CHAPTER XIII.
A SAD FATE.
For one instant, Dyke Darrel was paralyzed.
It was for a moment only, however. He shook the door furiously,blinded by smoke, and almost strangled by hot air.
The door would not yield.
At this moment, the girl awoke and began to scream. Bits of burningwood fell all about them.
Soon the roof would tumble in with a crash. When that moment came,every living thing must perish within the house.
Dyke Darrel moved to the window, leading Sibyl. She staggered andseemed ready to fall.
"Courage!" he cried, "we will soon be out of this."
Reaching the narrow window, the detective dashed out sash and glasswith a stool, and the air from outside seemed like a breath from fairyland.
"You must go first?"
Dyke Darrel assisted his fair companion to the opening. An instantlater she had passed outside.
Then something occurred that quite startled the detective and filledhim with intense alarm.
A burning log fell from the side of the cabin with a thud that wassickening. A horrible fear at once took possession of Darrel. With aquick bound he gained the opening, and leaped clear of the burninglogs to the ground without.
Turning about he uttered a cry of horror.
Sibyl Osborne lay crushed beneath a black log that was yet smokingwith heat. With a herculean effort the detective lifted and flung thelog from the poor girl's breast, and then he lifted and carried herbeyond the reach of flame and heat, and laid her on a little moundbeneath a giant tree.
One glance into the mad girl's face satisfied him of the mournfultruth. The falling log had done fatal work, and with his hand claspinghers, Dyke Darrel watched the gasps that grew fainter each moment,until the silence and quietude of eternity rested on all.
"Dead!"
With that one word Dyke Darrel started to his feet and gazed abouthim. There was a flinty gleam in his keen eyes and a fierce grating ofwhite teeth.
It had been a long time since the railroad detective was moved as atthat hour, with the work of human fiends before him.
From the burning cabin his gaze returned to the upturned whiteface of the dead girl. Pure and lovely as a lily looked the face ofthe wronged and dead.
"It is better so, perhaps," muttered the detective.
Had the girl lived she might never have enjoyed an hour of reason.With that dethroned, what could death be but a welcome messenger. Andyet the manner of the mad girl's taking off was shocking in theextreme.
Had Dyke Darrel known the way out, he would have taken the corpse inhis arms and hurried from the scene at once. As it was, the detectivedeemed it wise to remain in the vicinity until morning, when it waslikely he would have little trouble in making his way out of thewoods!
The remaining hours of the night passed slowly. Dyke Darrel dared notsleep, and so he kept his lonely vigil beside the dead, seated in theshadows, with revolver ready to use at a moment's notice.
No interruption came, however, and when the gray streaks of morningdawned the detective breathed easier. He at once went in search of aroad that would lead out of the wood.
He met with better success than he had dared hope. He found a paththat must have been used by the owner of the cabin, and which it wasevident the mad girl had followed in her wanderings.
How long she had been in the cabin the detective had no means ofknowing, but it seemed to him evident that she could have been therebut a few hours when discovered by him.
The way out of the Black Hollow woods was long and tedious, but DykeDarrel proved equal to the task, and when he broke cover and enteredupon the open ground above, he was glad to see a team approaching,driven by a farmer.
"Hello! What hev' you got there?" cried the man, in open-eyedamazement, when he halted beside the detective and his burden.
"A lady. She was accidentally killed last night."
"It's awful!"
"I quite agree with you," returned Dyke Darrel; "but if you will takethe woman aboard and drive to the house of Mr. Bragg, I will pay youfor it."
"Of course I will."
The farmer was garrulous on the way, and it required all thedetective's ingenuity to answer his questions promptly, so as not toexcite the fellow's suspicions.
The body of the beautiful dead girl was laid in one of Agent Bragg'srooms, and the latter telegraphed to the nearest town of importancefor a casket, which arrived at Black Hollow shortly after noon.
"I will attend to shipping it," said Mr. Bragg. "This is a sad case.It is a wonder to me that somebody did not see the girl yesterday."
"Possibly she got off at another station."
"Do you think she came to this vicinity on the cars?"
"Most certainly," answered the detective.
"Will you go to Chicago now?"
"I am not fully decided," returned Dyke Darrel. "At what hour does thetrain pass?"
"Six-fifty to-night."
"But the down train goes earlier?"
"At four."
"And at Bloomington I can take the cars for Burlington?" "If you sodesire."
"I will think about it."
Sauntering along in the afternoon, just in the outskirts of thevillage, Dyke Darrel came suddenly upon a man standing with his backagainst a telegraph pole.
"Hello!" ejaculated the detective, as the man turned and faced him.
It was Harper Elliston.
"I thought you were in Chicago," pursued the mystified Dyke. And thenhe remembered the face he had seen at the window of the cabin in BlackHollow the previous night. The memory brought a harsh expression tohis countenance.
"Ah, you are still here, Dyke."
Mr. Elliston smiled and held out his hand.
"I don't understand this," said Dyke Darrel. "You have deceived me insome way, Harper. You were in Black Hollow last night."
"There you are mistaken," assured Mr. Elliston; "I stopped off here onthe noon train."
"You did not go to Chicago, then?"
"Yes, I did; but only remained an hour. You see the man I was lookingfor was not there, but had gone to Burlington, Iowa, and so,remembering that you stopped off here yesterday, I thought I would rundown and learn if you had made any discovery."
"You came at noon?"
"Yes."
"Why did not you call for me at Bragg's?"
"Are you stopping there?"
"Certainly. If you had inquired for me of the agent here, you wouldhave certainly found me."
"That's exactly what I did do, and I did not find you; so now," andMr. Elliston laughed at the perplexed look on the detective's face.
The actions and words of this man were indeed a puzzle to Dyke Darrel.
"Harper, I want to ask you a plain question----"
"And you want a categorical answer, Mr. Darrel," interrupted the NewYorker with a laugh.
"I do."
"Go ahead."
"Weren't you in Black Hollow last night?"
"Certainly not. I was with a friend at least sixty miles away, nearChicago."
"Can you prove this?"
"If necessary, of course; but what in the world is the matter, Dyke? Ihope you wouldn't accuse me of deception."
"No. Will you come with me to Bragg's?"
"Certainly."
And then the two men walked away together. There was a solemnexpression pervading the face of Dyke Darrel. He had experienced manystrange things during his detective life, but this latest phasepuzzled him the most.
He could swear that he saw the face of Elliston at the window of thehouse in the gulch on the previous night, yet the assertion from hisfriend that he was fifty miles away at the time seemed honest enough.
Having been long in the detective work, Dyke Darrel had grown to besuspicious, and so he was fast losing faith in the good intentions ofhis New York friend. He had suddenly resolved on a test that hebelieved would prove effectual in setting all doubts at rest.
Arrived at the Bragg dwel
ling, the detective conducted Harper Ellistonat once to the room where the remains of the beautiful, dead girl layencoffined.