Part 40 (2/2)

Suddenly a flash of light stabbed the darkness. A shot rang out. And another.

Helen saw the man she was watching fall.

With a cry, she started from her seat; and before McIver, who had involuntarily stopped the car, could check her, she had leaped from her place beside him and was running toward the fallen man.

With a shout ”Helen!” McIver followed.

As she knelt beside the form on the ground McIver put his hand on her shoulder. ”Helen,” he said, sharply, as if to bring her to her senses, ”you must not--here, let me--”

Without moving from her position she turned her face up to him. ”Don't you understand, Jim? It is Captain Charlie.”

Two watchmen on the Ward estate, who had heard the shots, came running up.

McIver tried to insist that Helen go with him in his roadster to the house for help and a larger car, but she refused.

When he returned with John, the chauffeur and one of the big Ward machines, after telephoning the police and the doctor, Helen was kneeling over the wounded man just as he had left her.

She did not raise her head when they stood beside her and seemed unconscious of their presence. But when John lifted her up and she heard her brother's voice, she cried out and clung to him like a frightened child.

The doctor arrived just as they were carrying Captain Charlie into the room to which Mrs. Ward herself led them. The police came a moment later.

While the physician, with John's a.s.sistance, was caring for his patient, McIver gave the officers what information he could and went with them to the scene of the shooting.

He returned to the house after the officers had completed their examination of the spot and the immediate vicinity just in time to meet John, who was going out. Helen and her mother were with the doctor at the bedside of the a.s.sa.s.sin's victim.

McIver wondered at the anguish in John Ward's face. But Captain Charlie's comrade only asked, steadily, ”Did the police find anything, Jim?”

”Not a thing,” McIver answered. ”What does the doctor say, John?”

John turned away as if to hide his emotion and for a moment did not answer. Then he spoke those words so familiar to the men of Flanders'

fields, ”Charlie is going West, Jim. I must bring his father and sister. Would you mind waiting here until I return? Something might develop, you know.”

”Certainly, I will stay, John--anything that I can do--command me, won't you?”

”Thank you, Jim--I'll not be long.”

While he waited there alone, Jim McIver's mind went back over the strange incidents of the evening: Helen's visit to the Whaley home and her coming to him. Swiftly he reviewed their conversation. What was it that had so awakened Helen's deep concern for the laboring cla.s.s? He had before noticed her unusual interest in the strike and in the general industrial situation--but to-night--he had never dreamed that she would go so far. Why had she continued to refuse an answer to his pleading? What was Charlie Martin doing in that neighborhood at that hour? How had Helen recognized him so quickly and surely in the darkness? The man, as these and many other unanswerable questions crowded upon him, felt a strange foreboding. Mighty forces beyond his understanding seemed stirring about him. As one feels the gathering of a storm in the night, he felt the mysterious movements of elements beyond his control.

He was disturbed suddenly by the opening of an outer door behind him.

Turning quickly, he faced Adam Ward.

Before McIver could speak, the Mill owner motioned him to be silent.

Wondering, McIver obeyed and watched with amazement as the master of that house closed the door with cautious care and stole softly toward him. To his family Adam Ward's manner would not have appeared so strange, but McIver had never seen the man under one of his attacks of nervous excitement.

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