CHAPTER VIII
THE EXPLANATION
We had not noticed a car which had stopped just past us and Garrick wassurprised at hearing his own name called.
We looked up from contemplating the discovery he had made in the road,to see Miss Winslow waving to us. She had motored down from Tuxedoimmediately after receiving the message over the telephone, and withher keen eye had picked out both the place of the accident andourselves studying it.
As we approached, I could see that she was much more pale than usual.Evidently her anxiety for Warrington was thoroughly genuine. Theslanderous letter had not shaken her faith in him, yet.
She had left her car and was walking back along the road with us towardthe broken fence. Garrick had been talking to her earnestly and now,having introduced her to Dr. Mead, the doctor and he decided to climbdown to inspect the wrecked car itself in the ravine below.
Miss Winslow cast a quick look from the broken fence down at the tornand twisted wreckage of the car and gave a suppressed little cry andshudder.
"How is Mortimer?" she asked of me eagerly, for I had agreed to staywith her while the others went down the slope. "I mean how is hereally? Is he likely to be better soon, as Mr. Garrick said over thetelephone?" she appealed.
"Surely--absolutely," I assured her, knowing that if Garrick had saidthat he had meant it. "Miss Winslow, believe me, neither Mr. Garricknor Dr. Mead is concealing anything. It is pretty bad, of course. Suchthings are always bad. But it might be far worse. And besides, theworst now has passed."
Garrick had already promised to accompany her over to Dr. Mead's afterhe had made his examination of the wrecked car to confirm what thedoctor had already observed. It took several minutes for them tosatisfy themselves and meanwhile Violet Winslow, already highlyunstrung by the news from Garrick, waited more and more nervously.
In spite of his careful examination of the wrecked car, Garrick foundpractically nothing more than Dr. Mead had already told him. It waswith considerable relief that Miss Winslow saw the two again climbingup the slope in the direction of the road.
A few minutes later we were on our way back, Dr. Mead and Garrickleading the way in the doctor's car, while I accompanied Miss Winslowin her own car.
She said little, and it was plain to see that she was consumed byanxiety. Now and then she would ask a question about the accident, andalthough I tried in every way to divert her mind to other subjects sheunfailingly came back to that.
Tempering the details as much as I could I repeated for her just whathad happened to the best of our knowledge.
"And you have no idea who it could have been?" she asked turning thoseliquid eyes of hers on my face.
If there were any secret about it, it was perhaps fortunate that I didnot know. I don't think I am more than ordinarily susceptible and Iknow I did not delude myself that Miss Winslow ever could be anythingexcept a friend to either Garrick or myself. But I felt I could notresist the appeal in those eyes. I wondered if even they, by some magicintuition, might not pierce the very soul of man and uncover a lyingheart. I felt that Warrington could not have been other than he said hewas and still have been hastening to meet those eyes.
"Miss Winslow," I answered, "I have no more idea than you have who itcould be."
I was telling the truth and I felt that I could meet her gaze.
There must have been something about how I had phrased my answer thatcaused her to look at me more searchingly than before. Suddenly sheturned her face away and gazed at the passing landscape from the car.
She said nothing, but as I continued to watch her finely mouldedfeatures, I saw that she was making an effort to control herself. Itflashed over me, somehow, that perhaps, after all, she herselfsuspected someone. It was not that she said anything. It was merely anindefinable impression I received.
Had Warrington any enemies, not in the underworld, but among those ofhis own set, rivals, perhaps, who might even stoop to secure the aid ofthose of the underworld who could be bought to commit any crime in thecalendar for a price? I did not pause to examine the plausibility orthe impossibility of such a theory. What interested me was whether inher mind there was such a thought. Had she, perhaps, really more of anidea than I who it could be? She betrayed nothing of what her intuitiontold her, but I felt sure that, even though she knew nothing, there wasat least something she feared.
At last we arrived at Dr. Mead's and I handed her out of the car andinto the tastefully furnished little house. There was an air ofquietness about it that often indefinably pervades a house in whichthere is illness or a tragedy.
"May I--see him?" pleaded Miss Winslow, as Dr. Mead placed a chair forher.
I wondered what he would have done if there had been some good reasonwhy he should resist the pleading of her deep eyes.
"Why--er--for a minute--yes," he answered. "Later, soon, he may seevisitors longer, but just now I think for a few hours the less he isdisturbed the better."
The doctor excused himself for a moment to look at his patient andprepare him for the visit. Meanwhile Miss Winslow waited in thereception room downstairs, still very pale and nervous.
Warrington was in much less pain now than he had been when we left andDr. Mead decided that, since the nurse had made him so much morecomfortable, no further drug was necessary. In fact as his naturalvitality due to his athletic habits and clean living asserted itself,it seemed as if his injuries which at first had looked so serious werenot likely to prove as bad as the doctor had anticipated.
Still, he was badly enough as it was. The new nurse smoothed out hispillows and deftly tried to conceal as much as she could that wouldsuggest how badly he was injured and at last Violet Winslow was allowedto enter the room where the poor boy lay.
Miss Winslow never for a moment let her wonderful self-control failher. Quickly and noiselessly, like a ministering angel, she seemed tofloat rather than walk over the space from the door to the bed.
As she bent over him and whispered, "Mortimer!" the simple tone seemedto have an almost magic effect on him.
He opened his eyes which before had been languidly closed and gazed upat her face as if he saw a vision. Slowly the expression on his facechanged as he realized that it was indeed Violet herself. In spite ofthe pain of his hurts which must have been intense a smile played overhis features, as if he realized that it would never do to let her knowhow serious had been his condition.
As she bent over her hand had rested on the white covers of the bed.Feebly, in spite of the bandages that swathed the arm nearest her, heput out his own brawny hand and rested it on hers. She did not withdrawit, but passed the other hand gently over his throbbing forehead. Neverhave I seen a greater transformation in an invalid than was evident inMortimer Warrington. No tonic in all the pharmacopoeia of Dr. Meadcould have worked a more wonderful change.
Not a word was said by either Warrington or Violet for several seconds.They seemed content just to gaze into each other's faces, oblivious tous.
Warrington was the first to break the silence, in answer to what heknew must be her unspoken question.
"Your aunt--gambling," he murmured feebly, trying hard to connect hiswords so as to appear not so badly off as he had when he had spokenbefore. "I didn't know--till they told me--that the estate ownedit--was coming to tell you--going to cancel the lease--close it up--noone ever lose money there again--"
The words, jerky though they were, cost him a great physical effort tosay. She seemed to realize it, but there was a look of triumph on herface as she understood.
She had not been mistaken. Warrington was all that she had thought himto be.
He was looking eagerly into her face and as he looked he read in it theanswer to the questionings that had sent him off in the early hours ofthe morning on his fateful ride to Tuxedo.
Dr. Mead cleared his throat. Miss Winslow recognised it as a signalthat the time was growing short for the interview.
Reluctantly, she withdrew her hand from his, their eyes met anotherinsta
nt, and with a hasty word of sympathy and encouragement she leftthe room, conscious now that other eyes were watching.
"Oh, to think it was to tell me that that he got into it all," shecried, as she sank into a deep chair in the reception room,endeavouring not to give way to her feelings, now that the strain wasoff and she had no longer to keep a brave face. "I--I feel guilty!"
"I wouldn't say that," soothed Garrick. "Who knows? Perhaps if he hadstayed in the city--they might have succeeded,--whoever it was back ofthis thing."
She looked up at Garrick, startled, I thought, with the same expressionI had seen when she turned her face away in the car and I got theimpression that she felt more than she knew of the case.
"I may--see--Mr. Warrington again soon?" she asked, now again mistressof her feelings after Garrick's interruption that had served to takeher mind off a morbid aspect of the affair.
"Surely," agreed Dr. Mead. "I expect his progress to be rapid afterthis."
"Thank you," she murmured, as she slowly rose and prepared to make thereturn trip to her aunt's home.
"Oh, Mr. Garrick," she confided, as he helped her on with the wraps shehad thrown carelessly on a chair when she entered, "I can't help it--Ido feel guilty. Perhaps he thinks I am--like Aunt Emma---"
"Perhaps it was quite as much to convince your aunt as you that he tookthe trip," suggested Garrick.
Miss Winslow understood. "Why is it," she murmured, "that sometimespeople with the best intentions manage to bring about things thatare--more terrible?"
Garrick smiled. Quite evidently she and her aunt were not exactly intune. He said nothing.
As for Dr. Mead he seemed really pleased, for the patient hadbrightened up considerably after even the momentary glimpse he had hadof Violet. Altogether I felt that although they had seen each otheronly for a moment, it had done both good. Miss Winslow's fears had beenquieted and Warrington had been encouraged by the realisation that, inspite of its disastrous ending, his journey had accomplished itspurpose anyway.
There was, as Dr. Mead assured us, every prospect now that Warringtonwould pull through after the murderous assault that had been made onhim.
We saw Miss Winslow safely off on her return trip, much relieved by thepromise of the doctor that she might call once a day to see how thepatient was getting along.
Warrington was now resting more easily than he had since the accidentand Garrick, having exhausted the possibilities of investigation at thescene of the accident, announced that he would return to the city.
At the railroad terminus he called up both the apartment and the officein order to find out whether we had had any visitors during ourabsence. No one had called at the apartment, but the office boydowntown said that there was a man who had called and was coming backagain.
A half hour or so later when we arrived at the office we found McBirneyseated there, patiently determined to find Garrick.
Evidently the news of the assault on Warrington had travelled fast, forthe first thing McBirney wanted to know was how it happened and how hisclient was. In a few words Garrick told him as much about it as wasnecessary. McBirney listened attentively, but we could see that he wasbursting with his own budget of news.
"And, McBirney," concluded Garrick, without going into the question ofthe marks of the tires, "most remarkable of all, I am convinced thatthe car in which his assailant rode was no other than the Mercedes thatwas stolen from Warrington in the first place."
"Say," exclaimed McBirney in surprise, "that car must be all over atonce!"
"Why--what do you mean?"
"You know I have my own underground sources of information," explainedthe detective with pardonable pride at adding even a rumour to thebudget of news. "Of course you can't be certain of such things, but oneof my men, who is scouting around the Tenderloin looking for what hecan find, tells me that he saw a car near that gambling joint onForty-eighth Street and that it may have been the repainted andrenumbered Warrington car--at least it tallies with the descriptionthat we got from the garage keeper in north Jersey.
"Did he see who drove it?" asked Garrick eagerly.
"Not very well. It was a short, undersized man, as nearly as he couldmake out. Someone whom he did not recognize jumped in it from thegambling house and they disappeared. Even though my man, his suspicionsaroused, tried to follow them in a taxicab they managed to leave himbehind."
"In what direction did they go?" asked Garrick.
"Toward the West Side--where those fly-by-night garages are alllocated."
"Or, perhaps, the Jersey ferries," suggested Garrick.
"Well, I thought you might like to know about this undersized driver,"said McBirney a little sulkily because Garrick had not displayed asmuch enthusiasm as he expected.
"I do," hastened Garrick. "Of course I do. And it may prove to be avery important clew. But I was just running ahead of your story. Theundersized man couldn't have figured in the case afterward, assumingthat it was the car. He must have left it, probably in the city. Haveyou any idea who it could be?"
"Not unless he might be an employee or a keeper of one of thosenight-hawk garages," persisted McBirney. "That is possible."
"Quite," agreed Garrick.
McBirney had delivered his own news and in turn had received ours, orat least such of it as Garrick chose to tell at present. He wasapparently satisfied and rose to go.
"Keep after that undersized fellow, will you?" asked Garrick. "If youcould find out who he is and he should happen to be connected with oneof those garages we might get on the right trail at last."
"I will," promised McBirney. "He's evidently an expert driver of motorcars himself; my man could see that."
McBirney had gone. Garrick sat for several minutes gazing squarely atme. Then he leaned back in his chair, with his hands behind his head.
"Mark my words, Marshall," he observed slowly, "someone connected withthat gambling joint in some way has got wind of the fact thatWarrington is going to revoke the lease and close it up. We've got tobeat them to it--that's all."