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He had accepted the gossip then; he had not seen her and it all
seemed very natural;--hardly worth a moment's thought. But now!

And here, the other Demon sprang erect and grappled with him before
the first one had let go his hold. Oswald and Challoner! The
secret, unknown something which had softened that hard man's eye
when his brother's name was mentioned! He had noted it and realised
the mystery; a mystery before which sleep and rest must fly; a
mystery to which he must now give his thought, whatever the cost,
whatever the loss to those heavenly dreams the magic of which was
so new it seemed to envelope him in the balm of Paradise. Away,
then, image of light! Let the faculties thou hast dazed, act again.
There is more than Fate's caprice in Challoner's interest in a man
he never saw. Ghosts of old memories rise and demand a hearing.
Facts, trivial and commonplace enough to have been lost in oblivion
with the day which gave them birth, throng again from the past,
proving that nought dies without a possibility of resurrection.
Their power over this brooding man is shown by the force with which
his fingers crush against his bowed forehead. Oswald and Challoner!
Had he found the connecting link? Had it been--could it have been
Edith? The preposterous is sometimes true; could it be true in this
case?

He recalled the letters read to him as hers in that room of his in
Brooklyn. He had hardly noted them then, he was so sure of their
being forgeries, gotten up by the police to mislead him. Could they
have been real, the effusions of her mind, the breathings of her
heart, directed to an actual O. B., and that O. B., his brother?
They had not been meant for him. He had read enough of the mawkish
lines to be sure of that. None of the allusions fitted in with the
facts of their mutual intercourse. But they might with those of
another man; they might with the possible acts and affections of
Oswald whose temperament was wholly different from his and who might
have loved her, should it ever be shown that they had met and known
each other. And this was not an impossibility. Oswald had been
east, Oswald had even been in the Berkshires before himself. Oswald
--Why it was Oswald who had suggested that he should go there--go
where she still was. Why this second coincidence, if there were no
tie--if the Challoners and Oswald were as far apart as they seemed
and as conventionalities would naturally place them. Oswald was a
sentimentalist, but very reserved about his sentimentalities. If
these suppositions were true, he had had a sentimentalist's motive
for what he did. As Orlando realised this, he rose from his seat,
aghast at the possibilities confronting him from this line of
thought. Should he contemplate them? Risk his reason by dwelling
on a supposition which might have no foundation in fact? No. His
brain was too full--his purposes too important for any unnecessary
strain to be put upon his faculties. No thinking! investigation
first. Mr. Challoner should be able to settle this question. He
would see him. Even at this late hour he ought to be able to find
him in one of the rooms below; and, by the force of an irresistible
demand, learn in a moment whether he had to do with a mere chimera
of his own overwrought fancy, or with a fact which would call into
play all the resources of an hitherto unconquered and undaunted
nature.

There was a wood-fire burning in the sitting-room that night, and
around it was grouped a number of men with their papers and pipes.
Mr. Brotherson, entering, naturally looked that way for the man he
was in search of, and was disappointed not to find him there; but
on casting his glances elsewhere, he was relieved to see him
standing in one of the windows overlooking the street. His back
was to the room and he seemed to be lost in a fit of abstraction.

As Orlando crossed to him, he had time to observe how much whiter
was this man's head than in the last interview he had held with him
in the coroner's office in New York. But this evidence of grief in
one with whom he had little, if anything, in common, neither touched
his feelings nor deterred his step. The awakening of his heart to
new and profound emotions had not softened him towards the
sufferings of others if those others stood without the pale he had
previously raised as the legitimate boundary of a just man's
sympathies.

He was, as I have said, an extraordinary specimen of manly vigour
in body and in mind, and his presence in any company always
attracted attention and roused, if it never satisfied, curiosity.
Conversation accordingly ceased as he strode up to Mr. Challoner's
side, so that his words were quite audible as he addressed that
gentleman with a somewhat curt:

"You see me again, Mr. Challoner. May I beg of you a few minutes'
further conversation? I will not detain you long."

The grey head turned, and the many eyes watching showed surprise at
the expression of dislike and repulsion with which this New York
gentleman met the request thus emphatically urged. But his answer
was courteous enough. If Mr. Brotherson knew a place where they
would be left undisturbed, he would listen to him if he would be
very brief.

For reply, the other pointed to a small room quite unoccupied which
opened out of the one in which they then stood. Mr. Challoner bowed
and in an other moment the door closed upon them, to the infinite
disappointment of the men about the hearth.

"What do you wish to ask?" was Mr. Challoner's immediate inquiry.

"This; I make no apologies and expect in answer nothing more than
an unequivocal yes or no. You tell me that you have never met my
brother. Can that be said of the other members of your family
--of your deceased daughter, in fact?"

"No."

"She was acquainted with Oswald Brotherson?"

"She was."

"Without your knowledge?"

"Entirely so."

"Corresponded with him?"

"Not exactly."

"How, not exactly?"

"He wrote to her--occasionally. She wrote to him frequently--but
she never sent her letters."

"Ah!"

The exclamation was sharp, short and conveyed little. Yet with its
escape, the whole scaffolding of this man's hold upon life and his
own fate went down in indistinguishable chaos. Mr. Challoner
realised a sense of havoc, though the eyes bent upon his countenance
had not wavered, nor the stalwart figure moved.

"I have read some of those letters," the inventor finally
acknowledged. "The police took great pains to place them under my
eye, supposing them to have been meant for me because of the
initials written on the wrapper. But they were meant for Oswald.
You believe that now?"

"I know it."

"And that is why I found you in the same house with him."

"It is. Providence has robbed me of my daughter; if this brother
of yours should prove to be the man I am led to expect, I shall ask
him to take that place in my heart and life which was once hers."

A quick recoil, a smothered exclamation on the part of the man he
addressed. A barb had been hidden in this simple statement which
had reached some deeply-hidden but vulnerable spot in Brotherson's
breast, which had never been pierced before. His eye which alone
seemed alive, still rested piercingly upon that of Mr. Challoner,
but its light was fast fading, and speedily became lost in a
dimness in which the other seemed to see extinguished the last
upflaring embers of those inner fires which feed the aspiring soul.
It was a sight no man could see unmoved. Mr. Challoner turned
sharply away, in dread of the abyss which the next word he uttered
might open between them.

But Orlando Brotherson possessed resources of strength of which,
possibly, he was not aware himself. When Mr. Challoner, still more
affected by the silence than by the dread I have mentioned, turned
to confront him again, it was to find his features composed and
his glance clear. He had conquered all outward manifestation of
the mysterious emotion which for an instant had laid his proud
spirit low.

"You are considerate of my brother," were the words with which he
re-opened this painful conversation. "You will not find your
confidence misplaced. Oswald is a straightforward fellow, of few
faults."

"I believe it. No man can be so universally beloved without some
very substantial claims to regard. I am glad to see that your
opinion, though given somewhat coldly, coincides with that of his
friends."

"I am not given to exaggeration," was the even reply.

The flush which had come into Mr. Challoner's cheek under the effort
he had made to sustain with unflinching heroism this interview with
the man he looked upon as his mortal enemy, slowly faded out till
he looked the wraith of himself even to the unsympathetic eyes of
Orlando Brotherson. A duty lay before him which would tax to its
utmost extent his already greatly weakened self-control. Nothing
which had yet passed showed that this man realised the fact that
Oswald had been kept in ignorance of Miss Challoner's death. If
these brothers were to meet on the morrow, it must be with the full
understanding that this especial topic was to be completely avoided.
But in what words could he urge such a request upon this man? None
suggested themselves, yet he had promised Miss Scott that he would
ensure his silence in this regard, and it was with this difficulty
and no other he had been struggling when Mr. Brotherson came upon
him in the other room.

"You have still something to say," suggested the latter, as an
oppressive silence swallowed up that icy sentence I have already
recorded.

"I have," returned Mr. Challoner, regaining his courage under the
exigencies of the moment. "Miss Scott is very anxious to have your
promise that you will avoid all disagreeable topics with your brother
till the doctor pronounces him strong enough to meet the trouble
which awaits him."

"You mean--"

"He is not as unhappy as we. He knows nothing of the affliction
which has befallen him. He was taken ill--" The rest was almost
inaudible.

But Orlando Brotherson had no difficulty in understanding him, and
for the second time in this extraordinary interview, he gave
evidences of agitation and of a mind shaken from its equipoise.
But only for an instant. He did not shun the other's gaze or even
maintain more than a momentary silence. Indeed, he found strength
to smile, in a curious, sardonic way, as he said:

"Do you think I should be apt to broach this subject with any one,
let alone with him, whose connection with it I shall need days to
realise? I'm not so given to gossip. Besides, he and I have other
topics of interest. I have an invention ready with which I propose
to experiment in a place he has already prepared for me. We can
talk about that."

The irony, the hardy self-possession with which this was said struck
Mr. Challoner to the heart. Without a word he wheeled about towards
the door. Without a word, Brotherson stood, watching him go till he
saw his hand fall on the knob when he quietly prevented his exit by
saying:

"Unhappy truths cannot be long concealed. How soon does the doctor
think my brother can bear these inevitable revelations?"

"He said this morning that if his patient were as well to-morrow as
his present condition gives promise of, he might be told in another
week."

Orlando bowed his appreciation of this fact, but added quickly:

"Who is to do the telling?"

"Doris. Nobody else could be trusted with so delicate a task."

"I wish to be present."

Mr. Challoner looked up, surprised at the feeling with which this
request was charged.

"As his brother--his only remaining relative, I have that right.
Do you think that Dor--that Miss Scott, can be trusted not to
forestall that moment by any previous hint of what awaits him?"

"If she so promises. But will you exact this from her? It surely
cannot be necessary for me to say that your presence will add
infinitely to the difficulty of her task."

"Yet it is a duty I cannot shirk. I will consult the doctor about
it. I will make him see that I both understand and shall insist
upon my rights in this matter. But you may tell Miss Doris that I
will sit out of sight, and that I shall not obtrude myself unless
my name is brought up in an undesirable way."

The hand on the door-knob made a sudden movement.

"Mr. Brotherson, I can bear no more to-night. With your permission,
I will leave this question to be settled by others." And with a
repetition of his former bow, the bereaved father withdrew.

Orlando watched him till the door closed, then he too dropped his
mask.

But it was on again, when in a little while he passed through the
sitting-room on his way upstairs.

No other day in his whole life had been like this to the hardy
inventor; for in it both his heart and his conscience had been
awakened, and up to this hour he had not really known that he
possessed either.

XXXI

WHAT IS HE MAKING

Other boxes addressed to O. Brotherson had been received at the
station, and carried to the mysterious shed in the woods; and now,
with locked door and lifted top, the elder brother contemplated
his stores and prepared himself for work.

He had been allowed a short interview with Oswald, and he had
indulged himself in a few words with Doris. But he had left those
memories behind with other and more serious matters. Nothing that
could unnerve his hand or weaken his insight should enter this spot
sacred to his great hope. Here genius reigned. Here he was himself
wholly and without flaw;--a Titan with his grasp on a mechanical
idea by means of which he would soon rule the world.

Not so happy were the other characters in this drama. Oswald's
thoughts, disturbed for a short time by the somewhat constrained
interview he had held with his brother, had flown eastward again,
in silent love and longing; while Doris, with a double dread now
in her heart, went about her daily tasks, praying for strength to
endure the horrors of this week, without betraying the anxieties
secretly devouring her. And she was only seventeen and quite alone
in her trouble. She must bear it all unassisted and smile, which
she did with heavenly sweetness, when the magic threshold was
passed and she stood in her invalid's presence, overshadowed though
it ever was by the great Dread.

And Mr. Challoner? Let those endless walks of his through the woods
and over the hills tell his story if they can; or his rapidly
whitening hair, and lagging step. He had been a strong man before
his trouble, and had the stroke which laid him low been limited to
one quick, sharp blow he might have risen above it after a while
and been ready to encounter life again. But this long drawn out
misery was proving too much for him. The sight of Brotherson,
though they never really met, acted like acid upon a wound, and it
was not till six days had passed and the dreaded Sunday was at hand,
that he slept with any sense of rest or went his way about the town
without that halting at the corners which betrayed his perpetual
apprehension of a most undesirable encounter.

The reason for this change will be apparent in the short conversation
he held with a man he had come upon one evening in the small park
just beyond the workmen's dwellings.

"You see I am here," was the stranger's low greeting.

"Thank God," was Mr. Challoner's reply. "I could not have faced
to-morrow alone and I doubt if Miss Scott could have found the
requisite courage. Does she know that you are here?"

"I stopped at her door."

"Was that safe?"

"I think so. Mr. Brotherson--the Brooklyn one,--is up in his shed.
He sleeps there now, I am told, and soundly too I've no doubt."

"What is he making?"

"What half the inventors on both sides of the water are engaged
upon just now. A monoplane, or a biplane, or some machine for
carrying men through the air. I know, for I helped him with it.
But you'll find that if he succeeds in this undertaking, and I
believe he will, nothing short of fame awaits him. His invention
has startling points. But I'm not going to give them away. I'll
be true enough to him for that. As an inventor he has my sympathy;
but--Well, we will see what we shall see, to-morrow. You say that
he is bound to be present when Miss Scott relates her tragic story.
He won't be the only unseen listener. I've made my own arrangements
with Miss Scott. If he feels the need of watching her and his
brother Oswald, I feel the need of watching him."

"You take a burden of intolerable weight from my shoulders. Now I
shall feel easier about that interview. But I should like to ask
you this: Do you feel justified in this continued surveillance of a
man who has so frequently, and with such evident sincerity, declared
his innocence?"

"I do that. If he's as guiltless as he says he is, my watchfulness
won't hurt him. If he's not, then, Mr. Challoner, I've but one
duty; to match his strength with my patience. That man is the one
great mystery of the day, and mysteries call for solution. At least,
that's the way a detective looks at it."

"May Heaven help your efforts!"

"I shall need its assistance," was the dry rejoinder. Sweetwater
was by no means blind to the difficulties awaiting him.

XXXII

TELL ME, TELL IT ALL

The day was a grey one, the first of the kind in weeks. As Doris
stepped into the room where Oswald sat, she felt how much a ray of
sunshine would have encouraged her and yet how truly these leaden
skies and this dismal atmosphere expressed the gloom which soon
must fall upon this hopeful, smiling man.

He smiled because any man must smile at the entrance of so lovely a
woman, but it was an abstracted smile, and Doris, seeing it, felt
her courage falter for a moment, though her steps did not, nor her
steady compassionate gaze. Advancing slowly, and not answering
because she did not hear some casual remark of his, she took her
stand by his side and then slowly and with her eyes on his face,
sank down upon her knees, still without speaking, almost without
breathing.

His astonishment was evident, for her air was strange and full of
presage,--as, indeed, she had meant it to be. But he remained as
silent as she, only reached out his emaciated hand and, laying it
on her head, smiled again but this time far from abstractedly.
Then, as he saw her cheeks pale in terror of the task before her,
he ventured to ask gently:

"What is the matter, child? So weary, eh? Nothing worse than that,
I hope."

"Are you quite strong this morning? Strong enough to listen to my
troubles; strong enough to bear your own if God sees fit to send
them?" came hesitatingly from her lips as she watched the effect of
each word, in breathless anxiety.

"Troubles? There can be but one trouble for me," was his unexpected
reply. "That I do not fear--will not fear in my hour of happy
recovery. So long as Edith is well--Doris! Doris! You alarm me.
Edith is not ill;--not ill?"

The poor child could not answer save with her sympathetic look and
halting, tremulous breath; and these signs, he would not, could not
read, his own words had made such an echo in his ears.

"Ill! I cannot imagine Edith ill. I always see her in my thoughts,
as I saw her on that day of our first meeting; a perfect, animated
woman with the joyous look of a glad, harmonious nature. Nothing
has ever clouded that vision. If she were ill I would have known
it. We are so truly one that--Doris, Doris, you do not speak. You
know the depth of my love, the terror of my thoughts. Is Edith ill?"

The eyes gazing wildly into his, slowly left his face and raised
themselves aloft, with a sublime look. Would he understand? Yes,
he understood, and the cry which rang from his lips stopped for a
moment the beating of more than one heart in that little cottage.

"Dead!" he shrieked out, and fell back fainting in his chair, his
lips still murmuring in semi-unconsciousness, "Dead! dead!"

Doris sprang to her feet, thinking of nothing but his wavering,
slipping life till she saw his breath return, his eyes refill with
light. Then the horror of what was yet to come--the answer which
must be given to the how she saw trembling on his lips, caused her
to sink again upon her knees in an unconscious appeal for strength.
If that one sad revelation had been all!

But the rest must be told; his brother exacted it and so did the
situation. Further waiting, further hiding of the truth would be
insupportable after this. But oh, the bitterness of it! No wonder
that she turned away from those frenzied, wildly-demanding eyes.

"Doris?"

She trembled and looked behind her. She had not recognised his
voice. Had another entered? Had his brother dared--No, they were
alone; seemingly so, that is. She knew,--no one better--that they
were not really alone, that witnesses were within hearing, if not
within sight.

"Doris," he urged again, and this time she turned in his direction
and gazed, aghast. If the voice were strange, what of the face
which now confronted her. The ravages of sickness had been marked,
but they were nothing to those made in an instant by a blasting
grief. She was startled, although expecting much, and could only
press his hands while she waited for the question he was gathering
strength to utter. It was simple when it came; just two words:

"How long?"

She answered them as simply.

"Just as long as you have been ill," said she; then, with no attempt
to break the inevitable shock, she went on: "Miss Challoner was struck
dead and you were taken down with typhoid on the self-same day."

"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:

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