_ 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 burning wood 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 and seemed ready to fall.
"Courage!" he cried, "we will soon be out of this."
Reaching the narrow window, the detective dashed out sash and glass with a stool, and the air from outside seemed like a breath from fairy land.
"You must go first?"
Dyke Darrel assisted his fair companion to the opening. An instant later she had passed outside.
Then something occurred that quite startled the detective and filled him with intense alarm.
A burning log fell from the side of the cabin with a thud that was sickening. A horrible fear at once took possession of Darrel. With a quick bound he gained the opening, and leaped clear of the burning logs to the ground without.
Turning about he uttered a cry of horror.
Sibyl Osborne lay crushed beneath a black log that was yet smoking with heat. With a herculean effort the detective lifted and flung the log from the poor girl's breast, and then he lifted and carried her beyond the reach of flame and heat, and laid her on a little mound beneath a giant tree.
One glance into the mad girl's face satisfied him of the mournful truth. The falling log had done fatal work, and with his hand clasping hers, 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 about him. There was a flinty gleam in his keen eyes and a fierce grating of white teeth.
It had been a long time since the railroad detective was moved as at that hour, with the work of human fiends before him.
From the burning cabin his gaze returned to the upturned white face of the dead girl. Pure and lovely as a lily looked the face of the 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. And yet the manner of the mad girl's taking off was shocking in the extreme.
Had Dyke Darrel known the way out, he would have taken the corpse in his arms and hurried from the scene at once. As it was, the detective deemed it wise to remain in the vicinity until morning, when it was likely he would have little trouble in making his way out of the woods!
The remaining hours of the night passed slowly. Dyke Darrel dared not sleep, and so he kept his lonely vigil beside the dead, seated in the shadows, with revolver ready to use at a moment's notice.
No interruption came, however, and when the gray streaks of morning dawned the detective breathed easier. He at once went in search of a road that would lead out of the wood.
He met with better success than he had dared hope. He found a path that must have been used by the owner of the cabin, and which it was evident the mad girl had followed in her wanderings.
How long she had been in the cabin the detective had no means of knowing, but it seemed to him evident that she could have been there but a few hours when discovered by him.
The way out of the Black Hollow woods was long and tedious, but Dyke Darrel proved equal to the task, and when he broke cover and entered upon 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-eyed amazement, 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 take the woman aboard and drive to the house of Mr. Bragg, I will pay you for it."
"Of course I will."
The farmer was garrulous on the way, and it required all the detective's ingenuity to answer his questions promptly, so as not to excite the fellow's suspicions.
The body of the beautiful dead girl was laid in one of Agent Bragg's rooms, and the latter telegraphed to the nearest town of importance for 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 the train 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 so desire."
"I will think about it."
Sauntering along in the afternoon, just in the outskirts of the village, Dyke Darrel came suddenly upon a man standing with his back against 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 then he remembered the face he had seen at the window of the cabin in Black Hollow the previous night. The memory brought a harsh expression to his 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 in some way, Harper. You were in Black Hollow last night."
"There you are mistaken," assured Mr. Elliston; "I stopped off here on the noon train."
"You did not go to Chicago, then?"
"Yes, I did; but only remained an hour. You see the man I was looking for was not there, but had gone to Burlington, Iowa, and so, remembering that you stopped off here yesterday, I thought I would run down 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 would have certainly found me."
"That's exactly what I did do, and I did not find you; so now," and Mr. 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 New Yorker 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, near Chicago."
"Can you prove this?"
"If necessary, of course; but what in the world is the matter, Dyke? I hope 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 solemn expression pervading the face of Dyke Darrel. He had experienced many strange things during his detective life, but this latest phase puzzled him the most.
He could swear that he saw the face of Elliston at the window of the house in the gulch on the previous night, yet the assertion from his friend that he was fifty miles away at the time seemed honest enough.
Having been long in the detective work, Dyke Darrel had grown to be suspicious, and so he was fast losing faith in the good intentions of his New York friend. He had suddenly resolved on a test that he believed would prove effectual in setting all doubts at rest.
Arrived at the Bragg dwelling, the detective conducted Harper Elliston at once to the room where the remains of the beautiful, dead girl lay encoffined. _