the straightest route to the Behring shore. Later, construction crews came in and unreeled miles of cable through the wilderness, ready to string. But before the job was finished the first successful trans-Atlantic cable was laid by another company. Europe was connected with America by a shorter route, and the need for the longer, all-land line was ended over night. The promoters of the great project were forced to pocket their loss. They stopped operations, abandoned materials and equipment and cleared out of the forest, leaving hundreds of miles of cable wire on the ground behind them."

It was a curious tale of failure--of a magnificent dream gone wrong--and a meditative silence fell upon the group about the table as the colonel broke off speech and sat with a gloomy, retrospective frown and slowly puffed his pipe.

"You mean--they came up through these valleys--" Brunswick started to ask, but he was interrupted by a sharp exclamation from Dexter's side of the table.

"Wait! Just a minute!" The corporal half raised himself from his stool, gripping the table with his hand. "You said they left this wire--strung out through the wilderness?"

"Thousands of dollars' worth of copper wire--wasted," said Devreaux. "Just left out to--"

"Copper is not affected by weather," remarked Dexter before the colonel could finish. "The wire might remain just as it was for years--for centuries. Only it would be buried under an accumulation of forest trash, turning to mold and earth--buried deeper and deeper--"

He stopped, drew a short breath and got up from his stool. For a moment his glance searched about the room, and then without a word of apology he left the table, and picked up a rusted spade he found standing in the corner. There was a scraping of stool legs behind him, and as he turned towards the doorway he was aware that his companions were on their feet, trooping after him.

Passing out of doors, Dexter stopped in front of the cabin, and with his one useful hand he thrust his spade into the soft ground and started to dig. Before he had taken out a shovelful of earth, however, Colonel Devreaux came up to him and laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.

"Funny I didn't think of this myself," the old officer remarked depreciatingly. "But it didn't occur to me until you jumped up from the table. And--by jinks!--I'll bet you've struck the answer to everything! You'd better let a two-armed man do the labor." Devreaux glanced over his shoulder. "Here, Devlin," he commanded--"dig a trench across here."

The constable moved forward, took the spade, and set industriously to work. While the others stood by in tense curiosity he spaded up the yielding loam, and presently had excavated a narrow hole that went down two or three feet in the ground. Under the colonel's directions the digger started to carry his trench forward along the front of the cabin, but he had advanced only a pace or two, when the edge of his shovel caught against some hidden object under the loosened dirt, and refused to come up.

"Wait!" exclaimed the superintendent. He and Dexter dropped to their knees, and with eager hands began scooping away the musty-smelling earth. And in a moment they unburied an unyielding something that ran underground like a tenuous root.

"What?" demanded the colonel, peering near-sightedly into the trench.

Dexter had flattened himself on his chest to investigate. "Insulated wire!" he said in a suppressed voice. "A buried cable: The outer covering seems to have hardened--sort of petrified; but there's no doubt--"

"Let's see!" The colonel produced a knife from his pocket, thrust Dexter aside, stooped, and began to hack away at the moldy, taut-drawn strand. He cut through the outer surface, and the reddish glint of copper was revealed underneath.

He stood up with a sharp breath. "The old Western Union cable!" he muttered. "Trailed through the forest, and abandoned--more than a half century ago! Falling leaves drifting over it, decaying, forming new soil, burying it deeper and deeper, year by year! It must come all the way through the lower valleys, miles and miles of it."

"The line undoubtedly passes the cabin on the other side of the pass, where I first met young Preston, and the burned cabin, still farther south," put in Dexter in sober musing. "I dug around the one cabin the night Mudgett and the other chap were killed. But I didn't go deep enough. At the time I only thought it necessary to see if the ground had been recently disturbed. But of course it hadn't been. The cable was buried, not by the hand of man, but by the gradual work of the forest."

"Let's see where it goes!" said the colonel abruptly. He turned to Devlin. "Follow it up, please."

The constable resumed his digging, this time running his excavation along the line of the cable. The concealed wire led him straight to the cabin, and in a few minutes he had driven his trench to the base of the mud-daubed chimney.

Dexter had lingered in the background, an absorbed spectator, but when he saw where the cable led, he turned abruptly on his heel and almost ran back into the cabin. The four shackled prisoners watched his movements in furtive silence, but he paid no attention to them. The single bunk was built flush with the end of the fireplace, and he climbed up on the mattress and began to tap on the side of the plastered chimney. One of the stones moved before the pressure of his fingers, and he managed to pry it loose and draw it from place. And in the rudely built chimney was disclosed a dark, cubicle opening--a secret cubby hole in the masonry. He thrust his arm into the foot square space behind the stone, and drew forth a nickeled telephone instrument.

As he caught a breath of triumph, he heard a footstep behind him, and turned to see Colonel Devreaux staring over his shoulder. "Well, that seems to settle everything," remarked the old officer with a rueful expression. "The mysterious messages that passed back and forth through the wilderness! They had us guessing for a while, didn't they? But you've got it now."

Dexter continued his investigations, and at the bottom of the chimney he jarred loose two other stones, revealing a second and larger opening. From the compartment within he pulled forth a strand of new wire and a group of six heavy jars, which proved to be electric batteries.

"A simple form of telephone set, such as they use for private rural lines," he remarked after an examination of the apparatus he had brought to light. "Not good for a range of much more than ten miles, I imagine. But the terminals are connected and the batteries seem to be alive." He touched the colonel's elbow. "You can see where the wires run down to meet the old telegraph cable under the ground."

"The signal system of Stark's underground railway!" he remarked as Devreaux bent forward to look. "He found out in some way where the old cable ran, and put up a chain of trappers' shacks along the line of the wire. The telephones are hooked on in sections, I suppose, at about ten-mile intervals. A series of local circuits, with each set of batteries providing current for its own short stretch of line. But a message might be relayed from station to station, through the wilderness. So Stark was able to provide himself with means of long distance communication, with practically no labor and at very little expense."

Devreaux was impressed in spite of himself. "A stroke of genius," he mused. "But for a bit of luck on our side this Stark might have kept us guessing for years. We would have been groping around blindly, while Stark's innocent-appearing trappers could keep tabs on our movements, sending the word ahead, blocking us at every turn, laughing at us. It would have been like a deaf and sightless man chasing shadows." The colonel grinned in uncomfortable recollection. "In fact, for a while last fall it seemed that that was just what we were doing."

Devreaux was reaching forward to examine the arrangement of telephone wires, when Alison and Sergeant Brunswick appeared in the doorway. The girl advanced with a wan little smile. "You wondered how I happened to know about things that were taking place miles away in the forest," she said, glancing up at Dexter. "You tried to make me tell, and I wouldn't. It was a secret on which my brother's safety might have depended, and I had to keep it. But you've found out for yourself, and now it doesn't matter."

"I suppose all the cabins along the route are equipped with phones such as this one, concealed in the chimneys," Dexter remarked. "The cabin on the other side of the pass, for instance--where I spent a night with your brother, heard him call your name in the darkness, warning you to flee to Saddle Mountain: he was talking to you over one of these phones."

"There's no need to keep anything back now." Alison nodded quietly, and cast a quick glance towards the colonel. "That was the night I escaped from Colonel Devreaux. I had made my way back to the burned cabin. The chimney was still intact, the phone in it. I rang up my brother, and he answered. He told me you were with him, warned me of the danger of returning. He had heard that Mr. Stark was on his way across Saddle Mountain, and advised me to meet him there. And--well, you went too, and saved my life on the cliff--and afterwards--"

"And the time you found me pinned under the tree in the lower valley?" interrupted Dexter. "How did you get the news?"

The girl looked across the room towards the group of prisoners seated in the shadow. She indicated the red-bearded man, who shifted uneasily as the officers turned his direction. "He told me," she said. "He happened that day to come to the cabin where my brother and I were spending the winter. Mr. Stark had telephoned him at one of the other stations--about how a policeman was caught under an avalanche. I guessed it might be you, and I got the facts from him, and learned where you were to be found. So I waited my chance, and as soon as I could leave unobserved, I hurried from the cabin to go to you."

Dexter regarded her for a moment with eyes half closed. "It was a brave and generous thing to do," he said, but even as he spoke the inflexible line of his jaw reasserted itself, and he fixed her once more with a keenly inquiring gaze. "What about the night we were camping at the head of the pass, and you ran away from me?" he asked. "You came to this cabin--six or seven miles from the place you had left me--and you called to me for help, and I heard you."

She laughed a quick, fluttering laugh as she raised her head candidly to face him. "You remember the old dead tree at the top of the slope," she said, "when I found myself growing suddenly tired? I was tired, but I could have gone on a little farther--only I wanted to stop there."

"It was a gaunt old shell of a tree--hollow--" Dexter stopped to stare at her. "I know now!" he exclaimed. "It was one of Stark's stations. There's a telephone in the trunk of that tree."

Alison nodded. "As I told you before, I figured my brother'd spend the night at this cabin. And not knowing you were so close behind him, there was a danger of his oversleeping and being there next morning when you arrived. I thought I could warn him by telephone. I started to ring the cabin that night while you were gathering sticks for the fire, but you came back too soon for me. I had the receiver off, but didn't dare finish the call. You didn't give me another chance. But I must get word to Archie. So that night when you were asleep I slipped away to come here, intending to return to your camp before daylight.

"When I reached here," she pursued, "there was no Archie. You know what did happen--how I was forced to barricade myself in the cabin. In my fright I remembered the phone in the old hollow tree. The receiver was down and you had spread your blankets against the trunk. It was my only hope--to make you hear--and I screamed into the transmitter at this end, calling your help."

He looked at her soberly for an instant, and then laughed under his breath. "As simple as that! It was like a ghost voice whispering to me from the darkness, small and unreal, yet your voice."

"And knowing no more than that," she said softly, "you came."

He did not answer, but had turned with an absent-minded air, as though for no particular reason his attention was caught again by the hole in the chimney where the telephone instrument had been secreted. For a moment he stood silent, with thoughtfully puckered brows, and then, with a quick movement, he faced about once more to look at Alison.

"In the three cabins I have visited," he asserted, "the bunks were built like this one, placed against the side of the fireplace. Were the phones all concealed in the chimneys by the bunks, like this one?"

"Yes," she replied.

He nodded, and then as though he had forgotten her presence, he strode to the open window to stare into the twilight, with a pensive, far-off look in his eyes. But after a minute or two he turned to pace back across the floor, his head bowed abstractedly as he whistled a meaningless little tune between his teeth. Suddenly he halted before the girl. "I was thinking--" he began, and stopped.

She shot him a puzzled glance. "Yes?" she asked uncertainly.

"I was thinking of the night last fall when the two men were killed in their bunks. I heard a woman's voice inside that cabin--a woman talking over a telephone--" He threw up his head sharply. "You were there, Alison."

"I never went beyond the edge of the clearing," she declared, her lips setting defiantly. "You saw my tracks--"

"Yes," he interrupted with an impatient gesture. "That's what I'm getting at. Your tracks stopped twenty feet away from the cabin. Yet there was a woman inside, and if, as you insist, she wasn't you, then she had to be--"

Dexter caught his breath and swung around with kindling eyes to confront Colonel Devreaux. "It's a funny notion," he declared wonderingly, "and I can't quite make out why it never struck me before but--it's the only possible answer. This woman, whoever she was, never left the cabin.

"When I went out to look after my pony," he rushed on, "there were two people alive in the cabin. And when I reëntered the place there were two people dead. And there was no one else there at any time. The mysterious third person we've been looking for never existed."

"What are you driving at?" gasped the bewildered officer.

Dexter shook his head and turned again to Alison. "Did you know Mrs. Stark?" he asked tensely. "She's the only other woman I've heard of in this section of the forest. What was she like?

"Small woman, about thirty-five?" he inquired, as Alison stared blankly and failed to answer. "Thin, high-bridged nose, short black hair, black eyes, sallow complexion. Have I got her?"

The girl nodded without speaking.

"Did she ever wear men's clothes?"

"Yes," said the girl. "The last time I saw her she had on Mackinaws, felt hat, heavy lace boots--"

Dexter's eyes gleamed in excitement. "She's the one!" He spoke with utter conviction, as one who knows the truth at last.

"It was Mrs. Stark's voice I heard that night, talking on a telephone. It was she who masqueraded as a man and ambushed Constable Graves. She was the one I trailed to the cabin and arrested there, with Mudgett. It was she whom I found dead in the upper bunk!"