The Sleuth of St. James's Square by Melville Davisson Post (black authors fiction txt) 📕

the other. We can grant a certain factor of difference, a certain reasonable factor of difference. But not a great factor of difference. We have a right to conclude that one rail would give way before the other. But not that one would very readily give way before the other. For some reason this particular rail did give way, much more readily than it ought to have done.”

The trackman was listening with the greatest interest.

“Just how do you know that, Miss Warfield?” he said.

“Why,” replied Marion, “don't you see, from the mark on the ties, that the engine wheels left the rail almost at the moment they struck it. The marks of the wheels commence on the second tie ahead of the beginning of the rail. Therefore, this rail, for some reason, was more easily pushed out of alignment than it should have been. What was the reason?”

The track boss reflected.

“You see, Miss Warfield, this place is the beginning of an up-grade, the engine was coming down a long grade toward it, so when this train struck the first rails of the up-grade it struck it just like you'd drive in a wedge, and the hundred-ton brute of an engine jammed this rail out of alignment. That's all there is to it. When the rail sprung the wheels went down on the ties on that side and the train was ditched.”

“It was a clean accident, then, you think?” said Marion.

“Sure, Miss Warfield,” replied the man. “If anybody had tried to move that rail out of alignment, he would have to disconnect it at the other end, that is, take off the plate that joins it to the next rail. That would leave the end of the rail clean, with no broken plate. But the end of the rail is bent and the plate is twisted off. We looked at that the first thing. Nobody could twist that plate off. The engine did it when it left the track.

“You see, Miss Warfield, the weight of the engine, like a wedge, simply forced one of these rails out of alignment. Don't you understand how a hundred ton wedge driven against the track, at the start of an upgrade, could do it?”

The old peasant woman stood behind the track boss. The thing was a sort of awful game. She did not speak, but the vicissitudes of the inquiry advanced her, or retired her, with the effect of points, won or lost.

“I understand perfectly,” replied Marion, “how the impact of the heavy engine might drive both rails out of alignment, if they offered an equal resistance, or one of them out if it offered a less resistance. This is straight track. The wedge would go in even. It should have spread the rails equally. That's the probable thing. But instead it did the improbable thing; it spread one. I hold the improbable thing always in question. Human knowledge is built up on that postulate.

“True, a certain factor of difference in conditions must be allowed, as I have said, but an excessive factor cannot be allowed. We have got to find it, or discard human reason as an implement for getting at the truth.”

Again the big track boss smashed through the niceties of logic.

“These things happen all the time, Miss Warfield. You can't figure it out.”

“One ought to be able to determine it,”' replied the girl.

The track boss shook his head.

“We can't tell what made that rail give.”

“Of course, we can tell,” said Marion. “It gave because it was weakened.”

“But what weakened it?” replied the man. “You can't tell that? The rail's sound.”

“There could be only two causes,” said Marion. “It was either weakened by a natural agency or a human agency.”

The track boss made an annoyed gesture, like a practical person vexed with the refinements of a theorist.

“But how are you going to tell?”

“Now,” said Marion, “there is always a point as you follow a thing down, where the human design in it must appear, if there is a human design in it. The human mind can falsify events within a limited area. But if one keeps moving out, as from a center, he will find somewhere this point at which intelligence is no longer able to imitate the aspect of the result of natural forces... I think we have reached it.”

She paused and drove her query at the track boss.

“The spikes on the outside of this rail held it in place, did they not?”

“Yes, Miss Warfield.”

“Did the impact of the engine force these spikes out of the ties?”

“Yes, Miss Warfield, it forced them out.”

“How do you know it forced them out?”

“Well, Miss Warfield,” said the man, pointing to the rail and the denuded cross-ties, don't you see they're out?”

“I see that they are out,” replied Marion, “but I do not yet see that they have been forced out.”

She moved a step closer to the track boss and her voice hardened. “If these spikes were forced out by the impact of the engine, we ought to find torn spike holes inclining toward the end of the crossties.... Look!”

The big practical workman suddenly realized what the girl meant.

He stooped over and began to flash his torch along the end of the ties. We crowded against him. Every one of the spike holes, for the entire length of the rail, was straight and clean. The man seized one of the spikes and scrutinized it under his torch.

Then he stood up. For a moment he did not speak. He merely looked at Marion. “It's the holy truth!” he said. “Somebody pulled these spikes with a clawbar. That weakened the rail, and she bowed out when the engine struck her.”

Then he turned around, and shouted down the track to his crew. “Hey, boys! Spread out along the right of way and see if you can't find a claw-bar. The devils that do these tricks always throw away their tools.”

We stood together in a little tragic group. The old peasant woman came over to where I stood, she walked with a dead, wooden step. “Contessa,” she whispered, her old lips against my hand. “You will save him?”

And suddenly with a wild human resentment, I longed to cut a way out of the trap of this Fatality; to force its ruthless decree into a sort of equity, if I could do it.

“Yes,” I said, “I will save him!”

It was an impulse with no plan behind it. But the dabbing of the withered mouth on my fingers was like actual physical contact with a human heart.

For a moment she looked at me as one among the damned might look at Michael. Then she went slowly away, down through the wooded copse of the