The tramp broke in here, and told his story, with frequent interpretations by Alex and Mr. Winters. He used a strange medley, in which familiar words took unfamiliar meanings, but it was gradually made clear to us.
On the night in question the tramp had been “pounding his ear”—this stuck to me as being graphic—in an empty boxcar along the siding at Casanova. The train was going west, and due to leave at dawn. The tramp and the “brakey” were friendly, and things going well. About ten o’clock, perhaps earlier, a terrific crash against the side of the car roused him. He tried to open the door, but could not move it. He got out of the other side, and just as he did so, he heard someone groan.
The habits of a lifetime made him cautious. He slipped on to the bumper of a car and peered through. An automobile had struck the car, and stood there on two wheels. The tail lights were burning, but the headlights were out. Two men were stooping over someone who lay on the ground. Then the taller of the two started on a dogtrot along the train looking for an empty. He found one four cars away and ran back again. The two lifted the unconscious man into the empty boxcar, and, getting in themselves, stayed for three or four minutes. When they came out, after closing the sliding door, they cut up over the railroad embankment toward the town. One, the short one, seemed to limp.
The tramp was wary. He waited for ten minutes or so. Some women came down a path to the road and inspected the automobile. When they had gone, he crawled into the boxcar and closed the door again. Then he lighted a match. The figure of a man, unconscious, gagged, and with his hands tied, lay far at the end.
The tramp lost no time; he went through his pockets, found a little money and the cufflinks, and took them. Then he loosened the gag—it had been cruelly tight—and went his way, again closing the door of the boxcar. Outside on the road he found the watch. He got on the fast freight east, some time after, and rode into the city. He had sold the cufflinks, but on offering the watch to Alex he had been “copped.”
The story, with its cold recital of villainy, was done. I hardly knew if I were more anxious, or less. That it was Halsey, there could be no doubt. How badly he was hurt, how far he had been carried, were the questions that demanded immediate answer. But it was the first real information we had had; my boy had not been murdered outright. But instead of vague terrors there was now the real fear that he might be lying in some strange hospital receiving the casual attention commonly given to the charity cases. Even this, had we known it, would have been paradise to the terrible truth. I wake yet and feel myself cold and trembling with the horror of Halsey’s situation for three days after his disappearance.
Mr. Winters and Alex disposed of the tramp with a warning. It was evident he had told us all he knew. We had occasion, within a day or two, to be doubly thankful that we had given him his freedom. When Mr. Jamieson telephoned that night we had news for him; he told me what I had not realized before—that it would not be possible to find Halsey at once, even with this clue. The cars by this time, three days, might be scattered over the Union.
But he said to keep on hoping, that it was the best news we had had. And in the meantime, consumed with anxiety as we were, things were happening at the house in rapid succession.
We had one peaceful day—then Liddy took sick in the night. I went in when I heard her groaning, and found her with a hot-water bottle to her face, and her right cheek swollen until it was glassy.
“Toothache?” I asked, not too gently. “You deserve it. A woman of your age, who would rather go around with an exposed nerve in her head than have the tooth pulled! It would be over in a moment.”
“So would hanging,” Liddy protested, from behind the hot-water bottle.
I was hunting around for cotton and laudanum.
“You have a tooth just like it yourself, Miss Rachel,” she whimpered. “And I’m sure Doctor Boyle’s been trying to take it out for years.”
There was no laudanum, and Liddy made a terrible fuss when I proposed carbolic acid, just because I had put too much on the cotton once and burned her mouth. I’m sure it never did her any permanent harm; indeed, the doctor said afterward that living on liquid diet had been a splendid rest for her stomach. But she would have none of the acid, and she kept me awake groaning, so at last I got up and went to Gertrude’s door. To my surprise, it was locked.
I went around by the hall and into her bedroom that way. The bed was turned down, and her dressing-gown and nightdress lay ready in the little room next, but Gertrude was not there. She had not undressed.
I don’t know what terrible thoughts came to me in the minute I stood there. Through the door I could hear Liddy grumbling, with a squeal now and then when the pain stabbed harder. Then, automatically, I got the laudanum and went back to her.
It was fully a half-hour before Liddy’s groans subsided. At intervals I went to the door into the hall
